Bleep

William Basinski brings ‘Variations: A Movement in Chrome Primitive’ to his own 2062 imprint, celebrating 10 years since its original release. Known perhaps best for his haunting and huge ‘Disintegration Loops’ project, this record deals with a similar set of preoccupations, with its eight ‘Variations’ placing melancholic and minimal piano solos within a world of fractured tape hiss and elegiac delays. ‘Variation III’ is something like listening to the piano erode before your ears, as subtle tape loops render the instrument’s physical presence intangible, while in ‘Variation IV’ low-end reverberations seem to eat up both the instrument’s and the record’s surface to create a poignant and controlled beauty.