Skip to main content

William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops Listening Report

 

As the name suggests, „The Disintegration Loops” consists of a looping score that gets gradually distorted and degraded in the form of cracking sounds and low-quality playback. The actual score is for an Avant-Garde artist traditional and minimal. The structure is more experimental, a continuous repetition of what seems to be a short combination of ambient music. The distortion comes slowly and gradually over the time span of more than an hour. The context is almost equally important to the actual sounds. Coincidentally, the completion of the album occurred with the attacks on 9/11. This and the distortion give it a deeper meaning and resemble the passing of time with its almost destructive nature. After hearing it completely, there arises a sense of a long passage that was completed. There is enough time to adjust to the state or degradation until I noticed a change that was there before but took its time to be noticed - just like time. We often don’t know how fast time passes and often notice change much later than its occurrence. In addition, there is a resemblance to how our memory works. Change feels so prompt but noticing it takes time and almost a focused and intentional style of thinking. It is difficult to recall the state of how the music was a minute or 10 minutes ago, the state of degradation gets fuzzy and indefinable. Basinski showed us that the structure or the state of a musical piece, or art in general, can produce massive results on its effectiveness. Without the degradation, this would have been just a slow, ambient-like piece of music, but the medium and the context give it artistic weight.

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

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

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