William Basinski has announced a new album and 2024 tour dates planned for this fall. The upcoming LP is called September 23. Contrary to what that title suggests, the album will arrive four days later on September 27th via Temporary Residence Ltd. The contemporary experimental composer also shared a new song from the release, “September 23rd (Excerpt 1).” which you can listen to below.
September 23 is the first disc in a new series that Basinski calls the Arcadia Archive, an ongoing archival collection dedicated to the discovery and recovery of his work. It was recorded in September 1982 inside his first loft in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. September 23 it was constructed from a piano piece that Basinski composed in high school before expanding it into a different project.
“The original piano recordings were made on a piano owned by my downstairs neighbor, John Epperson – later known more famously as the world-famous drag artist, Lypsinka – at 351 Jay Street, also known as Casa Degli Artisti, our first loft in New York”. Basinski explains. “It was re-encoded with a small portable (probably Radio Shack) cassette player sitting on the piano as I improvised a piece I'd been working on since high school. It was pretty terrible, but when I did the John Giorno/William Burroughs cutting technique, I suddenly had something to put through the Frippertronics loop and feedback loop tape delay system – and boy did I get results. A very productive time for a young, up-and-coming queen in New York.”
Basinski will perform this new piece and other works on his upcoming fall tours. Dubbed the Arcadia Archive Tour, it spans four cities in total—San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and New York—with other shows to book, including stops at the Vancouver International Film Festival and Plantations show in Chicago. See Basinski's full list of tour dates below.
In 2022, Basinski collaborated with Janek Schaefer on the collaborative album …On reflection. His last solo album was released in 2020, Lamentationsthe same year he returned to his Sparkle Division project for recording To feel embraced. He also revealed the archival track The Clock Tower on the Beach last year.
Read the 5-10-15-20 interview “William Basinski on the music that made him.”
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William Basinski:
09-05 Chicago, IL – Garfield Park Conservatory
09-13 San Francisco, CA – Grace Cathedral
09-20 Seattle, WA – Seattle First Baptist Church
09-21 Portland, OR – First Congregational UCC Church
02-10 Vancouver, British Columbia – Vancouver International Film Festival
10-17 Los Angeles, CA – The Nimoy
11-01 New York, NY – Church of the Heavenly Rest
02-11 – Austin, TX – Levitation 2024
