Hometown: New York.
The lineup: William Basinski (music, production).
The background: This week's new bands have been specially picked by theguardian.com/music's guest editor Antony Hegarty, and if they are all as good as today's musician, William Basinski, then we will be very grateful indeed. Because Mr Basinski – and we use the deferential formal term of address because his work is sufficiently serious in its execution and substantial in its weight and gravitas to warrant it – is a truly welcome discovery. What kind of discovery, though, we're not sure. It's atmospheric but not exactly ambient because it's too jarring to be subsumed under that rubric and has a considerable emotional heft. And it's broadly electronic but not remotely cold – rather, it uses recording techniques generally regarded as "avant garde", "musique concrete" or "experimental" such as looping and sampling as well as programming, but the way it's all manipulated and deployed can be quite devastating in its forlorn intensity and solemn beauty.
In fact, we were so moved by his music but perplexed as to how to describe it that we rang the composer and "sound artist" – who has been making music in one form or another for more than 25 years and releasing records for over a decade – at home in New York last night for help. Is it some hitherto unaccounted-for hybrid of ambient and post-rock? "It's experimental electronic ambient music," he decided. "It's definitely quite melancholy, which is what I'm drawn to. It's contemporary electronic music. I use feedback loops to achieve something transcendental, to find something eternal that I can listen to over and over." He could also see parallels with his music and the abstract kosmische music of early-70s German units Cluster and Harmonia, and was pleased that works such as 2002's Disintegration Loops – constructed from rapidly decaying 20-year-old tapes of his earlier music that, with awful synchronicity, he prepared just as the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers were taking place – preceded today's "hauntological", "chillwave" and "drag" acts.
These are people who, like him, are involved in the evocation of memory and desire, mortality and dread. "It's wonderful that these kids, many of whom are younger than a lot of my pieces, are fans," he told us. He added of time and its degenerative effects: "I'm not obsessed [with the subject], not any more. I believe, in a way, we're like caterpillars. We spend most of our time eating and getting fat and one day we will blossom, get our wings and fly. Meanwhile, my music is a gift that I share. It resonates. I just try to do my best at it, and hope that I can [one day] figure the rest out."
The buzz: "It's the kind of music that makes you believe there is a Heaven, and that this is what it must sound like" – Pitchfork.
The truth: We've seen Basinski – who has a composition entitled the Saddest Melody Ever Heard – compared to everyone from Art of Noise to Mount Kimbie, Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Fennesz. But the description we read by a fan on YouTube captured best the sepulchral stillness and intimations of industrial clamour: "It's like hearing a church down the road from a steel factory".
Most likely to: Induce shock and awe.
Least likely to: Be played in Heaven, the London disco.
What to buy: His most recent album, 2009's Vivian & Ondine, is out now on the 2062 label.
File next to: Eno, Cluster, Harmonia, Fennesz.
Links: myspace.com/williambasinski
Tuesday's new band: Nomi.
