Disquiet Junto Project 0774: Count Down

The Assignment: Score some classic Dracula.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0774: Count Down
The Assignment: Score some classic Dracula.

It’s Halloween, so let’s get to work.

Step 1: There are plenty of recordings of Dracula on archive.org. Find a short segment, between one and five minutes, that you want to set to music.

Step 2: Record a piece of music as backing for the segment you selected in Step 1.

Step 3: Your finished piece is the combination of the audio snippet from Step 1 and the musical score from Step 2.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0774” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0774-count-down/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Immortality is quite a stretch of time.

Deadline: Monday, November 2, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 774th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Count Down — The Assignment: Score some classic Dracula — at disquiet.com/0774.

Light It Up

Downtown SF

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I’ve looked up and across at these San Francisco buildings for as long as I can remember, and I love how at night their edges are lit up all rectilinear style, like something out of Tron, and I only just this week came to recognize that the magic comes down to good old simple strings of lights. Nothing fancy. Nothing built-in. Zoom in to see.

Live Ambient Near Cucuron, France

Thomas Ouf hits record

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“A temporary shelter from the static” is the title of a new live set from Thomas Ouf, who has joined the expansive ranks of YouTube modular synth streamers, recording himself playing ambient music out in nature on a portable unit. He situated himself at Le Clos de Sannes near Cucuron, France, and let the video and audio record for just under a quarter of an hour. It’s the first in a planned series of videos where, as Ouf explains: “I set up my modular synthesizer (and more gear) in places I have a deep connection with or simply find inspiring.” In addition to the cool extra-widescreen footage, he provides a brief summary of the equipment he employed and his process.

On Repeat: Pedal, Sampler, Pedal Steel

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ One guitar, one incredible guitar pedal, which turns an opening series of notes into an endlessly drifting drone. Beautiful stuff. It’s by Perry Frank, who is from Sardinia, Italy.

▰ Keinseier, a film composer based in Hamburg, has been going to town on a specific set of electronic music instruments, doing lots of short videos (in which he performs on them usually without any additional effects or tools), and he’s become quite adept in particular with the Digitakt II. This performance uses lots of little quiet sounds.

▰ I listen to Gary Peters’ solo pedal steel music far more often than I write about it. This is a lovely recent recording. He says of his work: “Very simple things can be very beautiful. But such simplicity is quite hard to achieve. I manage to get close sometimes.” Peters is based in the UK and also lives in Spain.