Name: William Basinski
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, sound artist
Release: William Basinski's new album September 23rd is out via Temporary Residence.
Review by: Tobias Fischer interviewing himself

This interview review is part of 15 Questions's project of finding new, more engaging formats for the review format. For a deeper dive, read our William Basinski interview.



Has the music of William Basinski changed the way you think about music?

I still remember to this day buying a copy of A Red Score in Tile off Christoph Heemann, listening to it obsessively for a while and wondering whether anything was happening here it all.

I now believe I always knew deep inside that there were no changes in the traditional sense. But, like a kid on Christmas, I kept suspending my disbelief.



The more I listened and the more I thought about it, this album made me question my expectations about what needs to happen in a piece of music.

Basinski, just like Steve Roach with whom his work occasionally shares a remarkable similarity in terms of results, made me understand that sometimes, it's enough for the music to just act as a trigger – and for the sensations to take place inside of me rather than the score.

It was a profound insights but perhaps even more profound was the audacity of it, to simply realise that something as radical as this was possible in the first place. A Red Score in Tile hit me like a punk or noise record - and for six years, his entire discography from there up until Viviane & Ondine held an almost sacred importance for me.

So after reading the press release to September 23rd, it seems like this is a return to precisely that phase.

I think you're right. I mean, this is again based on music written a long time ago, 1982 to be precise.

That's the same year the Shortwave Music pieces came into existence which would, fifteen years later get released on Alva Noto's Raster Noto imprint and present Basinski's work to a broader audience for the first time. And September 23rd is just a week before September 29th of that year, when he composed the material for his 92982 album, another semi-classic.

The music here is based on a short passage from a piano improvisation which he recorded on a cheap cassette deck and then sent through a chain of effects. That sample is just seven seconds short and it forms the backbone of most of these 40 minutes – very similar to pieces like “Variations for Tape & Piano” (recorded later) or the shorter, more edited-down compositions on Melancholia (recorded around the same time).

So in almost every single respect, it very much feels like a return to those defining moments in his oeuvre.

I guess after Vivian & Ondine, which you've marked as the end of a phase, his releases were more textural, comprising of dense, gradually shifting layers of harmonies. There was less melody there and more of an ambient feeling. And yet, in a way, there was more happening in them compositionally. Here, I sometimes wonder: if I've listened to the first seven seconds, haven't I heard the entire piece?

It's a relatable sentiment, especially if you're hearing his music for the first time. And as I mentioned for A Red Score in Tile, it may be true in a matter-of-fact-way-of-speaking.

But this idea of Basinski's work being entirely loop-based isn't entirely accurate. Take the Disintegration Loops. Yes, the tapes simply keep playing, but the process of decay is actually making each iteration feel different. There's constant change, it's just that it's taking place on a sound level at a very, very slow pace.

And on the aforementioned “Variations for Tape & Piano,” he actually very discretely manipulates the material so that you're getting thematic counterpoints. I still think that's one of his most engrossing pieces, partly because it has a lighter tone, tasting more of white wine than whiskey.



But although September 23rd starts off almost like a direct continuation of that piece, it moves into an entirely different direction: There are three different sections here which bleed into each other and, in one case, are even separated by a short stretch of silence.

And then, there's a field recording of what sounds like distant, very quiet late-night traffic running underneath the piano droplets and which later billows into a resonant cloud.

That field recording may also be a throwback, as the second piece on 92982 features some of that, too.

True. And that release also contains another extended piano & drone composition, not unlike September 23rd.



I'm not discounting your explanations about the way this album is constructed. But do you really think this is something you need to listen to attentively? Isn't it rather an ambiance which works best when played in the background?

I remember Thomas Meinecke relating a funny story in a podium discussion once.

He had just started listening to house music and bought a few 12inches. Some of these started off with one or two minutes of drum loops. They were intended for the DJ, to make it easier for them to mix in a club, but Thomas didn't know this yet. He thought the long percussion intros were part of the composition and, like a well-behaved student, never skipped them, patiently waiting for the rest of the music to kick in.

I feel like something similar may well apply to Basinski's long-form pieces. I'm pretty sure he himself may have had them playing for long periods of time in the background, carefully evaluating them and using them to evoke a certain mood or headspace.

But, to me at least, it is exciting to take the plunge and treat them as though they have a definitive beginning and end, to really sit down for them and carve out the time to listen with full focus.

You don't get bored?

I get increasingly drawn in. And perhaps no other Basinski work draws me in more than September 23rd because it plays with our perception of time and space.

It starts with a straight-forward series of loop, but then it breaks the loops apart to create larger cycles, which then get broken up again until the music becomes completely free and you can no longer predict its course. Once you reach that point, you understand that there is no resolution here, nor can there be, but that you no longer want to look for it either.

Instead, the music creates something that only very few works of art are truly capable of: A state of suspension. It is a state of such complete surrender that while you're in it, your body seems drained of the power to break the spell. It is a feeling of voluntary submission, a free fall into something far bigger.

Do you think music like this means something?

I would argue that music like this can not “mean” something because it takes place outside of meaning. What I do think is that for those of us who relate to it, we relate to it very strongly because we recognise something in it, a time in our life, a situation we've been in, something outside of words, something that is buried below them.

It derives its meaning from letting listeners know that it exists. Yes, the mere fact that it exists means everything.