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BASINSKI, WILLIAM & RICHARD CHARTIER - Divertissement

Format: LP
Label & Cat.Number: Important Records IMPREC417
Release Year: 2015
Note: third collaboration by both US composers/minimalists, using electronics, piano, tape loops and short wave radio... "suggesting hundreds of years of history rising up from the depths of a reverberating cathedral"; lim. 500 first pressing
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €25.50


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"Divertissement is the third collaborative full length from minimalist composer William Basinski and sound artist Richard Chartier.
The duo utilize electronics, piano, tape-loops and short wave radio to evoke a dense atmosphere suggesting hundreds of years of history rising up from the depths of a reverberating cathedral. Subtle, buried and intense murmurs of melody morph through this deeply consuming and slowly evolving composition in two parts.
Pressed in an edition of 500 with beautiful cover drawings by artist James Elaine.
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 30 years in NYC and most recently, California. Employing obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops received international critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork Media. The Temporary Residence deluxe LP box-set reissue from 2012 was awarded best re-issue of the year and a score of 10 on Pitchfork. Installations and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker, James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums internationally, and his concerts are presented to sold out crowds around the world. Most recently, Basinski was chosen by Music Director, Antony Hegarty to create music for the new Robert Wilson opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic which had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011 and toured Europe in 2012 and North America in 2013. Orchestral transcriptions of The Disintegration Loops by Maxim Moston have been performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Queen Elizabeth Hall and La Batie Festival in Geneva, Switzerland. Basinski is currently touring the world in support of Cascade and The Deluge, his latest works which will be released in Spring 2015 on 2062/USA.
Richard Chartier (b.1971), sound and installation artist, is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic sound art which has been termed both microsound and Neo-Modernist. Chartier's minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself. Chartier's sound works/installations have been presented in galleries and museums internationally including the 2002's Whitney Biennial and he has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at digital art
electronic music festivals and exhibits. In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists/composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History's collection of 19th-Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration." [label info]

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