William Basinski is an American ambient composer, most known for their use of tape loops and their album series ‘The Disintegration Loops’. Basinski started composing ambient music during the 1980s with his first album ‘Shortwavemusic’ being recorded in 1983, but not being release till 1998. He rose to prominence in 2001/2002 with his series of albums ‘The Disintegration Loops’ which was series of 4 records. Basinski finished recording the album on the date of the 9/11 attacks, he was living in New York at the time and was greatly affected by it. The albums are comprised of reel-to-reel tape loops Basinski recorded 20 years prior to ‘The Disintegration Loops’. While transferring these tape loops to his daw to preserve them, he found the tape started disintegrating. He made the best of out of this situation and recorded the whole tape playing until all the sound had dropped out.
The Disintegration Loops where a big inspiration of my piece ‘Stella Dancing into the Starlight’. The idea of a loop slowly disintegrating over time is very fascinating to me. It is a great exercise in time and how time effects music and sounds, just like how time effected Basinskis tape loops. Disintegration in music also has an emotional tie, like with the disintegration loops and its ties to 9/11. The sound of the tape crumbling and disappearing is like how the twin towers both disintegrated and crumbled. That is why the disintegration loops are so emotional. Disintegration also works with memory, the dropout in tape can be used to represent medical disorders like amnesia and dementia.
For the track I meshed the sample based ambient style of artists like The Caretaker and the disintegration technique of Basinski.
Bibliography
www.youtube.com. (n.d.). William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnAE5go9dI&t=38s.