William Basinski
by The Disintegration Loops, a series of melty, mutated tape transfers, are pretty staggering [listen to Dip 1.3 below]. But William Basinski’s recent 92982, which seems to compress the murmur of all of Brooklyn, could even be better. ‘Ambient’ doesn’t nearly cover it: there’s a grandness, but never a grandiosity, of scale. It’s meditative without being lulling, mysterious without being merely vague. Amazing stuff.
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Tagged: 92982, disintegration loops, William Basinski
Also by MATTHEW SPECKTOR
People contort all kinds of ways to describe a really original writer, but Big Machine is an amazing piece of work. A true American Gothic ‘horror’ in the vein of Poe, or Melville or James — this book is authentically scary, compulsively strange, and hugely exciting on the sentence level. It’s also funny as hell. A riff about the Washerwoman cult, who rewrite the Bible in bizarre contemporary idiom, is worth the price of admission by itself. Read more
Sometimes pessimism is more encouraging than optimism, because more is true. I’m a huge fan of Straw Dogs, but the English counter-Humanist philosopher’s Heresies is just as bracing: ‘Belief in progress is the Prozac of the thinking classes’. Living in Los Angeles, where a brittle, self-obsessed ‘hopefulness’ is everywhere, I might need this writer (who certainly shouldn’t be confused with the Men Are From Mars guy) even more than you do. But you do, you do.
More timeless than current’. But I recently finished a long and complicated novel about Hollywood in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and am just now buckling down to write a short nonfiction book about this film, part of a series for Soft Skull Press. A little peremptorily written off as a mere ‘entertainment’, and also overshadowed by the in-fact-not-quite-as-good Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, this is a pretty dazzling effort: a coded Watergate-conspiracy narrative, a comment on the perils and pleasures of being fooled that’s also twice as much fun to watch as you remember. Which was pretty fun to begin with.
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If you’re dealing with the well-worn topics of nature and the ways mankind is shaping the natural world, it helps to be an objectively kick-ass artist such as George Boorujy. Read more
Nerds love pizza and nerds love Star Trek. Nerds need this Enterprise-shaped pizza cutter to show how they are nerdier than the nerdiest nerds on the message boards.
Sydney indie heroes (in the nicest possible way), The Paper Scissors (TPS to those that know the secret handshake) have made a video for their new single, The Bandit. And it’s good. Damn good.
Lookie here! A bike path in Seoul that plays music as people ride over it. The path is made of planks of wood of varying lengths that trigger little hammers when people ride over them, creating little percussive notes. Happy fun place yay!
A Paper Tiger is a new venture that launched in January of this year selling exclusive prints by some of my favorite artists such as Jack Long [shown above]. Read more
There’s something quite attractively kitsch about the Lucky Dragons’ latest release, Dream Island Laughing Language. It’s undoubtedly unusual, and not too friendly on the ears, but something warm and fuzzy keeps creeping out of the broken drum rhythms and looped vocals. It’s a mish-mash of jangly folk licks, Squarepusher-style drum ‘n bass with a few Coco Rosie-esque experimental sound effects thrown in: intriguing, original, and fairly hard to describe!
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This t-shirt, featuring 79 fictional weapons from movies, TV, video games, and comic books, is a really great way to get nerds to stare at your chest.
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The return of the Brionvega rr226
Italian brand Brionvega has resurrected the classy Radiofonografio piece first created in 1965. The updated version is just like the original turntable/radio unit, but also has a CD/DVD player.
How ’bout this Jose Manuel Hortelano-Pi guy, huh? Quite the illustrator, yessiree Bob. From Spain, too. Spain is great! Read more
It’s refreshing to see artists like Joe Kievitt who are contented to explore the beauty in simple forms and asymmetrical patterns. Read more
Benjamin Edminston’s psychedelic heads seem to have some fearful wisdom behind their blissed-out eyes. Read more
Mathematics? Leave me out. Fashematics? Now you’re talking! This gem of a site is a runway equation that adds up to a whole lot of wonderful.
Using Kyoko Hashimoto’s popular design, these acrylic earrings are made with unique hand formed sterling silver sleepers that make them light enough for everyday wear. Part of Kyoko’s collection, I Blame the Uni, (pronounced ‘oo-nee’, the Japanese name for sea urchin) and inspired by her experiences in the underground club scene of Tokyo. Read more
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