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Listening Report 6 William Basinski D P 3

 

Maria Alighourchi

7489718

The Future of American Music

 

Listening Report 6

William Basinski

D P 3

 

The “Disintegration Loop “1.3 by William Basinksi, a recorded piece of music gathered and clustered together through old, decaying tapes which ultimately is molded into a utterly new melody, is over 41 minutes long. The sounds evoke a melancholic and somewhat sad atmosphere. At the end of each looped segment, an uplifting chord is played. This uplifting chord implies to believe that there is reason for hope to escape the sadness and melancholy created by the beginning of the melody, only to hear the segment start all over again. Consequently establishing a fairly triste tone and creates the feeling of being stuck in place, like reliving a traumatic situation, in which, at the end, there was hope, only to begin all over again.

The looping, and seemingly never ending melody carries a sense of endlessness. Being one of the longest loops containing  the shortest amount of music, I have ever heard, contributing to the feeling of endlessness. This loop conveys the same feeling with witch it was brought to life – through withering, faltering tapes I experience a the strange sensation of defeat. More so, a  sense of a defeat incoming. The defeat will never occur because there is no relaxation of the final climax. The beginning of the end. I imagine to witness a falling battlefield, one after the other is smelling the sweet release of death while slowly descending down. The loop sounds agonizingly slow, altering every death into something even worse. Witnessing the ending of something, of an era, of a war or of a life is a dreadful thought, but having it in mind it leaves as agonizingly slowly as it came, leaving a mark. This mark will later turn into a not quite so visible scar. This molded piece of decaying madness conveys ultimately that exact mark. Listening to it for 40 minutes and then again while writing every inch of it down, embroidered a mark. Later, somewhere, sometime, I will hear a similar sound and this mark will then be a scar of a falling battlefield remembered and witnessed.

Simultaneously, upon my second listening, just now, the melted, clump of decaying tapes transmit the image of a battle long lost, of me stumbling over a massive pond of corpses, never witnessing the battle or the reason itself but the dreading, endless sense of pure defeat. Now it is finally there, like the second act of a play.

Towards the end of the composed piece, it starts to falter, to damp to loose it’s once found life, it’s energy. Considering the evenly damping tapes, a real ending of a music piece is found, defining this piece as not an utter loop by itself but a unique composition, with a clear beginning, middle and end. Thus, it could also be regarded as a story in itself - a splinter of history.

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