Album Review #1: William Basinski - Lamentations

I thought it would be cool to do some reviews on some of the music I like. Talking about music is cool, so I want to do that. Yeah.

I would not consider myself to be a critic of music, I just like talking about it. Of course, this review is probably all over the place, but yeah, I just like talking about it.

Starting with a huge favorite of mine, and one of the first vinyl that I collected, we have the album, Lamentations by the ambient experimental musician, William Basinski. Best known for his famous album, The Disintegration Loops, (I will review this one soon, so I am. not going to go. in depth), but this album takes many themes and elements from that and mashes it into good sweet fifty minutes.

Lamentations puts you into a dark and haunting place and builds this uneasy but at the same time, oddly calming atmosphere. The album opens up with the track "For Whom the Bell Tolls", one may think that this is a Metallica reference, but this is William Basinski we are talking about, so this track is a four-minute haunting drone of what sounds like a tape loop of heavily reverberated bells. This track is extremely mysterious and leaves you as to what is next. Once this track ends, the next track "Wheel of Fortune" jumps in suddenly, and can sometimes catch you off guard. It plays a harsh and dissonant loop that quickly decays over the runtime of three minutes.

Many of the tracks in this album follow the same format and theme. Each track is a compilation of tape loops that slowly decays over time, which is something that William Basinski excels in within his style. This is a major theme that takes place within his most famous work, The Disintegration Loops. The decay and degradation of each track make them all the more haunting and interesting

It's hard to pick a favorite track from this album, as all of them are quite good. However, I would say that one of my favorite tracks is probably the fourth track, "Tear Vial". The track opens with a melancholic and heart-wrenching piano loop, that punches you in the chest each time it repeats and slowly fades away. It's one that I have listened to countless times, and continue to do so.

The other track that I am a huge fan of, and many others are is the fifth track, “O, My Daughter, O, My Sorrow” This track opens up with a dissonant string loop, and slowly builds up a secondary loop of choir samples, which resonate and echo throughout the piece, and fills the room with this beautiful and haunting feeling that sticks with you. I haven’t heard many choir samples used in Basinski’s works, but when he uses them, they are always the ones that resonate with you and stand out the most. The final three tracks also use choir samples, and all of them sound like they come from the same piece.

The final track, fittingly titled “Fin” is an amazing end to this LP. After the ending of the powerful five-minute track, “Please, This **** Has Got To Stop” The track is only around ninety seconds long and repeats a ***uely similar choir loop from other tracks on the album, but this time, extremely deteriorated, and it sounds like it’s almost crying for help, and ***uely represents what it used to be. This is an amazing and beautifully haunting ending to this stunning album.

Overall, this is one of my favorite albums of all time. Each track is incredibly powerful and resonates with a different haunting feeling that captures your interest for its entire runtime. I highly encourage anyone interested in ambient music to check this one out and is a good introduction to William Basinski’s works, as it is kind of a condensed project of what he usually does with his music.

You can listen to the album here