While we’re on the subject of longform pieces, this new collaboration between Richard Chartier and William Basinski—their first in a decade—is a quiet stunner. It begins in a way I would never have expected to hear from LINE label founder Chartier, an artist whose work is distinguished largely by its quietness: with a jagged series of synth arpeggios, dramatic and insistent. They blast away for a little more than a moment and then fall silent, leaving just a soft filament of tone—a slow, string- or Theremin like melody cycling endlessly in the dark, like a light being swallowed up on a snowy night. After 30 minutes, the piece shifts: the melody finally falls away and gives way to a deep, rapid-fire pulse, still shrouded in that endless reverb. It’s a record of cosmic dimensions: the Big Bang, the denouement, and then the infinite expansion of the universe, accelerating outward.
—philip sherburne, futurismrestated.substack.com
Iconic tape looper William Basinski and extreme minimalist Richard Chartier have come together several times over the years, melding their minds into a monomaniacal ambient force. On Aurora Terminalis, they start from a staticky seed that germinates slowly into a colossal energy field. Overtones echo out above a series of ebbing and flowing drones, slipping in and out of sync. Each sound feels like it’s being distilled at a molecular level, the air flooding with free electrons cleaved from their original atoms. And the air is always full of sound even when the drones fade, their half lives hissing on to fill the negative space. As the hour-long track moves into its last third, pulses develop and splinter. There’s no single standout factor that makes Aurora Terminalis so irresistible, but it will tug your attention like a tractor beam nevertheless.
—thefader.com
All Songs Considered’s New Music Friday: The best albums out Jan. 10
—npr.org
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
Friday Five: Jan. 10, 2025
—themoderns.blog
Longtime friends and collaborators William Basinski and Richard Chartier return to LINE with Aurora Terminalis, a 60-minute odyssey through drone and ambient that marks their first new work together since 2015’s Divertissement. Starting with a burst of bright, jagged synths it soon dissolves into something significantly calmer before leaning into darker, more paranoid tones in the second half.
—thepredatorywasp.com
AMN PICKS OF THE WEEK. November 30, 2024
— avantmusicnews.com
William Basinski und Richard Chartier haben schon auf einer Reihe von Veröffentlichungen zusammengearbeitet, zuletzt vor zehn Jahren auf „Divertissement“, das auf Vinyl bei Important Records erschien. Im Titel spielt „Aurora Terminalis“ natürlich auf „Aurora Liminalis“ aus dem Jahr 2013 an, eine weitere Zusammenarbeit der beiden.
Natürlich auch wegen seines unglaubliche Resonanz erfahrenen Opus Magnum „The Disintegration Loops“ und weil auch auf zahlreichen anderen Arbeiten Basinskis Tapeloops aus seinem schier unerschöpflichen Archiv ein zentrales Klang und Gestaltungsmittel sind, wird vergessen, dass Basinski auch ab und an mit dem Voyetra 8-Synthesizer arbeitet, so z.B. auf der wunderschönen, selbst so bezeichneten „tranquil, somnolent ambient meditation“ „Silent Night“.Dieses Instrument wird auch auf “Aurora Terminalis” eingesetzt. Richard Chartier Chartier hat in den letzten Jahren zahlreiche Alben (allein und mit anderen) veröffentlicht, seine Installationen waren in Museen zu sehen und zu hören und auf seinem Label LINE hat er neben eigenen Arbeiten zahlreiche Künstlerinnen und Künstler veröffentlicht, die sich laut Selbstbeschreibung im weiten Feld des „contemporary minimalism“ bewegen. Auf dem Album war Basinski für “Voyetra 8 + loops”, Chartier für “electronics, field recordings, processing, mixing” zuständig, das Cover des Albums wird von einem Ausschnitt eines Gemäldes von Basinskis Partner James Elaine geziert.
Es ist sicher nicht das falscheste, wenn Erwartungen unterlaufen werden, denn das Album beginnt überraschenderweise mit leicht rabiaten, repetetiven Syntharpeggios, die man so vielleicht nicht auf einer Arbeit dieser zwei vermutet hätte. Diese ebben nach etwa eineinhalb Minuten ab und machen den Weg frei für eine zerbrechlich wirkende, todtraurige Melodie, die im weiteren Verlauf in leichtes Rauschen eingebettet wird. Da ist dann wieder diese auch andere Arbeiten Basinskis durchziehende Melancholie, die dem Hörenden immer wieder das Gefühl gibt, inmitten des Wissens des weg allen Fleisches – das Album sei „a fading gauzy signal for a finality“, heißt es von Labelseite – dennoch aufgehoben zu sein. Nach einer halben Stunde setzt ein Pochen im Hintergund ein, man meint, hier höre man einen im Äther gefangenen Hubschrauber. Im weiteren Verlauf werden die melodischen Passagen mit fast schon maschinell klingenden leicht dissonanten Passagen enggeführt, bevor das Stück dann nach einer Stunde langsam verklingt, terminiert (wird).
—africanpaper.com
the reunion of William Basinski + Richard Chartier whose electronic pulses bleed through the ambient skin
— acloserlisten.com (Winter Music Preview: Ambient & Drone)
