January 20, 2004
William Basinski
Wednesday 18th February 2004
Doors 7.30pm
The Horse Hospital is honoured to present
The Anatomy of Melancholy
a concert by
WILLIAM BASINSKI
with special guest, James Elaine
plus UK premiere screening of Melancholia ( Basinski / Elaine ) super8/video 3.5m, 2003.
William James Basinski
William Basinski is a musician, composer, auteur who has worked in experimental media for over twenty years in NYC, expanding the boundaries of the aural landscape. A classically trained clarinetist, he studied jazz saxophone and composition at North Texas State University in the late 70’s. In 1978, inspired by minimalists such as Steve Reich and Brian Eno, he
began developing his own vocabulary using tape loops and old reel to reel tape decks. He developed his meditative, melancholy style experimenting with short
looped melodies played against themselves creating feedback loops. His early studies with piano and tape, from 1980 –82, Variations: A Movement in Chrome Primitive, will be released in September 2002 for the first time on David Tibet’s London label, Durtro.
In 1982, he began experimenting with pulling sound from the airwaves. By sampling short melodies from Muzak radio onto tape loops of varying lengths,
slowing them down, and mixing them together with a symphony of shortwave radio static in real time, he created his Shortwave Music series. A selection of
these pieces was released to critical acclaim in 1998 by Carsten Nicolai’s German avant-garde label, Noton.
The culmination of these studies, the 1983 masterwork, The River, a 90-minute "music of the spheres" will be released on Raster-Noton in May 2002. Using current available cheap technology, Basinski created an "instant" 90 minute video for The River, by running the music through the audio-visualizer program, ArKaos that came with his Apple Powerbook, videotaping the animation off the screen and editing in I-movie.
During the early eighties in NYC, Basinski performed extensively on the saxophone with tape accompaniment. His ecstatic, earthy and cascading style on the tenor saxophone evokes John Coltrane, Gato Barbieri, the sound of the harmonica, or electric guitar, screeching pterodactyls, runaway freight trains. He performed and created installations throughout NYC, at legendary NY art spaces and venues such as Fashion Moda, Just above Midtown/Downtown, The Franklin Furnace, PS122, PS1, The Mudd Club, Danceteria, Exit Art, Thread Waxing Space, BACA, The World Trade Center Plaza for LMCC. Creative Time sponsored a two-night sold-out performance in 1985 at Art in the Anchorage, entitled Flesh Winter, with a set by James Elaine. In Flesh Winter, Basinski performed on the saxophones as a lonely Pan in a post-apocalyptic world of chaos inhabited only by decaying taxidermied animals, dead trees, broken televisions, smoke, fire and the ominous taped background music evoking a world crashing slowly to an end.