william basinski - is this the best ambient/drone stuff around or what?

holy shit that sounds like the best thing ever xp

distingeration loops 1 is shifted heavily towards the right channel in the mix, right? really hard to listen to on headphones.

i don't think so, no

hmm it definitely seems right-shifted to me, even in the iTunes samples. (NB I would buy it from eMusic but they won't let me join because I'm currently living out-of-the-states)

i bought mine on Amazon Mp3 and it certainly sounds "right-shifted" to me

yeah I guess fixing it in post would be against the spirit of the enterprise. really wish I could just put it on on headphones and zone out though...

dyao technology

(mine's not right-shifted btw)

hee waaannnt it

Achieved something akin to Distintegrating Loops here, using two reel to reel machines feeding back on one another. Rather than the tape itself degrading though it's the signal being obliterated by the analogue recording process. Something like this is what makes tape so exciting to work with, it seems like a natural process.

http://automating.bandcamp.com/track/soundoffsound

Available for download for one week:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2011/09/07/140265002/remembering-september-11-a-live-concert-webcast-from-the-temple-of-dendur

Wasn't sure about the added drums to start with, but it's growing on me.

yeah saw that linked on p'fork. will listen tonight when writing. drums?!

download??

Just to the right of "hear this concert".

Wow Toby, thanks so much for sharing! Going to make a listening event of this tonight!

Good stuff. I'm very interested in hearing this. Will zone out to it tonight.

thx toby i looked and looked and couldn't find the link.

http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/concerts/2011/09/20110911_concerts_dendur.mp3?dl=1

wonderful stuff, thanks

heard this a few times today and it's really pretty great.

i was at the temple of dendur for this on sunday. writing a review now, it'll be up at frieze.com in a day or two

yay frieze.com!

Woah listening now, turns out my current employer sponsored this event! I knew there was a connection with Basinski and Sep 11th but didn't make the connection. You can hear them thanked at 5:23

there were a lot of people I recognized in the audience - Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, Tony Conrad, etc. Antony is like a big teddy bear in person.

Antony and William Basinski are long time friends. Very cool that TOny Conrad was there!

yeah. when Conrad showed up, they asked him for his ticket, but he didn't have one (even though it was free, it was a ticketed event), so the Met guards wouldn't let him in. i gave him my +1 and got him into the show. i recognized him right away because i'd just seen him play the night before, at the Kitchen!

Aw, nice.

that's awesome, geeta.

the perfect music event??

dude has an awesome apartment

i wrangled the +1 by telling the press desk that Tony Conrad was my 'photographer'!

he would've been a great photographer for the article, we could've done something like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJbqnztjkbs

recognized him right away because i'd just seen him play the night before, at the Kitchen!

I didn't go to basinski, but just as an aside, conrad's set at the kitchen was really fun! didn't have much info beforehand and was very happy to see that he was playing with eli keszler. love that guy!

Ryan McAdams, the guy who conducted this, was in the same rowboat as me at last year's performance of Xenakis' Persephassa on the lake in Central Park. We talked about music a bunch. Cool guy.

A review in the NYT

Listening to this now. Very moving.

"dlp 1.1" has a stately, martial mood that the drums work well with, i think. the whole concert is lovely tho.

I made it to 1:38 before the description of the venue had me welling up. The Disintegration loops rivals on Sinking of the titanic to have me in a heap on the floor. Potentially leave this till im out of the office

I want an orchestration of the complete Disintegration Loops now, it really is very very well done.

Listening to this now. It really is overwhelmingly beautiful. The drums, as mentioned before, are an at first surprising but a wonderful addition throughout. An orchestration of the full Loops would be beyond amazing.

Aside of the Disintegration Loops I've only heard 'A Red Score In Tile', 'Melencholia' and '92982'. Anything else outstanding that I'm missing? I hope so!

This is amazing. I prefer this to the recorded version of dlp 1.1.

@AnotherDeadHero, I cannot recommend 'The Garden of Brokennness' enough, which is just utterly fantastic. His most 'silent' piece, I think, with a lot of built-in silence surrounded by melancholy piano. 'Silent Night' also is really great. But 'Garden' is an essential piece in Basinski's post-DLP era I'd say.

This concert is amazing. I listened to it in the dark last night and it really hit home. The drums are a daring touch but it works out so well. The whole concert sounds great though.

Oops, one 'n' too many in Brokenness there

Yes, I'm especially interested in tracking down a brass ensemble recording of Ingram Marshall's Fog Tropes II, the string quartet arrangement is beautiful but I can definitely imagine the original.

I would also check out "The River", which remains a personal all-time favorite piece of music for falling-asleep purposes. way more subtle than Disintegration Loops but still worth yr time.

My desperate attempts to track down a reasonably priced copy of 'The River' have proven entirely fruitless. As has my search to find it lossless. Anyone have it in FLAC? My dreams would be forever in debt.

boomkat have it as a flac. don't know about 'reasonably priced' though.

http://boomkat.com/downloads/87532-william-basinski-the-river

going for about $20 on discogs:

http://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=43599&ev=mb

is 2 euros on raster noton site. not sure of format

https://shop.raster-noton.net/?release=the%20river (and don't know whether it's the remix, but for 2E i'm not sure i care)

I managed to get a copy of 'The River'. Normans Records were having a half price sale and I picked it up for £10. I also ordered 'Silent Night' and 'A Red Score in tile'. I've heard the latter before but the former I'm unfamiliar with.

I have to be honest though, I've only listened to 'The River' once (just disc 1 at that) and great as it was I found it mildly unsettling as sleeping music.

just came here to see if anyone else had noticed how the mix of dlp1.1 shifts big to the right, it really is unlistenable on headphones. does anyone know how to fix it?

Yes, dlp1.1 on my copy of Disintegration Loops 1 CD is also "right-shifted." Basically, only the faintest of sounds come out of my left monitor when playing this track.
Some places like itunes and amazon seemed to have right/left balanced mp3 samples, so not sure what happened to the CD pressing. Agreed that it is a miserable experience to listen to dlp1.1 on headphones... I can't do it.