(All photos by Irene Favata.)
Ambient maestro William Basinski dropped by Berlin for a concert at Silent Green on April 16, where he performed his piece “On Time Out of Time (The Lovers)”. We talked to the legend himself after the show, which gave birth to the chaotic yet joyful conversation you will read below.
Nice mustache.
William Basinski: I like yours too. We’re doing stashes. (proceeds to leave the table to handle other things, then gets back 5 minutes later) So how’s the interview going so far? (laughs)
It’s going great. Everything is an interview. When you think it through, every conversation we have in life is sort of an interview, right?
Yeah. So what do you want to talk about?
First of all, I will say it’s a pleasure to meet you.
Pleasure to meet you too. Thank you for coming!
How is the tour going so far, and how are you handling its heavy routine?
It is hard. You know, I’m not 30 and I’m not that well anymore. I used to run track and swim and dive and do everything, even up until COVID. I got f.cking COVID before anyone even knew what it was while touring in November 2019. I came home from the long tour in Europe very sick. I had to cancel going to see my daddy in Northern California for his 90th birthday party, because I didn’t want to get anyone else sick. I thought it was the flu, but it was the worst ever. I’ve never been really sick in my life. Maybe a cold or a flu once a year or something like that, but nothing like this. I got over it and then I had to go to Paris Fashion Week early 2020 still before anyone knew COVID was, and got sick again! Another variant. I had a whole tour scheduled. I guess it was March 20th when the whole world shut down and everything was done. There weren’t any vaccines for a while. We were ordering masks and washing groceries, coming into the house like everyone else for months.
Then in 2021, it started up again. We did America and then went to Europe and then got another variant. F.cking UK, God forbid. Up until this year I was still mostly wearing masks on planes, in airports, everything. But in shows you can’t wear a mask, and then sometimes you meet people without masks. Well, I got sick again. The end of the tour that year was in Berlin, and I was planning on staying for 10 days to visit all my darling friends staying in Karsten’s beautiful old apartment that he still keeps for friends and colleagues and stuff. Got sniffles on the plane, took a test, positive, told the venue. They’re like, “Nope!” I’m like, “OK, well, I have a video program you can show. I won’t come.” They’re like, “No, we’ll talk to you later.” See you next Tuesday, b.tch. (both laugh) I thank God for Karsten. I got to just chill in his apartment and I made chicken soup. German pharmacies are fantastic, you can go into the Apotheke and they give you really good medicine. So I did what I had to do. I rested and I got well enough to go home before I had to leave.
Last year, we got another f.cking variant somewhere on the road. Now I have these long COVID symptoms, which are like immune disorders. It gets into your body, gets into your nerves and your bloodstream, crosses the brain barrier. It’s really f.cked up. So I’m doing the best I can, but I’m not going to complain anymore. But it’s tough for me at my age with this condition, right?
I don’t know how, but I never had COVID.
God bless! You’ve got a good immune system. You have good genes, baby. Maybe that mustache kept it out. (laughs)
Yeah. My mustache is my amulet.
Yeah! Keep it out, keep it out.
I love your latest record, September 23rd–
I know! I was gonna maybe do that show tonight and I brought with me the tape loops and everything, but it’s a very difficult show to do when there’s an opening act, and stages have to be changed. When I do that show, I have a boom stand with six different 40-year-old tape loops on it. I have my main set in Ableton on the laptop and the mixer and everything. This show tonight has full bandwidth. You’ve got real high frequencies and all this wonderful stuff. All the sound engineers who have these beautiful sound systems, they love that.
With the September 23rd works and some of those earlier archival pieces, everything’s in the mid range, because they were very badly recorded on old cassette tapes. Anything in Subs is going to be some weird ass slow f.cking wow and flutter and sh.t that I never even heard before. (laughs) You have to cut the Subs and then spend a lot of time finding the music with the sound engineer. Gary, my main man, my chief engineer comes with me to help the venue guys. He archives all the shows and helps me with everything on the tour. He’s the tour manager and everything. He’s just brilliant. We’ve been best friends for 50 years. He knows the frequency, so during the one hour we get for sound check, he can help the guys dial it in. Every place has a different sound system, a different resonant frequency in the building. Churches are really easy to do, because they’re giant crystals. Nothing rattles.
