|
William Basinski (Houston, 1958), a New York-based classically-trained clarinetist and saxophonist, specializes in compositions for loops and drones. He began experimenting with compositions for piano and tape that created a melancholy ambience via looped and overdubbed melodies with Variations - A Movement in Chrome Primitive (1980), released on Variations - A Movement in Chrome Primitive (Durtro, 2002 - Die Stadt, 2004).
The "movement" actually consists of eight "movements". Each is a simple loop
with no static noise: a muffled piano sonata (the first) , a frenzied
minimalist pattern (the second),
a music-box refrain (the third),
The fifth is the one that "disintegrates": its humble piano loop interacts with
a field of electronic noise and eventually succumbs to it.
The electronic field is protagonist also in the seventh piece: a loud rumble
comes and goes behind the limping piano phrase.
A Red Score in Tile (1979), released on A Red Score in Tile (3 Poplars, 2003) was even more austere.
The undulating and warped sustained tones of its infinite loop evoke a
muffled jam of cool jazz by a piano-based drum-less combo superimposed to
the recording of marbles rolling down a viscuous surface.
The implementation was still a bit too simplistic to fully deliver the power of
Basinski's vision.
Shortwave Music (1982), some of which appear on Shortwave Music (Noton, 1997 - 2062, 2007), processed and assembled snippets of radio broadcasts to produce atmospheres at the border between musique concrete and ambient music.
Evening Scars emanates a stream of vibrations that sound both ominous and cryptic, a meeting of
Brian Eno and
Pierre Henry.
The sinister hissing and grating of Cobalt Pools is even more
intimidating and sci-fi, while the sense of suspense and horror peaks in
Fringe Area, industrial music for zombies in death factories.
The 24-minute On A Frontier Of Wires sounds like the coupling of a
field recording of crickets and a pastoral flute melody that gets slowly
submerged by cosmic radiations; a symphony of angelic trumpets and hellish embers.
These pieces employ the looping technique in a more melodramatic manner,
allowing sounds to emerge and to fade away so as to create a narrative of sorts.
The CD reissue appends a fifth piece, Particle Showers,
an abstract soundpainting of even harsher dissonance.
By the standards of his ambient works, this was heavy-metal music.
The River (1983), collected on the double-disc The River (Noton, december 2002 - Musex International, 2008), was the most mature expression of
his "shortwave music", an eerie symphony of musique concrete.
Its core is a
sleepy loop of chirping and snoring androids in a field of
electromagnetic shocks.
The background sounds like swarms of little mechanical insects eroding sheets
of radioactive material. The lead instrument is a slow melodic pulsation.
The clangor is even more "industrial" in the second part, a the melodic
undercurrent replaces that pulsation. The combined effect is to create an
almost epic pathos. As it dissolves into languid siren-like drones and dub-like reverbs, the piece becomes more of a wall of abstract noise than a "musical"
composition. A psychedelic quality emerges: voices appear and disappear;
mindblowing drones blow from all directions; echoes chant shamanic formulas.
Melancholia (Durtro, 2003 - 2062, 2005) collects more loop-based vignettes from the 1980s, closer in feeling and scope to Erik Satie and Brian Eno.
During the 1980s, Basinski often played saxophone during multimedia performances, and was a member of the Gretchen Langheld Ensemble, which later evolved into House Afire. In 1989 he opened his own loft for the creative arts, nicknamed "Arcadia". Throughout the 1990s he refined his song-cycle Hymns of Oblivion. In 1997, Basinski launched his performance-art act Beautifying America. He also formed the electronic ensemble Life on Mars. Basinski has also created videos and films, notably the "ambient film" Fountain (2000).
Watermusic (2062, 2001) was the archetype of his subsequent shimmering, lulling, gentle ambient music for electronic keyboards, later continued on Watermusic II (Durtro, 2003). Instead of "disintegration loops", water music is softly and slowly tonal music for the Voyestra synthesizer that juxtaposes
a delicate droning melody and a dissonant burping pattern, and intertwines them
in an endless dance of loops.
The second volume has a stronger and more dynamic melodic voice, akin to the timbre of a church organ, while the burping pattern remains the anchoring element.
Thus revamped, this "Water Music" sounds like a slow-motion version of
Terry Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes.
