William Basinki’s 2002 opus The Disintegration Loops – the five-hour aural documentation of his own music physically decaying which unintentionally became an elegy to the 2,977 victims who died during the 9/11 attacks – will be something that crosses my mind just before I pass. At least I hope it will be. I’ve never felt so influenced, so impassioned or so absolutely infatuated with a single piece of music. I suppose in a way that’s depressing, but in another it’s rather wonderful. I choose to pay attention to the latter – the fact that someone can feel so emotionally astonished by some goddamn MP3 files. I wouldn’t dare try to deconstruct or explain the connection I feel with the music. The ideology of unknowing is what makes life beautiful.
Earlier this year saw Basinski release his latest record Cascade, a 40-minute piece where he manipulates a single piano tape loop recorded in 1982. “Cascade starts with just one repeating piano tape loop, one from my early days in Brooklyn when I was making all my loops,” he notes from his home in Los Angeles. He’s smoking a cigarette and nursing a beer, a police siren wails in the background before gradually fading out. Hauntingly apt. “It’s from one of my earliest piano compositions. The composition wasn’t working so I cut it up and made a bunch of loops. This was one that I always liked but had never done anything with. It’s really just the loop repeating, and it does it in a really beautiful way. It’s got a very strange rhythm. It’s very wilting and it kind of just carries you.”
A deeply melancholic and forlorn piece, the loop is swirled within a whirlwind of tessellating currents which deteriorate in a ghostly fashion. It’s a harrowing work – a piece that weaves its way through the deepest and darkest corners of your mind. As the loop begins to die the brute emotional force comes from what music isn’t heard – it’s sound in its most physical and pure form – a minimalist documentation on the frailty of life.
“It should have been a really easy record to make, but it was torture getting Cascade the way I wanted it,” he details of the meticulous and perfectionist working nature. “I almost threw it out several times. As with all of the original recordings that I used to make, it wasn’t very good. There was some crunchiness that I was having a horrible time dealing with. After so many attempts I finally got it to sound like a jewel. Like an organic plasma spaceship or something. I’m very happy with the way it turned out. I was so relieved when I got it to be perfect.”
As part of the Australian record label Room40’s event Open Frame, a two-day festival to celebrate their 15th anniversary, Basinski will bring Cascade to life in Sydney. “I created a live version of Cascade which I call The Deluge,” he explains. “It’s quite simple. I have two rather small ’70s-style Uher Report Monitor reel-to-reel decks. I’ll have several different reels with me that contain different parts of the piece. I also have my laptop which contains the processing for the main body of the work. I sit there and listen to the space and decide how long certain sections of the piece should go for.
“I just kind of let it happen. The loop starts, and repeats, and then I send it through a bunch of feedback loops which pick up lots of different harmonics and creates a lot of tension. Behind me there’ll be this beautiful sparkling video that was made by my partner James Elaine that works really well with the piece. That’s it. It’s simple.”
BY TYSON WRAY
