William Basinski Reviews

The Profile

William Basinski is an American experimental composer associated with ambient and tape-loop based music. He is widely known for The Disintegration Loops, created from aging magnetic tape loops whose sound audibly decays during transfer to digital, a work often linked to the atmosphere of September 11, 2001.

Publicly known for long-form ambient/drone compositions built from tape loops; The Disintegration Loops is his best-known project. Reviews also state he was in New York City around 9/11 and that the Disintegration Loops tapes disintegrated during digitization, leaving a recorded chronicle of decay.

Across these reviews, Basinski is framed as a key figure in experimental ambient, turning loops into slow-motion meditations on time, loss, and memory. The Disintegration Loops is repeatedly linked to 9/11 and to the audible decay of old magnetic tapes transferred to digital. Other works (Shortwavemusic, Cascade, The Garden of Brokenness) are described in trance-like, painterly terms: drones, piano droplets, soot, and therapeutic suspension. One live-report review is negative about the venue/organization rather than the music, describing a compromised performance setting.

Notable Quotes

❝ “The Past holds us back, the Future distresses us, and the Present slips away”.

❝ This is the music offered by Texan William Basinski in “The Disintegration Loops II,” the second chapter of the saga dedicated to the disintegration of sound and its moving permanence in memory.

❝ Basinski was in NYC during those days; he found tapes in his archive containing loops, small experiments, nothing pretentious. He tried to transfer them to digital, but while doing this, he saw the tape crumple upon itself, disintegrating while he was recording its content.

❝ “This all seems familiar, yet...”

❝ After a series of “shut the fuck up!”s, Basinski continues the show visibly annoyed, with the face and body language of someone who can’t wait to finish.