The very passage of time is its most effective instrument. From its 20-year gestation period to its infamously fateful completion, The Disintegration Loops is one of the most powerful manifestations of the inevitable cycle of life ever committed to tape, even as it documents the inevitable decay of all that is committed to tape. For a collection of music built around the poignant inevitability of decay, there has been a great many hopeful and inspired words devoted to William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops: stunning, ethereal, majestic, transfixing, life-affirming… and for good reason. The audio was remastered in 2012 from the original master tapes, and the artwork is packaged in deluxe old-style tip-on gatefold jackets. Still, they are the perfect albums to put on if you’re reading a book, doing chores, or just pottering around the house, ignorable until the point they aren’t anymore.For those who missed out on the now-legendary, highly sought-after (and highly sold-out) box sets, we are now offering the four volumes of The Disintegration Loops suite as separate, individually packaged albums. The box is currently reselling for around $3100, so it’s nigh on impossible. That article was written to commemorate the remastering of the albums in 2014 and the release of a limited edition 9-disc vinyl box of all four albums collected together. There’s a great Pitchfork article about them. How The Disintegration Loops were made and the context around their release has been written millions of times. Perhaps the most startling is the track “dlp 4.4,” but I am astounded every time I listen how this auditory epiphany happens again and again and again. The music warps and warbles, and sometimes big gaps of silence begin to emerge, small at first and then expanding and expanding like a hole in your favourite shirt. The fridge has stopped buzzing, there’s a screech and then a crash and the traffic stops, and the loops have disintegrated to a point where you notice them again. Then, about twenty minutes later, you realise. The loop is established, and soon it relaxes into a point of semantic satiation a constant pattern that you no longer actively hear. The four albums are split into various parts, each sonically different but thematically the same. The Disintegration Loops blend in because they’re like a mantra. The Disintegration Loops I – IV are an enigma though in that they are both so quick to blend into the background of your mind, and so quick to leap out again at distinct points in time. If you’re busy, they’re as ignorable and yet undeniably there as the buzzing of the fridge or the constant din of the traffic. I’ve been hooked on ambient music ever since, even though I’ve long since moved from that sharehouse, my green tomatoes still ripening on the vine as I did the final bond clean.Īll the albums and artists I mentioned above don’t make albums that have distinct or noticeable moments, but rather feelings that drift in and out, underpinning your thoughts and actions. I started listening to Perhaps by Harold Budd, Music for Airports by Brian Eno, sunny stuff like Laraaji when I needed a pick-up, and darker stuff like Jenny Hval when I was angry at the stupid political games that were being played. A friend had long ago recommended The Dead Texan by The Dead Texan, so I listened to that and it was perfect. The problem was, playing podcasts off my speakers as I toiled away was usually too topical, and the normal music I listened to seemed to be overly sad or angry. I’m sure everyone has stories about how helpless and precarious they felt at the time, but I’d only just come out of a dark period of my life so I decided to lean heavily on some hobbies to fill my time and calm my nerves. I remember my now-fiance crying the first time that case numbers passed tripled digits. Eventually I was put on JobKeeper and worked reduced hours from home, constantly on the phone and answering emails. “Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular it must be as ignorable as it is interesting” – Brian Eno (1978)ĭuring the confusion of the first Covid lockdown, I was stood down without pay.
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