Possibly the twenty-first century’s most important voice in ambient work, William Basinski debuts a brand-new work On Time, Out of Time in celebration of his sixtieth birthday. Known for his affecting Disintegration Loops series, his work typifies subtle states of inwardly expansive audio. He is joined by Melbourne’s WPH who explores the outer orbit of textural guitar performance.
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who’s been working in experimental media for over thirty years in New York, and, more recently, California. Employing obsolete technology, including analogue tape loops, his haunting, melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His four-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops received critical acclaim and was one of Pitchfork Media’s top-fifty albums of 2004. His 2012 box-set Temporary Residence was awarded best reissue of the year and a score of ten on Pitchfork. His concerts are presented to sold-out crowds around the world and the Installations and films he makes in collaboration with artist-filmmaker James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums internationally. Most recently, Basinski was chosen to create music for the new Robert Wilson opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, which had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011, and toured Europe in 2012 and North America in 2013. Orchestral transcriptions of The Disintegration Loops by Maxim Moston have been performed at the Metropolitan Museum, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and La Batie Festival in Geneva.
WPH is the alias of Melbourne guitarist Nathan Pilch. With his self-titled debut for Nice Music, Pilch specialises in spatially organised, low-dynamic cycles in high fidelity. Expertly rendered shimmer and drift are captured, as if bottled from a constant stream with no discernible beginning or end. His sounds are massive and environmental—a compelling, obscured topography. A release as inventive as it is inexplicably humanistic. For fans of Loren Connors, and Thomas Koner.
Mono is a program of sound curated by Lawrence English/Room40.
