William Basinski - Disintegration Loops

 William Basinski - Disintegration Loops

 

Once I road through the Grüneburg Park, dusk had fallen, the path minimally lit with those gas glowing forms. It was there that my head and I began to hum, mmm, mmm, mm m, mm, mmmmm. Sometime loud, or barely audible. Over and over again, scratchy appoaching an incline, a muttering of velocity, but staying in the loop of some kind of sound and strangely—a rhythm—slightly changing progressions. It became dissonant in my head but it was still there.  Like the longest end of a film…reading the names..all the people who had made this possible.  I prefer the full album of The Disintegration Loops, although I just know it from online listening. The erasing of the magnetic tape has a haunting and cosmic electronic lining, which at first is a dystopic end of music, end of the world drive of emotions.

Strange, as life greets us on occasion, composer William Basinskski has revealed that he originally was trying to save those old tapes, by some now 20-year-old process.  I guess that his tapes were not “baked” enough, or too baked—so they withered away in front of his eyes.  While this fading of the ferrite was in progress the World Trade Towers of NYC, were hit and smoke, fire and death were in the air. A friend Adam, and all the rest of the people who made the films of their lives possible, stopped breathing that day and days to come, years to come.

 

The orchestrated recordings which follow the recordings I am listening to are a sign of regeneration, soothing, remembrance.  I often hum ba daaa da, dedede and think of rhythm and how precious life is. 

 

Celina Lunsford, March, 2022