Published
The Disintegration Loops
Basinski started the project in August 2001 and finished it on the morning of the September 11 attacks in New York City, but he completed it before the attacks happened. He had an interview for the arts organization Creative Time in the buildings that day, though it was scheduled after they collapsed. While the World Trade Center collapsed, he was sitting on the roof of his apartment building with friends, such as Anohni. He filmed the fallout during the last hour of daylight, and the following morning he played “dlp 1.1” as a soundtrack to the aftermath. Stills from the video were used as the covers for the albums, and Basinski dedicated the work to the victims in a postscript in the liner notes. He said that the attacks recontextualized The Disintegration Loops as a work created from decay.
The final fade isn’t about the end of the music. It’s like the music continues and I have stepped out of the river and moved away. The music itself is continuous, always there.
Since the turn of this century, perhaps no other modern composition has had a more resonant healing effect than The Disintegration Loops. Composer William Basinski’s deteriorating analog tape loops evolved from melodic symphonies to melancholic silence over a span of time that uncannily turned passing minutes into pensive lifetimes. In her foreword for the new box set reissue of The Disintegration Loops, the pioneering multimedia storyteller, Laurie Anderson, describes the impact of this transformation in poetic detail: “These dissolving sounds, this emptying space, has gained my complete confidence. They are taking me somewhere. I am willingly following these sounds, becoming more and more transparent.” The Disintegration Loops – Arcadia Archive Edition is an expansive new box set that includes the entire 5-hour suite of iconic work. Newly remastered from the original recordings by Josh Bonati, the hefty package includes eight vinyl records (or four CDs for the less analog-inclined) in sturdy full-color jackets featuring the restored original artwork, and a new 1000-word foreword by Laurie Anderson – all housed in a striking heavyweight, case-wrapped box. It is the ideal encapsulation of one of the 21st Century’s most truly transcendent works. As Anderson concludes in her foreword, “this music has created another world, a world to be carried away in.”.