The Important Records label has posted an excerpt from a new album-length collaboration between the accomplished minimal sound explorers William Basinski and Richard Chartier. The collection, Divertissement, follows the duo’s Untitled 1-3 album from 2004 and single-track Aurora Liminalis from 2013, both of which were released on Line, which Chartier himself runs. The new record has two tracks, and this 12-minute excerpt ends suddenly, the cutoff quite a contrast to the evocative music that precedes it. The track mixes human voices and insectoid percusssive particulate amid a thick and quickly shifting drone, lending the work a considerable sense of depth, place, and motion.
The accompanying liner note gives some background: “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.”
It’s been a busy year for Basinski, best known for his haunting Disintegration Loops. He released The Deluge in May and Cascade in April.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/importantrecords. More from Chartier at 3particles.com and Basinski at mmlxii.com.