BASINSKI, WILLIAM
SEPTEMBER 23RD (TEMPORARY RESIDENCE)
label:
TEMPORARY RESIDENCE
September 23rd is the first release in William Basinski's new Arcadia Archive series. Recorded in September 1982 in his first loft in the pre-gentrified DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, September 23rd is a recently unearthed early entry in what has become a hugely inspirational and influential catalog.
Built from a piano piece that Basinski composed in high school in the mid-1970s, September 23rd quickly evolved into a vastly different work.
As Basinski explains: "The original piano recordings were made on on a piano belonging to my downstairs neighbor, John Epperson - later known more famously as world-renowned drag artist, Lypsinka - at 351 Jay Street aka Casa Degli Artisti, our first loft in New York.
It was recoded with a little portable (probably Radio Shack) cassette deck sitting on the piano as I improvised a piece I had been working on since high school.
It was pretty terrible, but when I did the John Giorno/William Burroughs cut-up technique, suddenly I had something to put through the Frippertronics loop and feedback loop tape delay system - and boy did I get results.
A very prolific time for a young, wacked-out queen in NYC."