7/31/2023 0 Comments Disintegration loops![]() I was broke, about to be evicted my shop had closed. Photograph: Danilo PellegrinelliĬome 2001, Basinski was “basically at the end of my rope. ‘It was almost like the core of this melody was trying to hold on ’til the very end’ … Basinski. He made music throughout, but releases were rare. He lived in a loft in pre-gentrification Williamsburg, where he later owned a vintage store. He knocked about there for years, producing bands (“the record industry ruined everyone I practically gave them, the fuckin’ idiots”), and occasionally playing in them, once opening for David Bowie playing sax with rockabilly band the Rockats. ![]() Indeed, Basinski’s biggest success would come after he moved to New York. “For the past 20 years we’ve lived 3,000 miles apart most of the time!” ( Elaine is based in Beijing.) What’s been the key to their lasting relationship? Basinski cackles. We would go to museums and see Clyfford Still paintings, to rundown theatres to see Godard films.” Basinski dropped out, and, with money he had made as a nude life model, bought a plane ticket to join Elaine in San Francisco. His wistful sigh suggests this was rather more romantic than the word “stalking” implies. ‘Who the hell does she think she is?’ I found out a couple of years ago he was stalking me. “When he first came into this coffee shop, he ignored everyone else and started talking to me, which made everyone really pissed off. “He was like the king of the art world there,” Basinski remembers. Girl, I was like, hello! Makeup? Stilettos? Count me in! Glitter and pretty stuff and vintage clothes galore – are you kidding?” He met the man who remains his partner, artist and curator James Elaine. “It was when The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out, and these people had all the costumes. Surrounded by Denton’s “queers and fabulous artists”, Basinski had finally found his tribe. ![]() William Basinski Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian ‘I thought, use the time, you fucking idiot: get back in the studio and back to work’. “John Cage, Steve Reich and Brian Eno were this golden triangle that gave me permission to try anything I wanted.” It was too world war two.” Instead, he was being creatively turned on by the new school of mid-century minimalist composers. I enjoyed the math and difficulty of it, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. “Most of the major music schools were still about 12-tone serialism, which I had done. I was melancholy.” He went to North Texas State University (now the University of Texas) in Denton to study music, majoring in composition after flunking out of jazz band. And the blues really struck me, because I had the blues as a child. “Edgar Winter was an idol of mine with the saxophone – I could slow his records down and learn the solos. Nevertheless, he kept playing, improvising at home. They wanted me to be first chair clarinet at New York Philharmonic, and I wanted to be David Bowie, so it was, this ain’t gonna happen, girl!” “I could get stoned before school and not worry about solos. No good at auditions, he was happy at third chair. After a move to Dallas, Basinski ended up playing in a 300-piece marching band in high school, and in a symphony orchestra and a jazz band. His father worked as a scientist contracted to Nasa (“he once took my hand and poked Neil Armstrong in the butt”), which made for an itinerant childhood. He was terrific, and he decided I was going to be the first chair clarinetist and the student conductor and the drum major.” “There were a bunch of mean, mean, mean kids in Florida.” A perceptive junior high teacher channelled Basinski’s artistry: “A very nice man, Mr Wood. ![]() “I was already a very flamboyant little hot mess of a kid, getting beat up,” he says. He knew he was gay from an early age, after the family moved to Florida. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardianīasinki’s rejection of Catholicism is understandable. ![]() Basinski performing at St John on Bethnal Green, London, in March. ![]()
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