William Basinski

Ever since the invention of magnetic tape, artists have used recordings, edits and loops to upend our sense of time and place. Following the experiments of the European and American avant-garde in the ’50s and ’60s, few modern artists have struck a nerve using tape techniques like William Basinski. While artists ditched tape for synths in the ’70s and ’80s, Basinski was building an archive of transmissions in a New York loft, combining looped melodic fragments with shortwave static and city sounds seeping through the windows. Juxtaposing machine mechanics with the sonic blur of everyday life, his music achieves a degree of pathos that’s rare in experimental music.