Artist: William Basinski
Song: 92982.1
Recorded at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre (Prepare The Ground Festival), May 31, 2026.
This was a mildly strange gig. It was part the Prepare the Ground Festival, which is a fairly broad-minded fest for "heavy" music of various strands. (All the metals!) I have heard nothing but good things about the organizers and the community-forward vibes they are working on, but the ticketing model was festival-style (i.e. you had to buy a wristband for a day or for the full weekend — there were no tickets to individual gigs). That meant that an outlier like Basinski wasn't going to get a lot of his "natural" crowd, unless they were superfans willing to shell out for that wristband. So, although he played in the festival's biggest venue (a rather lovely church) it had a smallish crowd, like maybe a third of the 750 seats were filled at the maximum. (And, amusingly, at the top of the hour after the concert was in progress, a good chunk of people split, as they were headed to another venue to catch something else.)
But that said, this was an excellent space to hear Basinski's slowly unfolding ambient pieces. Based around simple tape looks, Basinski has the courage to not rush things, with processing/degradation slowly unfolding in realtime. (Even his fades were epically long, something that could really be appreciated in a space that tolerates a huge dynamic range.)
last two pics by P.G.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment