Ae, Wayward Abscissions Yonder (2025) - 7/10

A fairly middling beginning that turns into a deep, tortured thrashing, wailing, and howling. Unfortunately it just kinda ends.

I only know what I saw in those brief 20 minutes alone 2:00 AM.

A Red Score in Tile is truly what you make of it and like every moment before, present, and after it is shaped an influenced by what you see before it. Some see an empty mall, some see ultimate derealization, some see death, some see nothing at all.

I don't want to rate this album out of a binary score or some sort of ranking because it feels both disingenous to what I feel about it and it isn't in the spirit of what it is, if it's even anything.

And much like every tenderly curated loop, every warp of the synth, every quiet moment I share in the quiet moment that is my life, it had ended and I had moved one; left only with the hazy reminisce of its feelings.

I thought to share these revelations in the moment and downloaded a picture of one of the covers, intending to write all this, but I had opened bluesky and nigh immediately had gotten distracted and carried away doing something else.

I saw how blindly fast we're hurdled through experience, left only to recollect what had just happened while continuing this endless collision with the present. I saw a glimpse into what could only be seen as both our life and the next: A repetitious shuffle with minute details that we cherish.

The mild weeping hum of the background, the almost manual "dunmp" at the end of every loop, the both impersonal and encompassing warmth of those 6 chords. I saw how fleeting every moment I share with anyone thinking about anything. I saw just how little and how much time I have to enjoy anything.

I did some digging and found an article by Daniel Baker 14 years ago discussing the (likely intended) themes and ideas the piece wanted to explore. After reading I decided to try and go back to sleep. In the 15-20 minutes that I lay there, weary eyed, face down in my pillow...I saw it. I saw it all.

I had heard it mentioned in passing before in another video talking about Take Care, Its a Desert Out There so I knew that William Basinski had something here, something that spoke to people, something that would speak to some part of me, I just hadn't seen it yet.

I thought "I guess I don't get it" and moved on. A lot has happened since then. I awoke at 1:13 AM to the same album ending with A Red Score in Tile and I decided to try it again, giving it my full attention. I noticed some small differences in it but I still felt nothing.

I remember sometime last year, I had finished an album that sampled A Red Score in Tile and needing something in my ears that wasn't umbearably loud machine rumbling, I listened to it. I remember the initial mystique fading away from me as I had realized it was just the simple loop.

A Red Score in Tile (1979/2003) - 🟥

With a budget temporary bliss state that really didn't work in the original milwaukee protocol and doesn't work here, the descent into a coma is still very good but not as good as it was. A lot of album made me glad that what was left was left on the cutting room floor.

It originally begets something close to EATEOT Stage 4 until the latter half/climax with a massive incoherent wall of noise. Now it's very hard to explain how a wall of noise is "boring" but in my best attempt, there's very little audible depth and it stays at one tone for far too long.