Reminds me of waking up on the sofa at 4am in front of a DVD menu that has been looping for hours

comment sections on songs like this are always nice to read through

I just thought I'd take a break and write something down. When in high school I started to listen to a lot of ambient music, and Basinski was definitely one (among many others) who stuck with me a lot. It was a very confusing time for me back then (not that it's gotten any better, a bit more different) and me and my friends had went on a trip to a small city in my home country. It was winter and we had just finished some important exams, so we just wanted to get away and get high. I wasn't particularly fond of them, and I wasn't particularly fond of the mood weed came with at that time for me neither, but being lonely as I was I went anyway. It was the last night we were there, two of us were laying on a wooden floor of a very old house, we had just finished a movie, and another woke up, and it's just one of those moments that's very hard to describe but you remember so vividly. Cascade was on in the background, and I was just staring at the ceiling, while the two of them were talking about some bullshit things that we used to talk about, but I just remember laying there, feeling this existential dread, not knowing what the fuck I was doing and where the fuck I was and why, but I just had to sit there with myself, thinking about my place in this universe and accepting that fact, however unpleasant it may be. Years later I still get that feeling a lot, and the dread hasn't become any less confusing or painful, but I can certainly appreciate the fact that it's a strange feeling, but one that is not unnatural and is important to experience during our time on earth, and I appreciate the fact that people like Basinski exist out there and can help people generate these strange emotions and states which can help people discover more about themselves, and I think that what life is all about.

I feel too lonely and brokenhearted and I'm listening to this at 4AM

Basinski: "I wanted Cascade to become this crystalline organism like a star or a liquid crystal spaceship, a jellyfish traveling through the galaxy…" Now I've read that, I can't get the image out of my head. Perfect.

Basinski found the sweet spot of existence. What an artist.

A sad sea lapping morosely upon a desolate shore. Dense fog. Life hasn't begun here yet.

Ah....the exquisite pain of being alive.

All of the comments on here are so damn beautiful to read

When you and the boys pass the realm of physical existance

I believe that to fully enjoy and understand life, you have to experience every emotion and every feeling possible. Sadness, loneliness, happiness, love, they're all there to help you know who you are and how the world works. Even if it hurts sometimes, emotions have purpose.

it’s like someone’s here with me. someone to comfort me so i don’t feel so alone.

reminds me of the railway in front of me near the church that rang the bells at noon, more than 45 years ago...

by far my favourite basinski, lost my marbles a few times to this masterpiece. excellent choice during psychotic episodes

This is my favorite piece of music for the last 5 years.

I'm digging the open mic here in the comments section. I'm surprised someone isn't here serving drinks.

Basinski's work always puts me in a nostalgic, wistful frame of mind. It's the soundtrack to my memories, even now being muddled and confused by the twists of time.

These types of melodies help me feel connected to the universe. It’s like I know there’s a tribe out there that get “it” even if that “it” is different for all of us, its understood. Half the people I hang out with don’t even know I listen to this kind of music, it’s so deeply personal for me. Ambient music encapsulates nostalgia, movement within what feels like a safe zone, and hope. It helps me heal my wounds and think about possibilities, while being right in the now. It curbs my what is the point of all this thoughts. It helps me radically accept and understand that not all things even have a point. I honestly don’t know what I’d do with out this stuff. I usually get back to it when I feel down, or stuck, or even scared and it’s sacred to me. So yeah this felt good to write. Xo

This song feels like the lost memories of summers gone by .

This reminds me of those cloudy winter mornings on Fridays that landed on a Consejo Técnico (a day that happens once a month where we basically get a Friday off school because teachers in every school in Mexico get together in their respective schools for some sort of school meeting) when my parents and siblings would just stay in our beds watching TV (we share a room) and it was really cozy

When life is not your priority, one should listen to this. Simply one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard.

Have slept to this for many nights and it ethes more into my heart each night. 1 of the masters , wouldn't be doin this music without him as a huge pillar...🖤

YES! I HEARD THIS ON N.P.R. DRIVING THRU WEST VIRGINIA LAST YEAR!!!!!!!!! FUCKING LOVE IT!!!!!!

I can't begin to describe how timeless and beautiful this piece is.

This one reminds me of my beloved, beloved Baltic Sea and cliffs. I could stare at the sea for hours. I love it.

It's like floating in an unknown misty blurred atmosphere of melancholia and sadness. Somehow awaiting and hoping for your love to finally come. It will probably not happen and you are painfully aware of it. It's cold out here, it hurts but you can't get out of it. You don't want to. And so you float and drown in this white cascade of broken dreams and thoughts.

My favorite loop 😊

Most people want to remain separate and ‘in control’. Most people want to keep dreaming that they are special, unique and separate. They want to remain separate more than they want to wake up to the perfect unity of an Unknown. (Adyashanti)

Listening while grading papers on a rainy fall afternoon...makes the grading tolerable!

