Temporary Residence Limited US Schallplatten & CDs

Review: The latest full-length excursion from William Basinski has its roots in a 2017 Berlin exhibition that the long-serving experimental composer was invited to contribute to. Basinski created music for two installations, making extensive use of recordings of two distant black holes captured using the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). Of the two tracks on show, it's the epic title track that hits home hardest. It's a 40 minute ambient epic of intergalactic proportions, with Basinski offering up slowly-shifting, ice cold chords, crackling aural textures and occasional bursts of distant activity. The track that follows is a little warmer and undeniably drowsy, with Basinski utilizing manipulated neo-classical movements to create an intoxicating ambient mood.

Review: William Basinski and Janek Schaefer make for a long distance collaboration on this much anticipated new album. It has taken the best part of eight years from conception to final execution but that more than proves worth the wait. Time and duration are recurring themes in their work and during the pandemic yeas in particular those were very much skewed and warped for us all. ". . . on reflection" casts itself free from temporal restraints with delicate piano passages, flickering melodies and drawn out drones that really sink you in deep.

Review: If postmodernity is what really rivets the minds and hearts of music listeners today, then longtime music-maker Eluvium (Matthew Robert Cooper) certainly has his finger firmly on the pulse. His latest album is a musical weigh-up of the concept of ontological relativism, a way of thinking that has seen an uptick in recent years thanks to the oncoming tide of new intelligence-mimicking (or, shall we say, cloning?) technologies such as AI and psyche-predictive algorithms. Through dour string movements, rattling soundscapes and neoclassical tropes, a sense of inevitability is put forth by the likes of 'Swift Automations' and 'Scatterbrains'. Whether the overarching conclusion of '(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality' means we'll be overtaken by robots is really up to you.