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Wall Street Journal

‘Time Indefinite' by William Tyler Review: Beauty in Fragments

Musicians who build a world around a single instrument and then inhabit it will eventually try to escape it. Nashville guitarist William Tyler has been putting out records under his own name since 2010. His music has varied from one release to the next—genre-mashing folk practitioners like John Fahey and Robbie Basho are clear influences, but he also draws from atmospheric psychedelia. But regardless of style, his music has always placed the guitar squarely at the center of his work. It's his primary tool, and his lyrical, efficient approach to the six-string has defined his music so far. Over the past couple of years, that has started to change. In 2023, he announced a collaboration with electronic producer Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, and their early single featured syncopated percussion, explosive distortion and samples. 'Time Indefinite' (Psychic Hotline), Mr. Tyler's seventh studio LP, out now, goes even further out: It's like nothing else he's done, and it may be his best album. The easiest way to think of 'Time Indefinite' is as a collage—it's not always easy to know how the individual elements are made or what the process for assembling them might have been. It's a collection about beauty disrupted, about things breaking apart and being reassembled in new shapes. Throughout the LP, gorgeous fragments of melody are presented and developed before being dissolved in an acid bath of static. Tones are warbly and pitches are unsteady; portions of the set were recorded using technology that the digital world has passed by, including cassettes and even VHS tapes. And yet, for all its experimental underpinnings, 'Time Indefinite' is accessible, musically and especially emotionally. The most jarring moment comes on the first track, 'Cabin Six.' We hear a loop of noise that sounds like an earthquake—played loudly on a full-range system, its low-end throb might shake the books off your shelves. Even before you learn what Mr. Tyler was going through personally when putting the album together—more on that later—'Time Indefinite' seems to narrate the flow of thoughts from a troubled mind, and the first passage of 'Cabin Six' suggests that something is deeply wrong. But the track grows quieter as it progresses across its eight minutes—shimmering drones, recordings of trains rumbling through the night, tendrils of slide guitar drenched in reverb that seem to sway in the air like paper ribbons in the breeze. It's lovely stuff that hints at the expanse of moods and textures to come.