Composer and sound architect William Basinski has announced a new album, September 23, which will be out September 27 via Temporary Residence. It’s the first release in Basinski’s Arcadia Archive series which is “dedicated to the discovery and recovery of his life’s work” and will feature “archival piano recordings captured at Arcadia, his former loft in Brooklyn.”
September 23rd started as a piano piece Basinski composed in high school in the mid-1970s, but evolved into something different entirely. “The original piano recordings were made on on a piano belonging to my downstairs neighbor, John Epperson – later known more famously as world-renowned drag artist, Lypsinka – at 351 Jay Street aka Casa Degli Artisti, our first loft in New York,” Basinski says. “It was recoded with a little portable (probably Radio Shack) cassette deck sitting on the piano as I improvised a piece I had been working on since high school. It was pretty terrible, but when I did the John Giorno/William Burroughs cut-up technique, suddenly I had something to put through the Frippertronics loop and feedback loop tape delay system – and boy did I get results. A very prolific time for a young, wacked-out queen in NYC.”
You can listen to an excerpt from September 23 below.
William Basinski will be on his Arcadia Archives tour this fall, where he’ll be “live mixing 40+ year old tape loops.” That includes a NYC show at Church of the Heavenly Rest on November 1. He’ll also play the 2024 edition of Plantasia at Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory on September 5 with Tyondai Braxton, Maria BC and more, and also Austin’s Levitation festival in November. All dates are listed below.
William Basinski – 2024 Tour Dates
Sep 5 – Chicago, IL @ Plantasia – Garfield Park Conservatory
Sep 13 – San Francisco, CA @ Grace Cathedral*
Sep 20 – Seattle, WA @ Seattle First Baptist Church*
Sep 21 – Portland, OR @ First Congregational UCC Church*
Oct 2 – Vancouver, BC @ Vancouver International Film Festival
Nov 1 – New York, NY @ Church of the Heavenly Rest*
Nov 2 – Austin, TX @ Levitation 2024 – The Long Center
*Arcadia Archive Tour