Skip to main content

Listening Report on William Basinski‘s The Disintegration Loops

 

Sarah Kumar

Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath

The Future of (American) Music

06 Mar. 2023

Listening Report on William Basinski‘s The Disintegration Loops

The album The Disintegration Loops features the same melody for about forty-one minutes that keeps repeating itself over and over with the only difference being the background noise, sounding like something disintegrating, increasingly growing distorted. This distorted noise is the sound of Basisnki’s taped recordings disintegrating; he had them keep playing despite their state, thus creating this loop of their disintegrating sound. As the album progresses, the sound only becomes more distorted, although it is hardly noticeable unless one were to skip forward at once. The loop, after a while, can put a person in trance, and the repetitive sound with minimal changes for a long-time make the brain blend some sounds together or tune out any changes that might have occurred.

            Near the end of the album, the deterioration of the tape recording is becoming much more evident. It starts to influence the overlaying melody that so far has stayed consistent throughout. The distortion engulfs the melody, reminding me of a machine, or a robot like in the movies, nearing the end of its life. The title is therefore an interesting choice, because loops mean that something is repeating for either a fixed amount of time or endlessly, but of which the end still connects to the beginning, while disintegration is a term used to indicate that something is falling to pieces. I imagine there to be an end to the disintegration of an object or a body, while a loop – usually visualized as a circle – is a never-ending occurrence.

            The last few minutes of the album are extremely distorted, not much of the original sound from the beginning is left. The ambience, however, is still the same. It is inevitable that this loop has an end as the tape recording cannot hold on forever; disintegration, after all, is not an endless process, even if it might take a long while. It can be thought of in this way: the destruction of something gave something else life; the destruction of the tape recording and loss of sound in it created a new work. Thus, the loop does start anew again, because even if the new recording might not be on tape, machines are not indestructible and fallible as well; one day, when this album falls apart – be it the physical medium that does so or the digital one – it can be sampled again to be used as the life of something new.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Listening Report on John Oswald: Plexure

 Sarah Kumar Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath The Future of (American) Music 06 Mar. 2023 Listening Report on John Oswald: Plexure According to John Oswald, “[a] plunderphone is a recognizable sonic quote, using the actual sound of something familiar which has already been recorded” (Lecture Slides 18). However, only if the source stays recognizable can it be called plunderphonics. In his album Plexure , several songs are played back and mixed together, thus creating a new sound. This is interesting because while the excerpts of songs that are used are recognizable or at least sound familiar to some degree, played backwards and mashed up as they are in Plexure , they create a new sound. Like on the cover of the album, on which a collage making up a man can be seen, the mixing of different songs played backwards gives a new feeling to something known. The way the songs are mixed makes them unintelligible. The meaning of the words of the original recordings are not able to be compr...
Post a Comment
Read more

William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops III

  The Disintegration Loops is a quartet of albums published in 2002 and 2003 by American avant-garde composer William Basinski. The pieces are made up of tape loop recordings that were played over time, with noise and crackles rising as the tape deteriorated. Basinski noticed this effect when attempting to convert his older recordings to digital format. The completion of the recordings coincided with the September 11, 2001 events, which Basinski witnessed and adds a deeper meaning to the composition. The composition is fascinating in many ways and makes the listener lose track of time. The tape loop recording had a very calming effect on me and put me in a trance-like state when I listened to it in its entirety. The tape loop is really soothing, so much so that I didn't even notice the loss of quality when I first listened to it. It makes you forget about time and allows you to really get into the piece capturing the calmness it exudes. You forget or don't really notice how i...
Post a Comment
Read more

John Cage – Inlets

  This does not sound like music to me. Depending on the interpretation of different players or performers, this piece will always sound different. In this case, it sounds to me like someone is walking through a cave with water at the bottom, dragging their feet through it. Sometimes it sounds like water in a toilet bowl, especially when we hear the water in a bigger shell being swished around. These sounds are relaxing in the background, it is like a gentle stream of water. I just wonder what went through the head of the composer while writing this piece. But I guess he had some experimental ideas that are interesting to try out. Those shells are quite pretty, I have never seen such big ones that are not broken. I was surprised when something else happened towards the end of the piece. That tone which came out of the one shell was so clear, it sounded like a trumpet. I didn’t know that shells can sound like that. It was quite beautiful. It was a nice way to end the piece. I di...
Post a Comment
Read more