Honoring 25 of years of the composer’s ambient masterwork ‘The Disintegration Loops’.
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 40 years in NYC and Los Angeles. 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 five-hour masterwork, The Disintegration Loops, received international critical acclaim and is now universally considered one of the most important and influential ambient albums of all time. The Disintegration Loops deluxe vinyl box set reissue (Temporary Residence Ltd., 2012) was awarded a perfect 10 score on Pitchfork. Multimedia installations and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums worldwide, and his concerts are presented to sold-out audiences across the world. Basinski was chosen by Music Director ANOHNI to create music for the Robert Wilson opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, 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, Dark Mofo Festival in Hobart Tasmania, and most recently Pitchfork Midwinter Festival with the Chicago Philharmonic. Basinski is currently touring the world in support of The Disintegration Loops — Arcadia Archive Edition, and preparing a new album for release in late 2026, Passing the Cup of Sorrows.
claire rousay’s music cascades from a well of documented experience, reflections of the past that compose the present. A prolific multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer, rousay gracefully crafts boundaryless music. From her frequent and acclaimed collaborations to her film scoring, from her own compositions to her solo pop work, rousay’s music is delicate yet powerful, carefully constructed with a casual intimacy. rousay collages a wealth of found sounds and field recordings with earthy strings, stately piano, and processed instrumentation, all of which trace the outlines of memories and distinct impressions and create a complex constellation of feeling. a little death illustrates rousay’s ability to sculpt sonic microcosms from disparate raw materials, worlds where sound and feeling are one in the same. Shaped around field recordings she captured at dusk, the album is an homage to the gentle drifts and lurking disquiet of twilight.
The process of composing a little death felt like a homecoming for rousay after the more pop-oriented song forms of 2024’s sentiment. “sentiment was a different way of working that helped refresh my music making habits and usual flow,” rousay notes. “This record is a return to what I see as my core solo practice, a re-dedication to those methods of working which I’ve found most align with what I envision my music or sound to be.” Intended as a part of a trilogy along with a heavenly touch and a softer focus, the pieces on a little death sprout from a wellspring of tactile samples and granularly processed sounds. The use of sounds recorded from her life outside of the studio remains a throughline in her work. While the previous two albums used field recordings as the primary sound source or central figure in the compositions, here they act more as springboards, timbrally intertwining with live instruments like additional voices in a chamber ensemble. Captured as daylight fades into memory, the sounds give a subtler diaristic impression, the recordings occupying a more elemental space which give moments of absolute clarity a shine in the dim gloaming.
rousay’s practice on a little death highlights her sensitivity to nuance, as moments of chance are deftly interwoven into compositions with intent. The album playfully combines elements with varied recording fidelities, rousay adding new layers of textural complexity with the juxtaposition of found sounds, melody and harmony. “Blending fidelities comes from how I started making music on my own,” says rousay. “I started recording myself as a teenager, and I needed two microphones and I had one real one and then my laptop. I’d use them both and find a way to make them work together. These pieces share a lineage with that, using what’s available.” Bristling electronics and violin harmonics are dotted by fidgety rustlings on “conditional love”. The metallic grinding and percussive clangs of “just”, featuring M. Sage, breathe sparks into droning clarinets and chordal piano figures. Recent and frequent collaborators like more eaze, Gretchen Korsmo, Andrew Weathers, and Alex Cunningham act as a make-shift sample library across the record, rousay manipulating performances old and new into elements that fit into her orchestrations. The lonesome acoustic guitars rousay employs on “night one” and “somewhat burdensome” recall the pop forms of sentiment but live deeper in the fabric of her compositions, woven by her dynamic arrangements.
rousay’s music has evolved from confessional to conversational and excavates the rich emotional essence of each passage. Her work as both archivist and adept arranger and orchestrator merge sublimely into deeply honest and engrossing music. The pieces of a little death are charged with rousay’s voice while giving space for new interpretations and contexts. The shifting atmospheres act as fragments of perspective, each ecstatic instance opening itself to new perceptions. On a little death, rousay’s blend of pop sensibility and compositional acumen turn abstracted sounds into tangible feelings, its warm, glimmering glow coalescing sensually with the darkness.