Eventually this organ-like melody kills the dissonance and soars to a solo
finale.
The four volumes of The Disintegration Loops (Musex, 2002-2003) are just that: loops of tapes that disintegrated during the recording process. Basinski adds a melodic commentary on the synthesizer, and turns them into symphonies that evolve in a predictable but highly emotional manner. The effect of the one-hour long DP 1.1, akin to
a solemn requiem march that is slowly reduced to a drumbeat,
is mesmerizing and opened new avenues to minimalism. This constituted the crowning achievement of the techniques first experimented with Variations.
DP 1.2 takes the same mournful melodic pattern used at the beginning
of 1.1 and basically sets it to "automatic repeat".
By just delaying that pattern a bit and emphasizing the contrasting notes,
DP 1.3 is the piece that most obviously evokes waves endlessly
washing ashore.
What was obscure in 1.1 and menacing in 1.2 becomes calm and humane in 1.3.
DP 2.1 and DP 2.2 unleash a volley of galactic drones that decay into a brittle battle call.
The 42-minute DP 3 targets a majestic choral-like aria that disintegrates into bursts of static noise.
DP 4 begins stuttering and noisy, and only gets worse along the way
until you only hear scratching and popping noises.
The less extreme 52-minute DP 5 mauls a celestial new-age hymn although
it does not completely erase it (and it is therefore less powerful than the
others).
The 40-minute
DP 6 sounds like an accelerated version of 1.3's tranquil waves
equipped with a percussion-like countercurrent that actually hints at a different melody.
All these pieces feel a little like being hypnotized by ocean waves and slowly
being lulled into oblivion (blurred vision and eventually just another world
with distant echoes of the real one).
His collaboration William Basinski + Richard Chartier (Spekk, 2004 - Line, 2008) is one of his most subtle works. The music defies Physics, evolving while it hardly changes at all: subconscious listening at its most ethereal. The first part grows slowly over the course of 21 minutes but remains fundamentally shapeless: a shadow without a body. The microscopic events that create the illusion of life remain embedded in the quantum lattice, below the threshold of human experience. It feels a bit like listening to the sea inside a shell. Whatever it is, it is rarefied and unbound, an echo of a large and concrete mass of vibrations. The second part (36 minutes) is unusually eerie and sensible. Basinski rarely leaves this much substance in his compositions. This one feels like the light of a shimmering rotating object, emanating in all directions, broadcasting to the universe its constant motion. The effect on the ears and the mind is similar to cosmic music. As the radiation deteriorates, its wavering notes feel like star dust drifting into gravity-less empty space. Each speck emits a slight tremor. Their cumulative effect is one of peaceful resignation to meaninglessness.
Still zigzagging between reissues of his old "tape & loop" constructions and his new ambient soul, Basinski achieved the celestial sound of Silent Night (2062, 2004), a gentle composition for synthesizer melody and crickets that has little in common with Basinski's old aesthetics and more in common with Harold Budd.
Basinski's romantic soul surfaced again with the 50-minute ambient sonata for piano and distortion The Garden of Brokenness (2006).
The music is created by the interference between the two threads: the looped piano melody (worthy of the romantic sonatas) and the stream of black noise.
The result is one of his most serene and optimistic works.
Sometimes the blurred nebula of noise prevails and drowns the delicate piano
notes, and sometimes the piano
stands out alone, and sometimes both sounds are muffled and merge into one.
If previous works focused on music that was "decaying", this one seems to focus on music that is being born.
The 44-minute Variation #9: Pantelleria on Variations For Piano And Tape (2062, 2006) is Basinski's most faithful interpretation of Brian Eno's ambient music, except that, of course, the process used to create the piece of music is exactly the opposite: deconstruction instead of construction of a looping form of music.
|
(Translation by/Tradotto da Davide Carrozza)
William Basinski (Houston, 1958), un clarinettista e sassofonista con educazione classica residente a New York, è specializzato in composizioni per loop e droni. Iniziò a sperimentare con composizioni per piano e nastro che creavano un'atmosfera malinconica mediante melodie messe in loop e sovraincise, con
Variations - A Movement in Chrome Primitive (1980; Durtro, 2002 - Die Stadt, 2004) e A Red Score in Tile (1979; 3 Poplars, 2003).
