2000 • 2062
Most people probably only know William Basinski for his fantastic Disintegration Loops collection (and for good reason, I might add), but that doesn't mean that his more obscure works aren't worth looking into—in fact he's one of the most consistently good ambient drone artists I know. Even when he's not playing around with old classical loops,
The sound of Watermusic is easy to describe: very low, throbbing bass drones, glitches fading in and out, shimmering background synths, quick and subtle pulses of sine waves... lots of little basic loops played over each other in an hour-long layer. While the overarching texture doesn't really change at all throughout the whole piece, the way the loops interact with each other (due to their different lengths) is always different, ebbing and flowing like... well, water. It may sound boring, but even an intensely concentrated listen finds the work to be incredibly consuming. It's never exactly the same thing the whole way through: sometimes the glitches stop, or the bass drops out momentarily; regardless you never heard the same thing twice.
It may sound like an incredibly generic and boring piece from what I just described, but it really isn't. Maybe this is just me, but lately I've been finding this sort of long-winded but entrancing drone to be really captivating (also see Eliane Radigue's work, even more repetitive than this but just as engrossing). Watermusic is one of those pieces that evokes a lot of imagery—for me, not water, but maybe a tranquil, misty snowfall, or something like that. (Maybe that's because it's November out. I can see this working for any weather.) It's very calming and beautiful, one of those pieces you can put on that instantly changes your mood and everything you were worried about it just gone.
Yeah, so maybe this is another one of those stupid gushing reviews. But what bad is there to say about Basinski (ever, really)? Put it on and bliss out. That's all there is to it.
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