Lamentations - William Basinski: Review
is an experimental and ambient music composer who has been working out of New York for over three decades. He is most well known for his Disintegration Loops series of short loops played on repeat while being stretched and distorted. Since 2013 Basinski has entered a particularly prolific period of releases with many distinct styles and collaborators, alongside remasters and re-releases of older work.
Review By Lavender:
While I think it should be absolutely essential that all serious music fans familiarize themselves with The Disintegration Loops there is plenty that William's greater discography offers. 2017's A Shadow In Time brought a greater spotlight back onto Basinski and his music and he has released a number of projects since then but Lamentations with it's trio of singles felt like the most major rollout since. Turns out it was for good reason because Lamentations is definitely my favorite thing William has done with Disintegration Loops and has a murky, dark and distinct personality to it that I find intoxicating.
While the singles for an ambient project never really tell the full story they still had enough personality to drum up a lot of excitement in me for the record. O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow gave the first taste of the light horror aesthetic the album was bringing with creepy distant vocal samples and a thick eerie haze over the entire progression. The result is a long and pretty intense track whose subtleties will keep you on your toes with vocal sampling that sends chills up my spine. Tear Vial is a relatively simple piano driven track that slowly works its way through almost five minutes. It isn't perfectly looped and that makes it a bit more unsettling than conventionally ambient songs but it is actively unsettling even if that's more of a background sensation than a primary force. The final single was Wheel Of Fortune a which sports a short drone loop that sounds like it was recorded at the end of a scary tunnel and played on repeat. It gets torn, extended and far less clear as the song goes on with panning background tones flying in and out. The song is deeply unsettling but I can't look away from it for a second.
For Whom The Bell Tolls is an intro song that works in reverse of what you'd expect wasting no time at all introducing deep waves of ambient sound working into more sparse and slow developing passages as the track goes on. It really pulls down the excitement in a way that kind of gets you ready for the dark elements that are incoming on the album. Punch And Judy is a really interesting track with a persistent wiry core. The quiet synth hits that fly in and out of the song sound like they are coming from all angles making the song feel like it exists in a very surreal space. Listen to the entire album with headphones but specifically this song because the mixing is really interesting.
All These To I, I Love is the records magnum opus and the entire album is worth hearing just for this track alone. It's basically an 11 minute blending of The Disintegration Loops and The Caretaker as WIlliam takes short pieces of what sounds like opera music and slowly warps it more and more as the song goes on. This isn't the only punch it pulls however as it works through numerous distinct phases including quiet musical passages in between the tightly looped vocal melodies. The effect is absolutely intoxicating and remarkably impactful. By the end of the song it feels like a star burning out in a depressing but genuinely magical conclusion. This makes it all the more strange to hear the next track Please, This Shit Has Got To Stop which feels like a last dying gasp of the track before it. It's jarring to hear the sample re-introduced only to have it break down in much quicker fashion over the course of 5 minutes. This time around it feels less like warping and more like a painfully routine quiet descent which evokes a whole new kind of horror.
The rest of the songs here are more aligned with Tear Vial as pseudo ambient pieces that do more to maintain the records horror aesthetic then push it into new directions. Passio is a more conventional ambient track with an airy sparse atmosphere. The song doesn't necessarily have distinct sonic phases but works through notable passages over it's 6 minutes. It isn't the most engaging song ever but it does nothing to bring me out of the album. SIlent Spring embodies it's title with long periods of isolated fuzz. Because of how quiet and distant it sounds it can almost give off the illusion of inactivity but there are details to the composition that make for another very light detour. Transfiguration is a shorter track with a rumbling core of bass and layers of synths sliding over top ot it. Once again it is simple by ambient standards but effective nonetheless.
Lamentations is one of the best and most interesting ambient projects I've heard in 2020. It has a persistent darkness holding tightly onto the core of the entire record and a nonstop train of refreshing ideas that reinforce each other sonically. There isn't much else like it that you'll hear this year and the only complaints I have about the record come when it slips into what feel like more generic interludes rather than necessary additions. Even these moments don't to much to slow down the records sonic poise however and the result is an album I'll be returning to in full frequently. 8/10
Album Cover Review By Tyler Judson:
This is a weird cover and I'm not sure how I feel about it. While it's cool and you feel like you have to look at it for a while to realize that there's no subject it also is confusing and too abstract to give viewers and listeners anything to grasp onto. I applaud the use of abstract concepts but this is just too disjointed for a cover. 3/10
For more ambient read my review of Brian and Roger Eno's Mixing Colours here