They are the perfect environment.
For what I do, yeah. Though sometimes, certain clubs and things can be tricky. But all the technicians we work with are professionals, they know their rooms. We are also professionals and we help to get it together in one hour. And it can sound really beautiful. The problem is to move the boom stand. I have to look at my loops and try them out, see which one I want first and which is next. Then I put them in order on this boom stand. They’re hanging there. If it has to be moved, that’s not good. (giggling) One time last year, Gary had to move it back, and there were two loops on there. He knew there were supposed to be six. He looked around and oh, they’re on the floor, the fans had blown them off or something, in this church somewhere in Portland or whatever. He put it back up, and at least they didn’t get stepped on and ruined, but they were all out of order and everything. So, you know, you’re flying by the seat of your pants. You don’t know what the f.ck’s going to happen. And that can be good, but not always. So it’s a difficult show to pull off. That’s why we didn’t do that one tonight. “On Time Out of Time (The Lovers)”, that’s what we did tonight.
You’ve been playing that in other concerts on this tour too, right?
Yeah. Because like I said, we didn’t sign up for this timeline that we’re living in right now. Let’s just go back a little bit, some 3 billion light years and start over again.
And reset.
And reset the whole paradigm for Christ’s sake.
Reset the whole world. (both laugh)
We try. My fans, you see, they’re so quiet. They’re so lovely, so beautiful. Everywhere. I’m so lucky. Everywhere I go, these kids come out and they’re just precious. They’re not tourists. They’re not like, “Oh, somebody says we should sit down, let’s go see and talk,” and blah, blah, blah. No, they come, they sit down, they’re quiet, they fall in. I love them so much.
I really get that through witnessing this show. I also personally know some people who listen to you, and they’re all cool people.
They’re all so cool. Yeah. And they’re very sensitive. The work is healing. People let me know that, and I’m so appreciative and it’s very moving. So I’m in service. I’m like a priest, you know, I have to do my masses.
You are the Ambient Priest Bowie.
(laughs) The Priestess! I don’t know if you ever saw it, you might have. There’s this great old 60’s postcard. I may have posted it on Instagram years ago or something, I don’t know. But it’s this lady at a bank. She’s got this ball and a big desk, and she’s there and there’s sparkles all around just like the Priestess. So whatever, I’m monitoring the frequencies of the room and I’m just sending out love to everybody.
And they’re receiving love.
And they send it back. And I feel it. And I need it.
We all need love and we all need it to be a mutual thing. I want to switch to another aspect: September 23rd is a recording you made in the ‘70s. That’s really far away. Long before you became a renowned artist. You were a different man. The thing is, even at my age, I sometimes feel like I have some memories that I’m not sure whether it’s a dream or reality. Do you also feel that way sometimes?
(slowly) I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that. I mean, I’m very blessed. Let’s just go back to when I was doing it.
Okay.
All right, maybe I was miserable, because no one got it for years. I wanted to get a record deal. I wanted to get signed, and they didn’t want my work. I think there was one tape missing from the track when I sent it to the record company and I went to get it out of a cardboard box in the basement next to the washing machine, but whatever! I was 20, 21, 22. My friends were a little bit older. They were painters, really creative artists. (My partner) James Elaine, Roger Justice… We shared this big loft and we were creative, and life was free back then.
We could afford minimum wage jobs, working the whole week and then pulling our money and paying the rent. We didn’t go out. We didn’t go to Studio 54. We did that a little bit later. We sometimes went to clubs when we could afford it, but we didn’t know we were fabulous and cute and if we were nice, we could get it for free, because no one told us, you know? (laughs) But that’s good, because we were doing our work at night and I was creating Watermusic and The River. That was a live recording in real time with microphones and tape loops and three tape decks. And on 92982, you can hear the fireworks going off and sh.t. So it was all very prolific for a young, crazy motherf.cker like me in New York who had no idea, but wanted to achieve something.
