#61

Abuses of political power have been on my mind lately, and this was a very intense project to work on. Basel Khartabil, a software engineer who worked on open-source projects, was arrested and charged with “harming state security.” He was imprisoned for many years, but now it has been months since anyone has heard from him.

Making this piece was very difficult - I was using the words of someone who found hope in a hopeless situation, and may no longer be alive. I hope I did him justice.

I started by building a drone of stacked fifths, taking a high note on my accordion and then pitching it down in Ableton’s Sample… I used these stacked fifths in “The Analyst, Movement III” to portray divinity and purity, and in this context I use it to portray freedom and self-determination. As we hear snippets of Basel’s letter describing his imprisonment, one note of the drone moves down by a half-step, introducing dissonance. The piece ends when the fundamental note moves up by a half-step.

Underneath everything is Basel’s letter, read in its entirety, twice. It starts out unprocessed, then slowly a vocoder takes it over until it becomes percussive static.

The final element is distant “crashes.” I wanted there to be irregular washes of white static to indicate breathing and the solitude of a prison cell, but Ableton gave me a weird drill-like glitch, which I pitched down and run through some delays to make it a wash of white noise. It sounds like distant gunfire or walls crashing.

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#62

These are all lovely. I haven’t been able to contribute this week, but as usual, the contributions from the community are amazing.

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#63

https://soundcloud.com/vgmrmojo/dj-0271-prison-sky-final

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#64

That’s no problem. The track is in the playlist. Changing the URL would probably cause confusion anyhow.

#65

In the hope we will soon all hear the news of Bassel Khartabil being freed.
As the rest of the group, I hope this story has a happy ending.

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#66

I was torn between the seeming hopelessness of his situation, the terrifying thoughts and imagery evoked from his remarkably positively-worded letter, and the slice of blue sky that sheds light and hope on his cause.

I hope to have juxtaposed darkness, fear, and melancholy, diffused by a beacon of light.

Drones created from noodles on Sonic Core Modular IV, orchestral parts by Emulator x3 software sampler. Since Bassel was a strong supporter of open-source software, I decided to pay homage to that, using Creative Commons Zero Attribution recordings of breathing, typing, and mouse clicking, from freesound.org.

I really hope there is the best possible end to this story. My love and strength to those close to Bassel.

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#67

sweet, cool sounds :slightly_smiling_face:

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#68

Pretty new to this discussion spot. Here’s what I posted. More to come in terms of information, although there is a rough description with the file link info. Glad to be back. Bassel is always in the process of being freed, I think, no matter what. The artwork was difficult to photograph well / quickly enough before the deadline, and painting over adhesive stencil stickers was not the best idea.
Anyhow, very moved by this project, so it is extending beyond this track (or, in this case, medley of tracks).

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#69

Hey all,
Just posted my video of this weeks Junto, hope you can take a look.

Thanks for Listening.

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#70

[Update: I specify “2 images” of the original image, because I’d rotated it and liked that look…but, it says new users are allowed one image a page. That is completely fair. It’s best to not dominate a space, even if it was unintentional! But, yeah. Feel free to rotate it and that kind of thing!]

Self-replying, already…oy. Anyhow, I really wanted to get the correct artwork, given it seemed important to my process and it was made for this project post, so, here it is rotated 2 different ways. (It’s the same license as the music, which I am never sure if I ought to mention it on music hosting sites, or just assume others are assuming it? Anyhow, it is here, as originally intended).

I feel quite awkward about doing this, but I just couldn’t get it out of my head that I hadn’t put up the full image or a very clear image, last time. It just wasn’t right! Okay, everybody take care. Also, I know I still haven’t outlined the process + the gear. It’s just that it was so many things, including doing the image (after the saxophone). I just used an internal microphone for that. The drums were recorded via interface with some decent clarity around late December, 2016. They’re quite granular, so I can usually pair up most of the drum solos from that session with solo improvised music. My interface was not working for a few days, so I couldn’t play along with anything. I also treated some piano and bass sounds recorded recently. But, there’s more to it, and every time I attempt to give a better description of the process, I just become completely unable to focus on prioritizing the information. In any case, I have lately been wondering how I can feel I’m making some sort of difference through music, and in this context it is possible to use the music to tell a story. Okay. Enough rambling! But, if I were in a situation like Bassel, his family/relatives, and friends found themselves in, I’d be so incredibly moved. So, that’s why I think it is very nice to do things like this. I just do not understand personally the mentality of some that various cultures cannot coexist, and then there comes a point where it is quite extreme, such as where Bassel’s been, and cultures are wiped out as much as they possibly can be. The 2nd of these 3 projects was one I hadn’t done or been familiar with, but the first one I remember really getting into using imagery and kind of re-building it, imagining the acoustics of the geography and architecture, and then combining any other information available during improvisation. In retrospect, I think it is even more cool than I did back in 2014 (when I’d already thought it was incredibly fun…but now there is a lot more of a story happening).

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