The Disintegration Loops
| The Disintegration Loops | ||||
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| Studio album by William Basinski | ||||
| Released | 2002/2003 | |||
| Recorded | 1982 | |||
| Genre | Avant-garde, ambient, drone | |||
| Length | 74:28 (I) 75:00 (II) 72:28 (III) 74:26 (IV) |
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| Label | 2062 | |||
| William Basinski chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Pitchfork | 9.4/10 (2004) 10/10 (2012) |
| Stylus | A+ |
The Disintegration Loops is a series of four albums by American avant-garde composer William Basinski released in 2002 and 2003. All tracks have the same form of ambient music fragments played in a tape loop that slowly deteriorates as it passes by the tape head, increasingly producing noises and cracks in the music as the theme progresses. The recording coincided with the 9/11 attacks and the album covers and accompanying videos feature a still skyline of New York City with smoke and dust rising from the World Trade Center site.
The series gathered undivided favorable reviews. It was reissued in 2012 on the tenth anniversary as a 9-LP box set and received a rare perfect 10 rating from Pitchfork.
The Disintegration Loops is based on Basinski's attempts to salvage earlier recordings made on magnetic tape, by transferring them into digital format; however, the tape had deteriorated to the point that, as it passed by the tape head, the ferrite detached from the plastic backing and fell off. The loops were allowed to play for extended periods as they deteriorated further, with increasing gaps and pauses in the music. These sounds were treated further with a spatializing reverb effect. Basinski has said that he finished the project the morning of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, and sat on the roof of his apartment building in Brooklyn with friends listening to the project as the World Trade Center towers collapsed. In 2011, Basinski corrected earlier reports where he described recording the last hour of daylight of 9/11 in N.Y.C. with a video camera focused on the smoke where the towers were from a neighbor's roof, then set the first loop as the sound-track to that footage. Stills from the video were used as the covers for the set of four CDs.
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