William Basinski
The Disintegration Loops

In musical jargon, a loop is a sample that repeats, closing in on itself. In The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, this concept is taken to the extreme. No longer a melody that repeats endlessly, but a melody that gradually dissolves, that "disintegrates" slowly and irreversibly. A short pattern that slips into oblivion, like a skyscraper in a slow-motion film implodes on itself while struggling helplessly against the force of gravity.

Nobody better than Basinski has managed to express what 9/11 was like for those who truly lived through it. Someone once said that a genius is merely someone who does the right thing at the right time. 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. The result was electrifying. Those Loops as they progressed fell apart, plunged into nothingness... this is the genesis of what is now considered one of the greatest experimental ambient works of all time.

You don't approach the Disintegration Loops like you would a track from any band, any musician; don't consider it music, don't look for melodies or dissonances, don't force yourself to listen; the two long tracks that compose the work (anonymously titled "D|P 1.1" and "D|P 2.1") are an impressionistic painting of the anguish of an event indelibly imprinted in the collective imagination of a nation (if not the entire globe). Rivers of ink and footage have been thrown to feed the craving for rationality that after September 11 pervaded the American people and beyond. Inquiries, documentaries, experts, and certifications of all kinds have been heard. All because people wanted to know, wanted to understand the incomprehensible, to probe the unfathomable. Basinski doesn't answer any why, no question is fulfilled. The Disintegration Loops is merely an image imprinted in the mind, just a manifesto of anguish indelibly impressed in these "ordinary" loops that disintegrate. As indeed ordinary was the image of the human silhouette imprinted on a wall of Hiroshima.