“The Disintegration Loops is a salve that helps make still-open wounds more endurable and reminds us that despite such carnage hope survives.”
A bit of background is necessary for anyone coming to William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops for the first time. Having unearthed in 2001 a set of analog tape loops from his archives (produced in 1982, the tapes had lain undisturbed in Tupperware containers for close to two decades), Basinski discovered that while playing them, the tapes were, in a sense, dying because the magnetic material containing the sounds was flaking off during playback (to preserve what he was hearing, he recorded the sounds onto CDs as they played) and turning the music to dust.
Originally published by Textura.Read it on Textura