Shortwave Music (1982), parte del quale appare in Shortwave Music (Noton, 1998 - 2062, 2007), processava e assemblava pezzi di trasmissioni radio per produrre atmosfere al confine tra musica concreta e ambient. Il doppio album The River (1983 - Noton, december 2002) fu la più matura espressione di "musica ad onde corte".
Melancholia (Durtro, 2003 - 2062, 2005) raccoglie altre vignette in loop risalenti agli anni '80, vicine nei sentimenti e nell'ambito a Erik Satie e Brian Eno.
Durante gli anni '80, Basinski suonava spesso il sassofono durante esibizioni multimediali, ed era membro del Gretchen Langheld Ensemble, che si evolse poi nella House Afire. Nel 1989 aprì il proprio loft per le arti creative, soprannominato "Arcadia". Per tutti gli anni '90, rifinì il suo ciclo di canzoni Hymns of Oblivion. Nel 1997, Basinski lanciò il suo numero di arte figurativa Beautifying America. Formò anche l'ensemble elettronico Life on Mars. Basinski ha anche creato video e film, tra cui il "film ambient" Fountain (2000).
Watermusic (2062, 2001) era l'archetipo della sua successiva ambient scintillante, cullante e delicata per tastiere elettroniche, poi continuata in Watermusic II (Durtro, 2003). A differenza dei "disintegration loops", la musica acquatica e musica tonale soffice e lenta per sintetizzatore Voyestra.
I quattro volumi di The Disintegration Loops (Musex, 2002-2003) sono solo questo: loop di nastri che si disintegrano durante la
registrazione. Basinski aggiunge un commento melodico al sintetizzatore e li trasforma in sinfonie che evolvono in modo prevedibile ma altamente emotivo. L'effetto è ipnotico e apre nuove frontiere al minimalismo. Questo è il coronamento delle tecniche sperimentate per la prima volta in Variations.
La sua collaborazione William Basinski + Richard Chartier (Spekk, 2004) è uno dei suoi lavori più soffusi. La musica sfida la fisica, evolvendosi quasi senza cambiare: il più etereo ascolto subconscio. La prima parte cresce lentamente nei corso dei suoi 21 minuti, ma rimane fondamentalmente senza forma: un'ombra senza un corpo. Gli eventi microscopici che creano l'illusione della vita rimangono radicati in reticoli quantici, sotto la soglia dell'esperienza umana. Sembra di ascoltare il rumore del mare in una conchiglia. Comunque, è rarefatta e slegata, un'eco di una massa grande e concreta di vibrazioni. La seconda parte (36 minuti) è insolitamente inquietante ed equilibrata. Raramente Basinski lascia tanta sostanza nelle sue composizioni. Sembra di percepire un oggetto scintillante in rotazione, che emana luce in ogni direzione e trasmette all'universo il suo moto perpetuo. L'effetto su udito e mente è simile a quello della musica cosmica. Mentre le radiazioni deteriorano, le loro tremolanti note sembrano polvere di stelle fluttuante nello spazio vuoto senza gravità. Ogni granello emette un leggero tremolio. L'effetto complessivo è di pacifica rassegnazione all'essere insignificanti.
Zigzagando tra ripubblicazioni delle sue vecchie costruzioni "tape & loop" e la sua nuova anima ambient, Basinski ottenne il suono celestiale di Silent Night (2062, 2004), una composizione per sintetizzatore che ha poco in comune con la vecchia estetica di basinski e più in comune con Harold Budd.
L'anima romantica di Basinski riaffiorò nella sonata ambient di 50 minuti per piano e distorsioni The Garden of Brokenness (2006). La musica è creata dall'interferenza delle due linee (il loop melodico del pianoforte e il flusso di rumore). Il risultato è forse il suo lavoro più sereno e ottimista. Se i lavori precedenti erano focalizzati sulla musica "marcescente", l'attenzione di questo sembra posta sulla musica che sta nascendo.
I 44 minuti di Variation #9: Pantelleria su Variations For Piano And Tape (2062, 2006) sono l'interpretazione più fedele da parte di Basinski dell'ambient di Brian Eno, tranne per il fatto che naturalmente il processo per creare il pezzo è esattamente l'opposto: decostruzione anziché costruzione di una forma musicale di loop.
|
