William Basinski + Tom Rogerson

The concert opens with the mesmeric Tom Rogerson. With his laptop and his piano his music (as proclaimed) builds on his work with Brian Eno, the sound makes sense with that in consideration. The piece slowly builds, with loops and effects pulled through his laptop. He creates a slowly evolving patchwork of ambient sound. It’s not abrasive at all. Instead, it’s quite acoustic, there’s elements of New Age electronic work. There’s a natural quality to it, the music creates a great sense of growth and creation. It’s ethereal and elemental, with a touch of cool iciness and a degree of comforting warmth below.

William Basinski is most known for his album Disintegration Loops and it’s something that still stalks him despite having been released in 2002. The consequence is that a lot of his recent work is irremovable from the context of the first, it also creates a weight with all of his music. There’s a distinct sense of ‘this is important.’

Basinski uses tapes to make his music. He loops them and produces new sounds using a plethora of equipment and alongside his laptop, making for what is a rather technical and distinctly analogue performance. There’s a quality of strangeness to him. After a pun, Basinski opens with a wall of sound, and before long he begins to introduce his samples. There’s a wide range of sounds throughout the set. There’s rawness, and gentility, beauty, and ugliness. Throughout his set, Basinski gesticulates behind his tape machines. He reaches upwards gracefully, he sways, and frequently laments, resting his head in his hands. In the first 20 minutes he discards his jacket, and contorts his body, topless to the music. He’s not a passive musician by any stretch, performing as though a rockstar rather than a typical PC musician. There’s a physicality to his performance and it’s a vital component. He shares what he feels. While there’s physicality and a degree of serenity to him. There’s also a punky air of hostility to the show. An undertone of threat fills the space from the get-go. Occasional bursts of abrasive noise set the tone and as he even says, when introducing his set, we’ll be making ‘war.’ For much of the performance he works around an Opera sample. At times it does feel stuck, and it can leave you wanting more development within the space of the sample. It sits, repeating, building noise behind – perhaps not enough. Although, Basinski is clearly lost in it, bending over his table, almost controlled by his own music.

As the set comes to its end, more crackles appear in the tapes, a glitchiness seeps through, a clear signal of the end. As the music becomes less and the crackle becomes more, the music slowly blends into silence. Basinski ceremoniously undoes the tape from his tape machine, the audience remains silent, and he packs it away. It isn’t until he bows to the audience that there’s rapturous applause.

Basinski spliced together some captivating music throughout the evening, there was edge where there needed to be, but also brightness. It seems that the meditative drones of the previous disintegration loops no longer is a defining characteristic of Basinski’s music. But that’s important, for if he hadn’t developed, he would be stuck. This evening he proved himself to be a legend who creates to an enormously high caliber and performs with charisma and bright talent.