Ken Wohlrob

The track is centered around a single haunting, 11-minute guitar track that was recorded live in one take. In honor of one of the track’s inspirations — avant garde composer William Basisnki — the soundscape is an exercise in minimalism, as the guitar line’s reverse-echo feedback loop draws the listener deeper into the sonic layers.

Liner Notes:

A song is a stubborn thing. It’ll resist you with all its might. As you try to bend it and twist it, it will reject your strokes of genius, leaving you feeling like a damn fool for thinking they would work in the first place. A song will tell you, in no uncertain terms, what it wants to be. Only a jackass would ignore it.

“William” was a confounding son of a bitch. I wanted it to be more. So I kept throwing different layers at it. But none of them worked. What was there was all it wanted. And the more I listened to it, the more it reminded me of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. Basisnki could’ve done so much more with those decaying tape loops. But he was confident enough as an artist to listen to what the music was telling him. It didn’t need more. There was such a journey in those slowly decaying repetitions. To smother them in other things would’ve dragged them down.

What I had was a single take of a repetitive guitar riff, played live through a reverse-echo feedback loop for 11 minutes. The feedback loop created oscillations and repetitions that took on a life of their own, extending past the riff, even re-absorbing it. There was a compelling journey in that single guitar line.

The soundscape is named after Basinski since he inspired the approach and after my father, who is also named William, because he’s had an interesting journey himself. Give it a spin and see where it takes you.