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WILLIAM BASINSKI + RICHARD CHARTIER

Aurora Terminalis

FULL ALBUM OUT JANUARY 10, 2025 on all digital platforms

A decade is a long pause… how the world has changed since…

Longtime friends and collaborators, iconic ambient composer William Basinski and sound artist/composer Richard Chartier return to LINE with Aurora Terminalis, their first new work together since 2015’s Divertissement LP (Important Records, US).

From an unexpected sudden burst of sound jaggedly spiraling outward, the tumult fades and shockwaves slide into lulling haze of a melody. Background nuance—nearly imperceptible—and foreground romanticism ripple near each others’ edges. Then, rhythmic and liquid, an erratic drifting over a clouded void… an ‘un-still’ life… a slow tracing.

Aurora Terminalis… a fading gauzy signal for a finality.

Basinski and Chartier have previously released two collaborative works on LINE; Aurora Liminalis (2013) and Untitled 1-3 (2008, an expanded reissue of Untitled originally on Spekk, Japan, 2004), as well as the archival Bandcamp exclusive Something from the Pink House a live improvisation recorded in 2004.

William Basinski’s archival album The Clocktower at the Beach (1979) was released on LINE in 2023.

Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Reviews
Catalog:
LINE_157
Format:
digital
Edition:
open edition
Release:
January 2025
Tracklist:

1.  Aurora Terminalis (excerpt 1) (06:07)   [releases Nov 22]
2.  Aurora Terminalis (excerpt 2) (06:33)  [releases Dec 20]
3.  Aurora Terminalis (60:21)  [releases Jan 10]

composed & recorded by Basinski & Chartier 2024

William Basinski: Voyetra 8 + loops
Richard Chartier: electronics, field recordings, processing, mixing

Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space

cover image: detail of ‘Glass Eye’, 2024 by James Elaine (acrylic and house paints, razor cuts on canvas, 62 in x 92 in)

© 2025 LINE

William Basinski published by Musex International (BMI)
Richard Chartier published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd

William Basinski (b.1958) is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for nearly five decades in NYC and California. Employing obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time. His epic 4-disc masterwork, The Disintegration Loops received international critical acclaim and was chosen as one of the top 50 albums of 2004 by Pitchfork Media. The Temporary Residence deluxe LP box-set reissue from 2012 was awarded best re-issue of the year and a score of 10 on Pitchfork.

Orchestral transcriptions of The Disintegration Loops by Maxim Moston have been performed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Queen Elizabeth Hall (London) and La Batie Festival (Geneva, Switzerland), Dark Mofo Festival (Hobart, Tasmania), the Pitchfork Midwinter Festival (Chicago) with the Chicago Philharmonic, the Barbican Centre (London) with the London Contemporary Orchestra, and most recently at Le Lieu Unique (Nantes, France) with Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire.

Installations and films made in collaboration with artist-filmmaker, James Elaine have been presented in festivals and museums internationally, and his concerts are presented to sold out crowds around the world. Basinski was chosen by Music Director, Anohni to create music for the Robert Wilson opera, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic which had its world premiere at the Manchester International Festival in July 2011 and toured Europe in 2012 and North America in 2013.

Since 2020, Basinski’s jazzy project SPARKLE DIVISION with Preston Wendel and Gary Thomas Wright and special guests such as the late Henry Grimes, has releaased two albums To Feel Embraced and Foxy and several singles on Temporary Residence Ltd.

Basinski’s solo work, Lamentations was released in 2020 and his collaborative album . . . on reflection with British sound artist Janek Schaefer in 2022, both on Temporary Residence Ltd. Also in 2022, a cover version of David Bowie’s ‘Subterraneans’ with Alva Noto and Martin L. Gore of Depeche Mode was released on Noton, Germany. In 2023, his unearthed early work The Clocktower at the Beach (1979) was released on Richard Chartier’s label LINE.

2024 marked the beginning of a new series of archival releases—Arcadia Archive—on Temporary Residence Ltd. starting with the 1982 recording titled September 23rd.

Basinski continues to tour the world with his live performances.

www.mmlxii.com

portrait: Preston Wendel, 2022

Richard Chartier (b.1971) is a Los Angeles based artist / composer considered one of the key figures in minimalist sound art. Chartier’s works explore the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception, and the act of listening.

Chartier’s critically acclaimed sound works have been published since 1998 on a variety of labels internationally including Room40 (Australia), Touch / Ash International (UK), Editions Mego (Austria), INA GRM (France), Important Records (US), mAtter (Japan), Raster-Noton (Germany), Spekk (Japan), Trente Oiseaux (Germany), 901editions (Italy), 12k (US), and his own imprint, LINE (US).

He has collaborated with composer William Basinski, sound artists ELEH, France Jobin, Robert Curgenven, Taylor Deupree, AGF, CoH, Yann Novak, and German electronic music pioneer Asmus Tietchens. In installation form, he has created works with multimedia artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, visual artist Linn Meyers, and projected light artist Anthony McCall. As his project Pinkcourtesyphone he has collaborated with Cosey Fanni Tutti, Kid Congo Powers, harpist Gwyneth Wentink, AGF, and thereminist Evelina Domnitch.

Chartier’s sound works/installations have been presented in museums and galleries internationally including the Whitney Biennial and the influential sound art exhibit ‘Sounding Spaces’ at NTT/ICC in Tokyo. His performances have occurred live across Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America.

Since 2000, Chartier has curated his influential recording label LINE, publishing over 160 editions documenting the compositional and installation work of international sound and video artists who explore the aesthetics of contemporary minimalism.

www.3particles.com

full image of ‘Glass Eye’ 2024 by James Elaine
(acrylic and house paints, razor cuts on canvas, 62 in x 92 in)

REVIEWS OF
Aurora Terminalis

  • Chartier and Basinski’s fifth full-length collaboration, ‘Aurora Terminalis’ is a pastel-hued refraction of light-headed, subtly kosmische synth tones and washed-out rhythms that’s presented thru a sheet of whirring tape noise. Quite lovely.

     

     

    There’s a shock in the opening moments of ‘Aurora Terminalis’, when we’re blasted with saturated, reverb-soused synth arpeggios – the sort of cloud-punching neo-cosmic gear you’d expect to find on the tail end of a Caterina Barbieri LP. But in a matter of minutes, old friends Basinski and Chartier isolate the decaying notes and extend them into melancholy, echoing whines that move slower than a Scandinavian sunrise. Going by the title alone, this one’s a sequel to the duo’s beloved second album, 2013’s ‘Aurora Liminalis’… but there are few aesthetic similarities. Where that record sounded like tracers against a night sky, all gaseous, barely active textures and ASMR churr, this new LP has a mistier, more wistful presence that feels sober and humanistic. The illusory elements that surround the gentle pads are particularly striking: faint, processed insect sounds (the murmur of crickets, the distant croak of frogs) are formed into frothing waves that barely crack through the netting ferric hiss that’s draped across the entire recording. And it’s these cryptic asides that help focus our attention on the movement, as Basinski and Chartier animate their elegiac soundscape with fluttering delays that, in time, envelope the track completely.

    And the second half of ‘Aurora Terminalis’ is significantly shifted. Here, the sublime harmonies are submerged underneath tottering, blanched rattles that loom in the half-light. It’s Chartier’s expertise that’s placed under the microscope now, with almost undetectable high-frequency microsounds that dance gracefully with Basinski’s omnipresent saturations. More formally structured than their previous releases, but packed with so much fine detail that you’ll need repeat listens to illuminate all the filigree cracks, this is advanced minimalism from two of the scene’s towering figures.
    —boomkat.com