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William Basinski – D|P 3

 

William Basinski’s ambient track of tape loop recordings called The Disintegration Loops 3 awakens a variety of feelings each time it is experienced, and based on the thoughts of the moment that the track is played, it makes it easier for the listener to be sunk in those particular thoughts. The deteriorating tapes looping a specific melody accompanied by the sizzles of the tape material enhances its hypnotizing effect on me. Regardless of the work being dedicated by Basinski to the victims of the 9/11 attacks, the first dominant feeling for me was the nostalgia that emerged out of the reminiscence of some childhood scenes of mine. When I heard the melody being looped and the sizzles in harmony with the melody, the unclear motion picture of a childhood memory stroked me. To be more precise, I imagine a motion film roll of two seconds out of forty-eight frames, and the negative is distorted, however still provides me with that two-second scene.

What is pictured here is me playing in the backyard of my grandparents’ house in our tiny hometown in Turkey. Spring has just arrived and made a couple of trees in the back garden blossom. The colors of white and green intertwine in the garden, and I have my very basic toy tricycle made for me out of wires by my grandfather, who expertized in building bicycles in his bike shop. Only a couple of seconds of the reminiscence looped in my mind, being wiped away as I try to get more of it, just like the seconds of melody being looped in the piece by Basinski.

On the other hand, when I get out of this personal evocation, what the work makes me feel is the apocalypse, like if all the living beings got erased from the earth, the Disintegration Loops 3 would be an accommodating sound that would be heard all over the planet. In conclusion, history repeats itself, and we all go back to where we have come from; therefore, just as the sound towards the end of the track becomes more and more sizzling with the last energy it has, memories fade away by the considerable help of the time.

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