No other song reminds me of watching snowfall quite like this one. Just know that the second it starts snowing in the UK this year, I'll have this one on a loop.

... a fragment of memory that floats and you do not know what it is ...

Atoms and stars dance in perfect balance The universe a hall, 4 dimensions sealed like a snowglobe art for an unknown beholder

One of the best things that Basinski has ever done. I could listen to this all day. It's so simple but yet so beautiful.

this tastes like winter

The length of these ambient tracks are new to me, but it makes it sound more powerful. I can feel it.

can't stop myself from crying anytime i play this piece. it's so painful in its essence.

In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again someday, But you never did. Well I'm alone there now... In our 'special place'... Waiting for you...

Feels like falling asleep in front of a windowpane on a rainy day.

why does this remind me something that i had forgotten.....but still can't fully remember.

I feel like crying, but the tears are not coming out. I have failed myself again. It's a huge fault in my personality. I keep failing myself even after I am given several chances. I am constantly building myself back up just to tear everything that i am building in one day. Its like I've been stuck in the same spot for the past 4 years- statoinary like a rock, only a rock may move from a gust of wind. I am not progressing in anything even though I have everything between my hands. One day it will be too late to change anything and that day can be any day from now.

Walking alone, on the surface of a new world.

William Basinski has for a long time made a sub-genre in ambient music which started with the Disintegration Tapes and continues, via Variations For Piano & Tape, to this. Yet through the magic of his recording process it supercedes pigeonholing and becomes not-ambient, just a different kind of musical experience. I wish people would put on his records and listen to them with the willingness that they have to stream a film on Netflix, because the process is enriching. I'm guilty of this too. I spend too much time doing shit and watching shit when I could be listening to this.

the sound of snow falling

i could listen to this all day, and it's like 2 chords being played over and over again lol. Genius looping.

The future is being accomplished now, If I raise my hand a little, All five beams of light will stay with you. Each day I used my collar bones For shoring up the past, as though with timber, I measured time with geodetic chains And marched across it, as though it were the Urals. -Arseny Tarkovsky

One of the most simple yet beautiful pieces of art ever to be created.

This is so beautiful, but my soul drops the bottom of a well of sadness whenever I hear this

This reminds me so much of Silent Hill. Very surreal with a hint of unease.

The Disintegration Loops, which I discovered just a couple of weeks ago, brought me here.

Walking on a deserted beach at night looking at the night sky's twinkling stars. Love this loop with its echoing piano ebbing and flowing like waves lapping against the shore of eternity.Sounds like Erik Satie in an alternative dimension.I wonder if William has a complete piece of music that this loop was lifted from?🤔

I am listening to this for 20 minutes now and cannot get enough. It´s a similar feeling to this one in summertime when you have a day at the beach, when you just flow on the surface of the water, not moving and the body is carried away. You look into the blue sky and sometimes you catch the top of green trees....your ears are under water, you cannot hear anything-and if you do catch a whisper and you know someone is calling your name and is trying to ask for your attention you are numb...

Listen to this while scuba diving, look up at the surface, look at the life around you, hidden from us, protected from us by the ocean.

Ive just discovered, or may I say..been cosmically captivated by this soul saving magic...Beyond words

Потрясающе!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sometimes you just need to take a deep breath and clear your mind to set things on track again, this music always help me on this! thx William

perfect for watching snow come down....or imagining that. let it snow in your mind and you'll be happy.

This music takes me away from the hurt i'm feeling. Takes me away from the reality of the hurt and the hurt of reality

Thank you ❤

The problem is that people confuse art with entertainment

pure emptiness

Going deeper and deeper...

I started crying when I thought about this emptiness I feel; dead friend, disconnected love. I put this song on just now hoping that maybe I can disappear too.

Last night, a few friends & I listened to this, laying on the floor, with a soft blue light painting the room. It was a magical moment. It somehow reminded of my very existence. I couldn't be more grateful for ambient music

Our ability to endure and even love repetition is a weird thing. This tune owns me

I feel the water, that peace...

This is phenomenal

I really love this track. It's so soothing and cold, and it makes me imagine relaxing alone in a big fancy library at night in a leather chair near a lamp, gazing up at the night sky through the skylights.

Coś wspaniałego

The perfect thing about it is that everyone see their own moment and picture on this masterpiece!

I love this. I can feel the subtle fluctuations in the arrangement. I can sense what Basinski was going for. This reminds me of sitting on the rocks by the water at the darkest point of the evening. The monotony of the fog horn in the distance. the droning wah, wah, wah. The systematic repetition of the warning light above my head. The signal to the unwary crew that rocks are in the distance. The tide now at the highest point. I can sense it gently ebbing against the rocks. There isn't a storm. The ebb isn't a thrash. There is no violence. Just the monotony of flowing water. Yet. Like a stream is never thought to be the same in consecutive seconds passing. There is always something different beside me. The little shifts in how the water moves against the rocks on which I sit. Perhaps a patter and slosh and listless movement. There is repetition and diversity occurring all around me at once. It is both comforting and thoughtful, and exciting. This is what the arrangement reminds me of. I get it. It takes a bit to get, but I caught the cascade. Top notch arrangement.

