Skip to main content

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 it sounded 5 minutes ago or if the audio quality has changed or not.  Much like in real life, minutes, hours, and eventually years pass, and you don't notice many differences until you look back, not when the event occurs. On the second listen, I fast-forwarded and focused more on the quality of the recording, and it was clear to hear that the quality deteriorated over time. This was especially evident in the last five minutes of the recording.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Steve Reich – Different Trains

  In his piece "Different Trains" Steve Reich uses sound recordings of noises that typically occur at a train station, such as train announcements: "from Chicago to New York" or the sounds of a departing train. These recordings are accompanied throughout by a four-piece band/orchestra with string instruments, such as a violin. As soon as a new voice comes with the announcement of a new train, the beat and the style of playing of the band changes. More precisely, the band's playing changes first before the new announcement follows. At the same time, the speed of the pieces changes depending on the commentary of the people. With this the band brings additional tension. From minute seven a small chronology begins starting with 1939 up to 1941 and back again to 1940. This all seems to be related to the second world war, which is also confirmed by the following statements. Like "The Germans invaded Hungary" or "Black Crow's invaded this country...
Post a Comment
Read more

John Oswald – Plexure (Full Album)

  Jon Oswald was known for his Plunderphonics music pieces, where he created new pieces from already existing music recordings of famous artists and reworked them. Artists like Michael Jackson, who was also part of the cover on Plunderphonic, The Beatles, James Brown, Bing Crosby but also classical musicians like Beethoven and Bach were part of his pieces.   The first minute and a half of his album consists of a wild mix of R&B and hip-hop songs. They are single, very short sequences, about 2-3 seconds long, which were cut together. The first song was introduced with a sound that reminded me of Michael Jackson's Thriller. From minute five to about minute seven, the use of rock & roll music was recognizable. At the end, I recognized Madonna, Nirvana and again Michael Jackson, among others. Personally, I can hardly identify with this kind of music, because listening to the album, I felt the compilation was relatively arbitrary and not balanced with each other. I recogniz...
Post a Comment
Read more