Pokuskulp [Disquiet0254] by Suss Müsik

Here in Suss Müsik studio, we often talk about “sculpting the fog.” We aren’t interested in hazy ambience for its own sake; the ability to manipulate and layer atmospheric noise is an essential part of our compositional process.

For this short piece, Suss Müsik thought in terms of shorts and longs: how much aural value can be extracted from a tiny portion of a sound, yet still retain the essence of character that renders something recognizable? Can those blips of information be extended to create additional sub-context, not unlike a 1960‘s drone experiment with strings and wood instruments, where the listener seems to hear other voices and timbres that aren’t actually being played?

We sampled, we stretched, we clipped, we layered. We ran it through a wind-controlled midi device to preserve the quality of breath. We created a metronomic tick to keep time. We scrambled the voices and randomized the sequence. We played it live and recorded it quickly.

The piece is titled Pokuskulp, a verbal mashup of the Icelandic words for “fog” and “sculpture.”

More on this 254th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Fog and Steam: Make music from two provided samples” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0254/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

llllllll.co/t/music-of-fog-and-steam-disquiet-junto-project-0254/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Fog horn sample by Schaarsen:

http://www.freesound.org/people/schaarsen/sounds/69663/

Train whistle sample by Ecodios:

http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodios/sounds/119963/