William Basinski has announced a new solo piano album, Passing the Cup of Sorrows, which comes out on October 23. It follows 2020’s Lamentations and the 2022 Janek Schaefer collaborative project …On Reflection. The album is composed of a single 40-minute work, an excerpt of which is out today. Listen to it below.
According to a press release, the album title is lifte dfrom “a hypnotherapy concept known as ‘Life Between Lives,’ where two souls who shared a tumultuous or destructive relationship on Earth undergo a purge and reconcile in the spirit world.” Blending solo piano with subtle electronics, the record “recalls fragments of traumatic memories and projects them as fractals in a slow-moving soft focus that’s as eerie as it is enlightened.”
