William Basinski & Lawrence English

Selva Oscura Black Vinyl Edition

For over half a decade, William Basinski and Lawrence English have been in regular
contact with one another. During that time their paths have crossed repeatedly in
various cities; Zagreb, Los Angeles, Hobart and more, in a variety situations. It was
from these chance encounters - and the strange familiar of lives lived in transit - that
their first collaboration, Selva Oscura, was seeded. The phrase Selva Oscura draws
its root from Dante's Inferno. Literally translated as "twilight forest," it
metaphorically speaks to both those who find themselves on the unfamiliar path and
more explicitly the nature of losing one's way in place and time. Each of the
extended pieces on this record maps an acoustic topography that draws on the
concept of drifting into the strange familiar. The works each dwell in an ever shifting,
yet fundamentally constant state of unfolding. As one sound fades away, another is
revealed in its place, creating a sense of an eternal reveal. Selva Oscura was
recorded in Brisbane and Los Angeles simultaneously. The compositions were each
created through a process of iteration and rearrangement that inverted the micro
and macro characteristics of the raw sonic materials. Dynamics and density were
chiseled with restraint and at other times intensely reductionist approaches to
create a limitlessly deep, but open sound field - as rich as the suggested place from
which its title is drawn.