Pre-order for “Passing the Cup of Sorrows” by William Basinski.

In the realm of past-life regression hypnotherapy, there is a concept known as "Life Between Lives," wherein a sacred exchange of energy occurs between two souls in the spirit world, helping a spirit fully understand and forgive a being who hurt them in a past life. This exchange - called "passing the cup of sorrows" - became the unexpected inspiration for William Basinski's first new album in six years. While sinking deeper into the daily abyss of our collective negativity bias, William Basinski stumbled upon a video describing the spiritual hypnotherapy exercise known as "passing the cup of sorrows." Fixed on the glow of a screen that projected mounting anxiety and cynicism at a seemingly interminable pace, Basinski found the testimonials of this fascinating therapeutic practice to be profoundly moving. He sat at his piano, translating the transformation of those traumatic memories of past lives into cathartic tears of the present day. Channeling the quiet curiosity and asymmetrical patterns of pioneering 20th Century composer, Morton Feldman, Passing the Cup of Sorrows is a single 40-minute piece that employs a solitary piano and subtle electronics to truly haunting effect. It recalls fragments of traumatic memories and projects them as fractals in a slow-moving soft focus that's as eerie as it is enlightened.

EXPECTED RELEASE DATE: 11/20/26.

PRE-ORDER DISCLAIMER: Release dates are tentative and often get pushed back or cancelled by the labels. We try 100% to get you what you order, but there are times when we aren’t allotted enough of the item to fill all of the orders (and usually we won’t know this until the week of the release). In this case we will contact you as soon as we are aware that the order can’t be fulfilled. Special limited/indie exclusive releases can be ordered in multiples, but we can’t guarantee that we will be able to fill more than one copy of each said release.

Pre-orders are essentially “special orders”. This means if you place a pre-order, we are ordering it specially for you (many items we have up for pre-order are not items we carry in our store, and those that we do, we are ordering EXTRA copies to fill your pre-orders). Because of this, we cannot do cancellations or refunds after the pre-ordering time period has ended.