One of his finest works yet, I think. Basinski has always been very near and dear to my heart, tugging my heart strings through many deaths and a lot of trauma. It's so odd to think that these works are simply just tape looping and decaying, with textures added over the top in principle, but this seemingly simple art form has the power to bring you to tears and think deeply on the past. Thank you, William. You've done my life a great service.

What I like about this guys music is the duality of the music itself and the man. He’s like this cheery & colorful cosmopolitan gay guy and he makes the most somber morose music imaginable.

this really hit me around 19:00 in with a true feeling of physical and mental calm.

Allow me to inhabit the space between your hands, Twice broken diamond, Has anyone ever told you the song the crickets wrote for you? Allow me to populate your pupils in low light environments, Salt water wave spray, Has the moon sent you any fan mail? Allow me to nestle in the timing of your laughter, Evergreen pot of life, Have you danced the trees into stillness? Allow me to relocate to the breath you held, Gust of wind through the willows, Have you returned the owl her silent strike? Allow me to live in the locks of your hair, Cascade of brown shade, Have you tasted the inside of my existence?

I fell to sleep with this on. I had a nightmare. It was dark. I felt deep sadness.

I swear. When I close my eyes, this song made me see things that aren't there

some notes, chords and structures give goose bumps .. I never understood why... Someone said its Nostalgia, but thats not it. Im hearing this for the first time (these tiny bits of broken piano dancing on a pond of sounds) ... Que Bon !!

Definitely a piece of music you need to listen to at the right moment. But when the moment is right, its beauty becomes apparent

beautiful.

Headphones in I listened Eyes closed and Empty mind I gently left the earth

oh my god this is amazing

This gives me flashbacks to when my parents took me to church at five years old and I noticed how all the windows had this privacy film that made it a little too blurry to see clearly outside. It was raining and I just kept staring at the droplets of blurred water impacting the window

To dream of the infinity....

This reinforces my will to make music.

Stripped from flesh our souls begin to rest on an infinite sheet of light, like a feather falling to the ground we watch memories of our past circling and twirling on a golden theatre film reel. Of who we were and what we became the cold breath of death still lingers, imprinted in the Aether until we rejoin again in the next life.

23:10 is fire.

reading theory of mind papers as i listen to this... talk about stream of consciousness suits this perfectly

the interesting thing is that from what i think i can hear is that each time the loop retriggers/repeats there is like either a delay or slight variation in timing, so that it is more fluid and slightly flexible, It might have to to with his 'method' of using two tape machines playing of one another, and what i guess is that maybe they retrigger each other depending on when their delay effects end or start or something like that. Either way there is an organic quality, analog perhaps because if this was digital then the loops would be alot of obvious where they trigger, it would be quantized. So there seems to be a slight randomness factor that William Basinski is controlling during the recording of this 40min set.

Thank you so much for this. Have spent six months finishing editing my debut novel to this. Perfect for focusing. Basinski - you are amazing

This music brings me to a place where only my soul can express

Yes, there is a monotony to it but that monotony, as I realized after listening to it for awhile, could be a representation of the rhythmic, frequent, lapping of little waves on a shore. When I focused on that visual the music suddenly became sublime and I felt more at peace for a time.

When everything sounds like it’s ending And the trees are all bird and bone My sidling mind Wafts its way back to you. All the miles of nothing Mean that you are closer. When everything smells like it’s over And the wings are waving north goodbye You apparate In the flipbook that the rampart makes. All the empty fields and hours Mean that you are closer. When everything tastes like winter And I warm up your memory in the motel microwave The black and white leaves Remember their bleeding gold Just long enough to sink you into me Before they coagulate Into a flurry of failing eyelids The fluorescent lights Standing sentinel, Ever-watchful For any sort of heart movement. (And still) I know that you are closer. When everything sounds like it’s ending When everything smells like it’s over When everything tastes like winter I know that you are closer. I know that you are closer.

This is....beautiful.....this is.....perfect......exactly how my life would be in the form of sound...

I reeeeaaaaalllyyy recommend putting this on whilst driving around SF when it's overcast with fog early in the day on the weekend. It eerily fits.

i'm alive, i'm alive, i'm alive

Beautiful and meditative without snags.

1:51 That drop though

this is very deeply chill

Could it be? Among the darkness I sank myself into Your flare I stare Could it be? Your mere presence Blessing upon tired heart I revive Could it be? Candle light To drive away the night Moonlit wit to warm me up Inside Could it be? Will you drive away the ghosts? Will you be the promise broken? Could it be? Perhaps I won't rush Again I'll let it be If it'll be It'll be

Best album of the 2015