William Basinski

Passing The Cup Of Sorrows is William Basinski's first new album in six years, released by Temporary Residence. The title comes from past-life regression hypnotherapy: in the state called 'life between lives', two souls exchange energy so that one can understand and forgive the other for a harm done in a previous existence, a ritual known as passing the cup of sorrows.

Basinski came across testimonies of this practice in a video, at a time when he felt overwhelmed by the anxiety and cynicism coming off the screen, and found them deeply moving. He sat at the piano and tried to translate those memories of old traumas into something cathartic in the present. The result is a single piece of about forty minutes for solo piano and discreet electronics, close in spirit to the quiet, asymmetrical patterns of Morton Feldman: fragments that return slightly changed, slow, out of focus, unsettling and luminous at the same time.

A different Basinski from the decaying tape loops of The Disintegration Loops, built on a single instrument, but with the same patience and the same attention to how memory erodes and repeats.