William Basinski - Listening Report

 

William Basinski is an American avant-garde composer, clarinetist, saxophonist, sound artist, and video artist. One of his most known projects is “Disintegration Loops” which is a series of albums that consist of tape loop recordings. Tape loops are loops of repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns of sound played on a tape recorder. An example for that is “Disintegration Loops 2” by Basinski.

“Disintegration Loops 2” by William Basinski is a very comforting song in my eyes. While listening to it, I went through a process of self-reflection and concentration on myself.

The song makes me feel like entering a very deep and harmonious space because of its calmness and harmonious sounds. Even though there is not much variation in used instruments, speed, sounds, etc. the song does not get boring. Instead, I feel like the more I listen to it, the more I get involved.

“Disintegration Loops 2” is a perfect example on how to evoke different emotions. The song has some sense of darkness, isolation and depression while still creating comfort, warmth and inspiration. It is a mixture of so many different possible emotions. Therefore, the interpretation depends on the position of the listener.

Additionally, the song carries some kind of angelic character. I cannot clearly determine which instruments exactly are used but they create this kind of angelic,

 

majestic and heaven-like sound. Actually, this song is similar to my imagination on how entering heaven (if there is any) would sound like.

The repetitive rhythmic musical patterns are very minimalistic, yet very fascinating and captivating. I would even say they have some kind of hypnotic character because one can get lost in these repetitive patterns of musical sounds.

For me, this play is very fascinating because I cannot remember ever hearing anything like this. There are many songs with repetitive patterns and lyrics for example, but I have never heard a song that is so captivating while being very simple and minimalistic. Most of the time, I get really annoyed when not hearing much variation in music because I get easily bored. But this song is so easy to listen to and to follow

 

along the whole 40 minutes. I can imagine myself listening to the song while studying and reading, but also while running errands and taking a walk. “Disintegration Loops 2” has so many different levels of meaning and interpretation and therefore suits so many different situations. Usually, I listen to different genres for different situations but in my opinion, “Disintegration Loops 2” suits so many different situations.