What do you get when you bring together two titans of ambient sound? A journey through an auditory aurora – at once sublime and terminal. Aurora Terminalis is the long-awaited reunion of William Basinski and Richard Chartier, returning after nearly a decade to remind us why their collaborative efforts are such a cornerstone in experimental music.
This is not a record for the casual listener multitasking through life’s noise; it’s an invitation to surrender entirely to sound, to let go of linearity, and drift into an expansive, cosmic haze where the boundaries between melody, noise, and silence dissolve.
The centerpiece of the album, a single sprawling 60-minute track, is both ethereal and deeply immersive. It begins with an unexpected rupture—a jagged, spiraling burst of sound that feels almost jarring, like the universe clearing its throat. This moment of chaos gradually subsides into the delicately layered terrain of Basinski’s loops and Chartier’s nuanced electronic manipulations. Voyetra 8 synthesizer tones float alongside field recordings and processed sonic whispers, creating a shimmering interplay between the organic and the artificial.
The music doesn’t progress so much as it unfurls, like a mist rolling across an alien landscape. Basinski’s signature loops echo with the melancholic weight of passing time, while Chartier’s minimalist electronics weave in subtle disruptions, like the fluttering pulse of a distant star. It’s a conversation not just between the artists but between temporalities—the transient and the eternal, the decaying and the unyielding.
The two excerpts offered as standalone tracks feel like fragments of a dream—self-contained yet inseparably tied to the larger whole. They give the uninitiated a taste of the work’s grandeur but truly function as doors into the sprawling universe of Aurora Terminalis.
The title itself is poetic, suggesting both beauty and an inevitable end. There’s an elegiac quality to the work, a sense that we’re witnessing not just the fading of light but perhaps the dissolution of something greater—a world, a memory, a connection. And yet, there’s hope in the way the sound lingers, refusing to vanish entirely, leaving behind spectral traces for us to follow.
William Basinski’s career spans decades of reshaping the ambient genre, his magnum opus The Disintegration Loops becoming a symbol of beauty in decay. His mastery of obsolete technology, particularly tape loops, has made him a chronicler of memory and loss. On “Aurora Terminalis”, his loops once again hold a mirror to time, revealing its fleeting yet profound nature.
Richard Chartier, a minimalist sound artist of global acclaim, brings an architectural precision to the collaboration. Known for his explorations of silence and perception, Chartier’s contributions here act as the glue binding Basinski’s temporal melancholy with something more immediate and tactile. His work ensures the album is not just a reflection on the past but an articulation of the present’s tenuous vibrations.
Aurora Terminalis is a masterclass in collaborative ambient composition. Basinski and Chartier have given us something rare: a work that feels both finite and infinite, personal and universal, comforting and disquieting. It’s a slow burn, a patient reward for those willing to listen deeply, and a poignant reminder that beauty often resides in the spaces between beginnings and endings.
Perfect for solitary late-night listening or as a soundtrack to moments when the world feels like it’s slipping through your fingers. 5 / 5
—chaindlk.com
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
