William Basinski: Disintegration Loops I (2002)

I've had a bit of a rough day. Life sometimes just seems so unrelenting, so merciless. I've been feeling stressed to find purpose in my day to day lately due to my laptop being in an unusable condition for writing new music. And i'm still getting over a poor review for my band from a source that i thought was sure to be enthusiastic about it. This has left me to face the more mundane components that make up my life: a job that is routine and unrewarding, few friends in a new city, and financial worries and woes. The stuff we all go through, the stuff noone likes. Tonight, though, i put on William Basinski's Disintegration Loops, and my disposition was immediately leveled.
I had heard about the Disintegration Loops for a few years, but never came across a copy, maybe due to its lack of record store accessibility. Thanks to Emusic, i now own volume 1 for the price of a mere 2 download credits (that's almost an hour and a half of music!), and have finally gotten to hear it for myself. Basinski is a composer, sound artist, and video artist and has dabbled in tape loops for years, following in the minimalist school of Brian Eno or Arvo Part. The recording was born when a digital transfer of loops failed and Basinski's tape loops eventually degraded or "disintegrated". What we have today is the result of that recording- a distant and sad, echoing loop that slowly evolves into its own death over time. According to Basinski, these looped recordings were played for friends on his rooftop in New York the day of September 11, while filming the also slow demise of the World Trade Centers as their smoke billowed into the sky. I can't imagine how sad and powerful that had to have been, the elegaic music becoming mourner as humanity was baffled by humanity. The actual music here is beautiful, and part of its charm in being distant, reverbed-out, and murky is that it got that way naturally, at least in part. It is a somber yet uplifting reminder of the frailty of our human existences as time goes on. After spending the last couple hours with this disc in such a meditative mood, i feel like the state of my life is just fine, and that i'm part of a much greater world in which we all struggle. But we struggle together, and that's what's beautiful.

Rating: 9.0