William Basinski's "Cascade"

Video from William Basinski's June 2014 performance of "Cascade" at ISSUE, produced by The New Yorker to accompany Sasha Frere-Jone's feature on him in the November 10th issue.

Brian Eno once said that “repetition is a form of change,” but Basinski’s tape loops physically revise that and bring the idea back as “repetition is change.”

I first heard “Cascade,” to be released in March, at Issue Project Room, in Brooklyn, in June. As Basinski played, projections—mostly images of rippling water—made by Elaine fell over him and his equipment. Though “The Disintegration Loops” holds gravitas, it is not his most severe or dark work. That prize might go to “Cascade.”

— Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker.