The simple instructions were to imagine my next single, called 'Hyperloop'. I ignored the proposed transportation and just thought about the word.
Seemed obvious to start with a loop somehow, so I decided I would go beyond ("hyper-") a loop by first writing a 4-bar loop and then just structuring the composition around starting with the first beat of that loop and adding one more beat with each repetition. Once it expands out to the full 4-bar loop I worked backwards, removing the last beat until the track ends with just the first beat of the loop again.
In other words, at the start of the track you hear the first beat of the loop, then the first two beats, then the first three beats, then the first bar, then the first bar + the first beat of the second bar, etc.
A "single" suggested to me something poppy, and "Hyper-" also made me think of the label Hyperdub. I started out playing with bright synths like one of their artists, LV, but sort of toned it back in the end.
More on this 86th Disquiet Junto project, in which a song was made based on its assigned title (“Hyperloop”), at:
disquiet.com/2013/08/22/disquiet0086-hyperloop/
The Tesla Motors press release for their proposed Hyperloop transportation:
www.teslamotors.com/blog/hyperloop
An article suggesting the costs in Tesla Motors write up above are completely inaccurate:
www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20130818,0,2474072.column
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/