William Basinski (Fields, Belgrade)

Fields

19 September Fields will open the autumn season: as part of a world tour, a concert by William Basinski will take place in Belgrade.

William Basinski is one of the leading minimalist composers of the 21st century. Decay, repetition and a “ghostly” structure — impossibly melancholic music that instantly made Basinski a classic of ambient.

For most of his life William Basinski worked in New York, living in an attic in Brooklyn. He opened for Bowie and ran a vintage shop. Seeing him for the first time, with an unbuttoned shirt and a glam hairstyle, it's hard to imagine you're facing a geeky composer inspired by the music of John Cage and Brian Eno. Basinski is more of a rock star in the world of ambient music.

The cult album Basinski made, The Disintegration Loops, came with a surprising and deeply heartbreaking story. While sorting his archives in 2001, the musician decided to digitize two-decade-old magnetic tapes. He started a recorder and stepped away for a while; when he returned he noticed that during playback his recordings had begun to disintegrate. This captured the process of decay, which accidentally coincided with another destruction — the September 11 attacks. After finishing the recording, Basinski went up to the roof of his Brooklyn house and filmed a smoking New York. One of those shots became the basis for the album cover.

After the release of The Disintegration Loops many things followed: the album grew into a four-disc cycle and has been performed by orchestra several times, and the approach — repetition and slow erosion — became Basinski's trademark. The two-part Watermusic, as if echoing water glints, and the further submerged Vivian & Ondine; the aching Melancholia and the mystical Nocturnes, where the dissected piano literally crumbles to dust — each of these works has gained cult status as well as its own audience.

William Basinski's performance in Belgrade is a rare opportunity to hear his music not alone on a recording, but in the same space with its author.