Tag: Disquiet

Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.

Among the themes Don DeLillo explores in his excellent novel White Noise is the miasma of uncertainty: a deep foreboding that eclipses human existence like a noxious cloud. The genius of the novel, which some argue to be DeLillo’s best work, is represented by moments of dry humor and domestic banality that poke through its chemically worrisome haze. Consider this passage by the story’s narrator:

I opened the refrigerator door, peered into the freezer compartment. A strange crackling sound came off the plastic food wrap, the snug covering for half eaten things, the Ziploc sacks of livers and ribs, all gleaming with sleety crystals. A cold dry sizzle. A sound like some element breaking down, resolving itself into Freon vapors. An eerie static, insistent but near subliminal, that made me think of wintering souls, some form of dormant life approaching the threshold of perception.

This is the intention Suss Müsik took with this week’s Junto assignment. The goal was to create a “cold dry sizzle … insistent but near subliminal, approaching the threshold of perception.” A disquieting yet enveloping calm. Various forms of white noise were recorded and altered using VCV Rack modules, with an external Chase Bliss Dark Worlds pedal adding extra tones.

The piece, titled DeLillo, was recorded live to 8-track and mastered quickly.

It must be mentioned that, as of this writing, the world is undergoing significant trauma. Suss Müsik is reminded of another passage from White Noise that feels oddly appropriate: “War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”

May peace be with us all.

Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well.

Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is a development and commercialization practice in which a new concept is introduced to the market with basic features. The intention is to maximize the amount of learning, in order to assess product fertility, while minimizing the amount of resource investment.

The general template of an MVP consists of listing the key characteristics of the product that customers will deem essential, usually in the form of questions. These are then coupled with elements that can be designed and manufactured within aggressive time and cost guardrails. Subsequent iterations of the MVP render an offering of increasing maturity, ideally and hopefully, before it transforms the market for which it’s targeted.

Suss Müsik took an MVP approach to this week’s Junto project. The primary questions regarding viability might be interpreted as: to what extent do acoustic and electric guitar fragments, when pressurized under certain constraints, no longer render themselves as inherently musical? At what point do these fragments cease to offer acousmatic value to the listener? And to what extent would an audience be willing to subject themselves to that experience?

The responses to these inquiries, as with all instances of MVP concept testing, are subject to input from a respective target audience. In this case, that audience is you.

The piece is titled MVP v.1 and was recorded live to 8-track in February 2022. The image is a schematic overlay of an actual instrument prototype.

Major thanks to Saga Söderback for having come up with this project.