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

bitchassfagg0t otm

agree about overpriced coffee table bullshit, but i look forward to downloading this and skipping it when it comes up on random

Heads up, heads, he's playing in SF in a month as part of the Electronic Music Festival

Really enjoyed last night's QEH performance; we got the world premiere of the orchestration for DLP 2.1 (featuring someone on amplified clingfilm), then DLP 1.1. Both took a couple of minutes to settle into, but were pretty amazing after that.

Thought 2.1 was fantastic, 1.1 too focussed around the trombone for my liking (nothing against trombones it just seemed top heavy). But the double bass drone it finished on was absolutely electric.

On a tetchier note, can we ban from all 'high art' events (for want of a better term) all hipsters, young people, or anyone incapable of a) arriving on time; ii) sitting quietly for more than two minutes; and 3) going for any length of time without a drink or a smoke. There were people entering late all the way through the first piece and a good ten minutes into the second after the interval and it was really fucking annoying. I blame QEH a bit for not making it clear that the interval wouldn't be long enough to go out for a fag and visit the bar. The cinema style bag rustling was beyond the pale and the palpable discomfort when the conductor held the silence for a couple of minutes after the end of the second piece was ridiculous. Although it was kinda funny when someone started clapping literally half a beat after the end of the first, and then hurriedly stopped, when the conductors arms were still raised and the orchestra still at attention.

People sat near me were pretty good, apart from someone who had the rustliest bag known to man & unleashed it twice. I'll forgive them the 1st occasion, but not the 2nd.

I was pretty lucky with people around me (I'd lucked out on a ticket dead in the middle of the third row, which minimised distraction), but I did notice people entering late - particularly odd as they had signs up saying there would be no late admittance. They could definitely have done a better job informing people about an interval, or even just that there were going to be two pieces - I only knew that from the website, and I'd imagined there would be an interval.

In general I find shows like this suffer a little from being neither traditional classical shows (where silence, no late admission etc is pretty standard) nor obviously more relaxed, so people don't know quite how to behave (cf. the guy who sat in a dark theatre pissing around on twitter on his phone in front of us at a Steve Reich show in Chicago a couple of years ago). Obviously I would prefer them to shut up and sit still.

Thought 2.1 was fantastic, 1.1 too focussed around the trombone for my liking (nothing against trombones it just seemed top heavy). But the double bass drone it finished on was absolutely electric.

Agreed; have listened to the NPR recording of 1.1 enough to be expecting the trombones, though, so they didn't bother me (and I enjoyed watching them). That double bass drone was wonderful.

I've never heard any of the live performances - how do they emulate the disintegration effect? do players just gradually drop out over time?

sometimes i listen to this stuff all day long

On a tetchier note, can we ban from all 'high art' events (for want of a better term) all hipsters, young people, or anyone incapable of a) arriving on time; ii) sitting quietly for more than two minutes; and 3) going for any length of time without a drink or a smoke.

he performed 'vivian & ondine' at this little gallery space in LA a month ago and had to start over about two minutes in because he couldn't be heard over the sound of people outside talking/laughing/opening beer/etc

I've never heard any of the live performances - how do they emulate the disintegration effect? do players just gradually drop out over time?

roughly speaking, yes, although they all fade out individually.

ah ok, that's what I expected. I assume the score has unique instructions for each player - "long decrescendo between measures 400-500", or whatever.

tangent, but people with billions of dollars have no idea how to have fun. if i was made of money, i'd hire an orchestra to play this, but instead of having them gradually fade out, i'd physically obscure the players. the stage would be composed of 16 or so modular units on wheels. over the course of the piece, a team of people would gradually dissemble the stage units and begin wheeling them off into an adjacent hall, turning them away from the audience, holding up long metal tubes in front of certain players. or better yet, at the same time, dissemble the audience and wheel them off at the same time, slowly.

but whatever rich people, buy your yacht, whatever

oh yeah, and also the hypothetical rich person would pay basinski and the orchestra handsomely for their performance and then perform it repeatedly for free, instead of for $50+ in a music hall.

if I was that rich, maybe I could buy a copy of this boxset

Hoping this box set means people will just sell the cds so I can just pick up the ones I don't have for cheap. That or win the box set somehow.

UK: http://www.normanrecords.com/records/135893-william-basinski--the-disintegration

Re: the live disintegration, in 2.1 the actual disintegrating tape noise was simulated with percussion - snare brushing, rim tapping, and as already mentioned amplified clingfilm (or cellophane? It looked like clingfilm but I would have thought that would be too soft and quiet.)

UK: http://www.normanrecords.com/records/135893-william-basinski--the-disintegration

― djh, Monday, August 13, 2012

Almost £300! You can have it shipped direct from the label to the UK for £175...

You will get hit with VAT + customs duty + handling charge on parcel that size from the USA, almost without doubt. I would also fear for the safety of such a mammoth box coming all on its lonesome from the USA, however well they pack it. Tough choices...

