“What's he created here is a living document: a field recording of orchestrated decay.”
It's impossible: no one could create a script this contrived. Yet, apparently, it happened. William Basinski's four-disk epic, The Disintegration Loops, was created out of tape loops Basinski made back in the early 1980s. These loops held some personal significance to Basinski, a significance he only touches on in the liner notes and we can only guess at. Originally, he just wanted to transfer the loops from analog reel-to-reel tape to digital hard disk. However, once he started the transfer, he discovered something: the tapes were old and were disintegrating as they played and he recorded them. As he notes in the liner notes, "The music was dying." But he kept recording, documenting the death of these loops.
Originally published by Stylus.Read it on Stylus
