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BASINSKI, WILLIAM - The Deluge

Format: LP
Label & Cat.Number: Temporary Residence TRR258
Release Year: 2015
Note: companion release to the "Cascade" CD, based on the same material; comes on 180gr. white vinyl, with download code and heavy sleeve; limited and highly collectable like all BASINSKI vinyl releases
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €26.00
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More Info

"Cascade and The Deluge are variations on the latest tape-loop and delay composition from the inimitable William Basinski. Cascade is the CD/Digital variant, and The Deluge is the deluxe 180 gram white vinyl LP companion. In Cascade, a single ancient lilting piano tape loop repeats endlessly carrying one along in its tessellating current. In The Deluge, the same loop is processed through a series of feedback loops of different lengths, creating a spiraling crescendo of overtones that eventually fades away to silence. In the denouement, a series of limpid piano loops leads to an urgent orchestral theme that builds and gradually dies."

The Deluge is a limited edition, 180 gram white vinyl LP packaged in a heavyweight full-color cardboard jacket. All copies are white, there
is no black vinyl variant" [label info]



"The Deluge and Cascade are two variations on the same set of tape loops constructed by William Basinski, with the former being released on vinyl and the latter on compact disc. Piano and orchestral recordings are the source material embedded onto those tapes, which Basinski colors with the muddled patinas of a fictionalized antiquity. It's same deliciously haunted atmosphere that has captured our imaginations ever since he released the seminal Disintegration Loops nearly fifteen years ago. We'd love to believe that he stumbled up a pile of quarter-inch tape from some closet in a forgotten school who had a music program sometime in the '50s and '60s, whose students were only instructed on playing the most elegiac of funeral dirges on the piano. For that's to what these fragmented piano melodies allude. From the onset of the three pieces, Basinski introduces a loop packed with notes and relatively bombastic melodic figures, not quite to the point of Nancarrow / Melnyk polydactyl fervor; but the flurry from this introductory loop is intentionally set up to be a position of excess from which Basinski can chisel away to reveal a fundamental pattern within his woozy melancholia traced with delay, echo, reverb, and drone. So fucking what if we've already heard Basinski present this same technique on every preceding recording, it remains always unnervingly beautiful and spellbinding." [Aquarius Rec.]


"The Deluge is a different thing, this is the version I perform. It's a narrative... like a film in 3 acts. As a metaphor let's think of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans for example. It's raining, rain is a precious commodity. It's still raining, the ground is getting saturated, torrents are flowing through the streets. Sand bag the doors. Oh my God, the water is rising. Get upstairs, it's coming in. Shit, get into the attic! It sounds like it's stopping... cut a hole in the roof, get that wooden table top let's get out... suddenly you see the world has changed beyond belief... you are floating on a wooden tabletop with your family looking at the devastation of this great storm. You are in shock... but you are alive. And as the credits roll you realize nothing will ever be the same again. This is analogous to the rapacious profit-driven capitalism that is destroying our planet. If one focuses too much on that sparkly diamond, that high, that profit, that bank account... destruction ensues." [W. Basinski]