Not that I'm saying that buying from Norman et al in the UK is an inherently 'better' choice, just that there may be more to consider than pure pricing.

I hear you. But those additional charges won't get close to £125. I'm expecting then to be in the region of £50.

Also, the boxes still have to come from the US to get to Norman Records... Though they'll obviously be part of a larger, safer shipment.

I sold my unplayed Warp 20 boxset to fund this one, so you're mostly just reading me convincing myself that I've made the right decision to order direct...

Absolutely - the main thing is to enjoy it!

"I hear you. But those additional charges won't get close to £125. I'm expecting then to be in the region of £50."

Recently bought the Can box from US Amazon 'cos with that price even in the likely event I got hit with the extortionate fees & tax, it was still going to work out at pretty much the same price as UK Amazon.

http://philsbootlegs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/william-basinski-disintegration-loops.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/11/12/164978574/divinity-from-dust-the-healing-power-of-the-disintegration-loops

gr8 editing npr

"an old pile of old recordings"

"he keep the loops running"

was listed in boomkat newsletter today, £299, free postage.

http://boomkat.com/vinyl/561223-william-basinski-the-disintegration-loops-deluxe-box-set

the frustrating thing, about being a record store that wanted to stock this, was that i placed a pre-order with a distributor. so it arrives and i'm trying to figure out what to price the damn thing at so that it's reasonably competitive, only to find that you can buy it direct from the label as a consumer for less than i paid for it wholesale. which is.. frustrating, wanting to be a retailed who carries something cool like this, but also being in a position where it's almost impossible to be competitive w/r/t pricing. meaning... i probably don't sell these things.

Just been listening to Radiolab's podcast (http://www.radiolab.org/2011/oct/04/) where they talk about the disintegration loops and interview WB himself. There's a little discussion about the relationship between the sounds on the tapes and the way in which the tape degrades; the decay parts of the chords decay first, the attack parts last. Do any of you have any idea why this might be?

i was just listening to that episode the other day! it's a great one. the only thing i could think of is that perhaps it has to do with the direction that the tape was looping. imagine a surface with a series of bumps. if you repeatedly ran your hand from right to left over the bumps, the bumps on the right might wear down faster than the ones on the left. maybe it's similar with the tape - with the attack on the left and the decay on the right.

in other personal listening relationship to william basinski news, i love disintegration loops, but i think i love melancholia and 92982 even more. what a guy!

new Basinski:

http://boomkat.com/cds/711685-william-basinski-nocturnes

Ausgezeichnet.

http://devonrecordclub.com/2013/10/16/william-basinski-the-disintegration-loops-round-55-robs-choice/

Roughly a dozen Basinski albums just showed up on Spotify--more or less his entire discography *except* for Disintegration Loops. http://open.spotify.com/artist/6u5axd0rpDsWSmzhFfb2VB

good spot, thank you -- i feel like the (unexpanded) loops used to be on there but i don't know if i trust that

yeah thanks - I have an "orphaned artists" playlist for ones like Basinski where the only things on Spotify were by accident as part of some other comp or soundtrack (i.e La Monte Young, Zoviet France, etc) - now I can take Basinski off that list.

https://24.media.tumblr.com/60a5c656311fc310e7d7cffaace5bbe6/tumblr_n1ujj93P1F1qzoue7o1_1280.jpg

I think this tweet was the highlight of the Oscars for me.

lol

is he producing new music these days? seems like the only things i've seen him release the past few years are reissues and reworkings of older pieces.

he's on bbc6 freak zone this week talking about stuff. probably these upcoming gigs.

http://www.factmag.com/2013/11/20/william-basinski-to-recreate-his-storied-arcadia-venue-in-east-london-recruits-charlemagne-palestine-and-rhys-chatham-for-shows/

(which start tonight)

Performing in Pasadena next month: http://axsfestival.org/2014/program/solunaris/

only really knowing basinski as the disintegration loops guy, this is somewhat surprising to see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmL3NR9nrFI

i had a heavy phase with this guy years ago, i even got to do an amazing phone interview with him once...but for some reason, for the past year or so, i just haven't been able to get the same feeling out of his music. i still let it run when a track comes up in my sleep or writing playlist, and it's nice, but i don't know...i have some kind of mental blockage with it now. re: ambient, this also happened for me with stars of the lid, though eno, budd, gas, and ambient vangelis are still fine...

<3 this:

https://twitter.com/WilliamBasinski/status/628610802526752769

^ looking very debonair as usual btw, like some sort of parisian gangster mountie

London Gig

http://store.unionchapel.org.uk/events/23-feb-16-william-basinski---shadow-in-time-uk-premiere-union-chapel/

I'm going to try and use disintegration loops to get my toddler to go to sleep at night. Max Richter and Eluvium have failed. I'm counting on you William.