![]() ![]() The progression from ambiance to percussiveness to nothingness continues for the other three of the Loops.ĭue to its unfortunate juxtaposition with 9/11, The Disintegration Loops has introduced many to the notion of ambient music. Indeed, the last minute or so of Dlp 1.1 is virtually inaudible, a fitting resolution. The use of silence, though perhaps initially inadvertent, cannot be historically separated from that of John Cage. The end result is dramatically different from the beginning. The overall volume dips, but with some amplification a constant background hum can be picked up. After that, the ambient melody fades and the tapes have broken down to the point that they are largely supplying a wavering sequence of beats. By the two-thirds mark, the patterns are clearly staggered. I remember enjoying it quite a bit, finding myself intrigued not only by its origin story but also the material itself.Īs noted, the nature of each recording changes at a glacial pace. The sheer length of the set was (and still is) intimidating. I initially listened to all four Disintegration Loops in the mid-2000s, shortly after their release. He dedicated The Disintegration Loops to the victims of the attack. The slow and inevitable fading of the music matched that of Ground Zero in an unintentional and frightful manner. On his rooftop, he filmed the giant clouds of smoke billowing from lower Manhattan and listened to his recordings while watching the horror. From his home in Brooklyn, he was able to watch the aftereffects of that day’s terrorist attacks. Thus, at first blush, these recordings seem highly repetitive but they are not – variations are constantly forming and falling apart.īasinski was putting the final touches to these recordings on the morning of September 11, 2001. The first piece, Dlp 1.1, is over an hour of music made from just a few seconds of tape. These wind up forming new patterns and rhythms. ![]() Each piece is a short ambient melody that continuously repeats as it slowly falls apart into crackling and static with breaks of silence. Stored on magnetic tape for years, Basinski later found that this tape had physically decayed and would continue to do so when played. He recorded hours of this playout, documenting the slow deterioration, and then processed the result with reverb.Īpproximately five hours of music was made in this fashion, spanning four CDs. William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops is one of the most well-known and critically acclaimed ambient works of all time. In the vein of Brian Eno, Basinski made a number of ambient recordings from unconventional sources, such as shortwave radio and delay loops. ![]()
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