I had some training. I was a classically trained musician. I had some amazing classes in university learning about John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and deep listening, plus learning that you don’t have to write it all down and have people play it. Then I met all these amazing record collectors that had it all. Jamie worked at record stores when I met him and he had everything. He’s still just an incredible music colleague. He’s got this huge collection. He makes the best playlists. You could just set him up on one record and he’ll be like, “Oh, I’m going to do it. This classic country place, I’m going to do this.” Tons and tons and tons of stuff. He had it all. The Germans from the ‘70s. Tangerine Dream and Connie Plank and all these guys. I was getting to hear all this and going, “Oh, drone! That’s allowed?” When I looked at the back of the Fripp and Eno album that showed the Frippertronics with two tape decks and the tape delay thing, I was like-
“I can do that?”
“I can do that.” There was a junk store right up the street, and we got a bunch of used tape for $5 and $10, whatever I can afford. I couldn’t afford a Mellotron, but I could afford that. So I tried to make my own things and I had a job and we rented a piano. This was in San Francisco in ‘78 before we moved to New York. I knew about preparing it and I knew about trying different things with some of the piano pieces I’ve done, like maybe hitting the note with the pedal down and then hitting the record so you don’t get the attack. You get almost a string sound or something. Just lots of experimentation.
The Muzak station was the most powerful station in New York. It was at the top of the Empire State Building. We had a big loft and wires going all around with speakers and stuff. The strings just came to us through airwaves. And I was like, “Well, I want a Mellotron. It’s free. Let me get some of that.” (laughs) I started trying to make my own Mellotron. So that’s where all that sh.t comes from.
Speaking of all that stuff, is there a specific setup idea that you haven’t incorporated into your music making yet, but would love at some point?
No. (both laugh) I’ve done my work. Well, I have created my patches, I still have tons of them, and I’ve got my own synthesizer that nobody else has, and the AI can’t copy it.
That’s good to know.
They better not be able to copy. I mean, they’re trying, but they didn’t.
In what ways are they trying?
Oh please. They’re trying to copy everything! They’re recording everything. Copying everything. F.cking revenge of the goddamn nerds. Motherf.ckers. Let’s not go there.
I consider you a big diva in the best way possible. Who do you think is the biggest diva in the music industry today?
(blushes) Oh Christ, I don’t know.
Apart from you, of course.
(laughs) Oh please! I don’t think along those lines, but I have to tell you, Anohni is a goddess, and also my daughter. She calls me mommy. I saw her at the Pyramid Club when she was doing her Blacklips Performance Cult. I was producing young bands at that time and doing my Arcadia shows and things. So I had the business card, and I always looked nice and fierce and everything. I went downstairs to the dressing room afterwards and talked to her. I said, “Darling, your music! I want to know more about your music. I have a studio in Williamsburg. It’s just a couple of stops on the train. Here’s my number. Come and see me. I want to talk to you about this music. I want to hear more.” So she did come, and she knew I was somebody that was getting people signed. We did our first demo tape. She brought her 4-track, and it was all so good. It was like, “OK, we’ll just make it sound the best it can.” So we made her a demo tape, and she started getting more gigs.
When we were doing the Arcadia shows, it was like a company. I picked people I liked. We would continue with them and we would do different series and stuff like that. We really worked with people, you know? It wasn’t just a one time gig or something. It was like a real company.If somebody else was playing on one night, well, maybe some of these kids would be doing the door or the bar or whatever. Of course everybody stole from me, but what are you going to do? They were all broke. I’ve never made a goddamn penny, but it’s legendary now. (laughs)
Have you seen her new show?
No.
Have you heard the new record?
No, not yet.
(surprised Pikachu face)
I know people love it, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. So much stuff has come out recently, you know?
Yeah, her new show, she’s still touring it. If you have a chance to see it, you better not miss it, because that band is the best in the world. The nuance, the arrangements… And her! She’s so beautiful and precious now. I’m so proud of her, because she came back. She was worn out. When sh.t hits big, it can kill you. But she survived. She took a break. She’s very smart and she’s doing much better now. She’s in a better place. You better look and see where she’s coming near you. And if you can, you got to go see her.
You can check out William Basinski’s Bandcamp profile here.
