William Basinski | |
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Background information | |
Born | Houston, Texas, U.S. | June 25, 1958
Genres | |
Occupations |
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Years active | 1978–present |
Labels |
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Member of | Sparkle Division |
Website | mmlxii |
William James Basinski [1] (born June 25, 1958) is an American avant-garde composer based in Los Angeles, California. [2] He is also a clarinetist, saxophonist, sound artist, and video artist. [3]
Basinski is best known for his four-volume album The Disintegration Loops (2002–2003), constructed from gradually decaying twenty-year-old tapes of his earlier music. [4]
William James Basinski was born in 1958 in Houston, Texas. [5] He was raised in a Catholic family, [6] and states that he had his first "really mystical, wonderful, magical" musical experiences as an infant at Houston's St. Anne Church. [5] His father was a scientist contracted to NASA, which caused the family to move often. [5] Basinski says he knew that he was gay from an early age. [5]
A classically trained clarinetist, Basinski studied jazz saxophone and composition at the University of North Texas in the late 1970s. In 1978 inspired by minimalists such as Steve Reich and Brian Eno, [7] he began developing his own vocabulary using tape loops and old reel-to-reel tape decks. [8] He developed his meditative, melancholy style experimenting with short looped melodies played against themselves creating feedback loops. [3]
His first release was Shortwavemusic. Although created in 1983, it was first released on vinyl in a small edition in 1998 by Carsten Nicolai's Raster-Noton sub-label. This was followed by Watermusic, self-released in 2000 on Basinski's 2062 Records. Another 2-disc work was Variations: A Movement in Chrome Primitive, 1980: it was finally released in 2004 by David Tibet on the Durtro/Die Stadt label. At the time this work was created, Basinski was experimenting with compositions for piano and tape loops. [3]
Throughout the 1980s, Basinski created a vast archive of experimental works using tape loop and delay systems, found sounds, and shortwave radio static. He was a member of many bands including Gretchen Langheld Ensemble and House Afire. In 1989 he opened his own performance space, "Arcadia" at 118 N. 11th Street. [9] On one occasion, he opened for David Bowie, playing saxophone with rockabilly band The Rockats. [5] Basinski would later dedicate a track from A Shadow in Time to Bowie.
In August and September 2001 he set to work on what would become his most recognizable piece, the four-volume album The Disintegration Loops . The recordings were based on old tape loops which had degraded in quality. While attempting to salvage the recordings in a digital format, the tapes slowly crumbled and left a timestamp history of their demise. [10] [11] [12] [13]
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David Tibet is an English poet, artist and musician. He is best known for the musical group Current 93, which he founded and is the only consistent member of, along with his contributions to the band Death in June.
Ryoji Ikeda is a Japanese visual and sound artist who currently lives and works in Paris, France. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. Rhythmically, Ikeda's music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine. His work also encroaches on the world of ambient music and lowercase; many tracks on his albums are concerned with slowly evolving soundscapes, with little or no sense of pulse.
Carsten Nicolai is a German artist, musician and label owner. As a musician he is known under the pseudonym Alva Noto.
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Raster-Noton was a German electronic music record label. It was established in 1999 in Chemnitz, Germany. By the mid 2010s, it had become known as "one of Europe’s most revered and reliable hubs for experimental electronic music, IDM and audio-visual art."
The Disintegration Loops is a series of four albums by the American avant-garde composer William Basinski, released in 2002 and 2003. The albums comprise tape loop recordings played for extended time, with noise and cracks increasing as the tape deteriorated. Basinski discovered the effect while attempting to transfer his earlier recordings to digital format.
Aether is the sixth album by Australian improvised music trio The Necks first released on the Fish of Milk label in 2001 and later on the ReR label internationally. The album features a single hour-long track, titled "Aether", performed by Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton and Tony Buck.
The London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO), founded in 2008 by Hugh Brunt and Robert Ames, is an ensemble of young musicians whose stated aim is "to explore and promote new music to an increasingly wide audience". LCO staged its inaugural season at LSO St. Luke's and has since performed at venues and festivals both in the UK and internationally, including the Roundhouse, Latitude Festival, The Old Vic Tunnels, Snape Maltings, Southbank Centre, Barbican, Spitalfield's Music, Royal Opera House, Yota Space, and Unsound Festival. LCO has since provided its work on films including Theeb, Moonlight, Macbeth, Slow West,The Master, The Two Popes and American Animals.
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A Shadow in Time is an album by American avant-garde composer William Basinski. It was released on January 20, 2017, by 2062 Records and Temporary Residence Limited.
Cascade is a studio album by William Basinski. It was released on 2062 Records on April 28, 2015. The release comes with a download code for The Deluge. It peaked at number 4 on Billboard's New Age Albums chart.
On Time Out of Time is a studio album by William Basinski. It was released on Temporary Residence Limited on March 8, 2019. It peaked at number 2 on Billboard's New Age Albums chart.
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We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow is the third studio album by the Caretaker, an alias of musician Leyland Kirby. Released in 2003, it was the last of Kirby's "haunted ballroom trilogy", which spans his albums influenced by the film The Shining. It features distorted melodies from the 20th century to recreate the ambience of The Shining's ballroom. We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow was met with positive reception from music critics, who praised its themes of the paranormal. Kirby's next album as the Caretaker, Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia (2005) would abandon the haunted ballroom concept and install themes of memory loss.
Eager to Tear Apart the Stars is the second studio album by English electronic musician Leyland Kirby, released on 3 October 2011. Following his own name debut album Sadly, the Future Is No Longer What It Was, Kirby continued exploring a more personal side of his music, though one that differs from his work as the Caretaker. Kirby produced the songs without using any samples, mostly creating piano tracks from synthesisers. This style of sound drew comparisons to the work of composers Harold Budd and Roedelius, though the record's press release claimed Kirby has his own oeuvre.
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Sparkle Division is an American electronic music group composed of composers William Basinski, Preston Wendel, and Gary Thomas Wright.