Review: William Basinski - On Time Out Of Time

Unbeknown to me until I read the recent review on Resident Advisor, William Basinski loves a concept album, and the recently release On Time Out Of Time continues that trend for the artist. Described as a sound sculptor and experimental composer, Basinski uses his classically trained knowledge to great effect in the world of the ambient music that he creates.

This is my first experience of William Basinski so I view this as a new observer rather than established fan. I think I may very well become the latter fairly quickly as a result of listening to this piece.

To quote Basinski's own website in relation to this release "These works utilize, among other things, exclusive source recordings from the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) capturing the sounds of the merging of two distant massive black holes, 1.3 billion years ago."

Taken in isolation, this statement could give you perfect justification not to listen to Basinski, as it is easy to misconstrue the inspiration as a little self-indulgent or as pompous posturing. Given the ambient genre has at first glance been dismissed as 'just noise' or 'elevator music' by some around the electronic music scene, it probably highlights the significance of thematic intent even more.

The recently completed 6-album opus Everywhere At The End Of Time by The Caretaker is a perfect example of this, taking the concept of a person's onset of Alzheimer's disease - and subsequent descent into it's maddening effects which render the person a shell of their former selves to the outside world - artist Leyland James Kirby has over 3 years created a lasting imprint on the musical world with a hard-to-listen-to yet deeply impactful project concerning this terrible illness. It is both a fascinating and distressing listen.

On Time Out Of Time is essentially split into two tracks: the former and title track being a sprawling glide through the perceived meeting of the two black holes, told through a series of ethereal drones and echoes, overlaid with static and a series of other-worldly howls and cleverly sampled components of strings and synths. As is the general pattern with any ambient music compositions, they tend to 'evolve' very subtly and this is no exception, with the gradual rise and fall of sounds created to evoke the feeling of an almost out of body experience; of drifting lifelessly amongst space and seeing the event horizons of the black holes glistening with their connections as the intense gravitational pulls create an awe-inspiring (and truly terrifying) celestial event. It is a wonderful track and incredibly for a 40-minute piece it is a real journey; something to lose yourself in completely.

The cover art does a perfect job of creating the visual and if you are interested, the actual sound of the two black holes in question colliding is sampled here. I just had to hear it for myself and it is quite bizarre.

The second track is 4(E+D)4(ER=EPR) which refers to - and I quote from RA directly here - "a live recording from two installations, by the artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, that Basinski originally scored (found here and here). The title nods to an equation one installation was named after—ER=EPR—which in theoretical physics refers to a proposal about "entangled" particles and wormholes".

I am at a loss to try and explain this too much but simply listening to the track I am further transported into the realms of space and the unknown over the course of a further 10 minutes. The simplicity of the rolling drones and snatches of strings and samples is totally transformative, and creates a strange sense of emotion somewhere between curiosity and awe at what your mind might conjure up that it is seeing in the place this music transports you to. So, so cleverly done it defies belief.

This piece of course brings my interest in Basinski's work over his preceding years firmly into view - not least 2017's well respected tribute to one David Bowie, entitled A Shadow In Time - and I am delighted again to have found yet another artist who can paint such wonderful sound pictures and embed so much texture into his compositions as to delight, bewilder and entrance.

10/10

Badger x