The legend behind The Disintegration Loops goes something like this: in 2001, experimental composer Basinski decided, in the interests of preservation, to digitise a series of loops he'd recorded from an easy listening station in the 1980s. He set up his digital recorder and left a loop running. A while later he returned to discover that the tape was physically deteriorating with each pass across the tape head: the metal coating was coming away from the plastic backing. Consequently, the music was actually disintegrating with each pass through the spindle. Basinski repeated the process with other loops and obtained similar results. The result became The Disintegration Loops, released in 2002 and reissued last year: a series of extended ambient pieces of music that actually feel as though they are dying as you listen to them.
From the start each loop bears little semblance to the original radio station recording. Each has been slowed down to a repetitive, melancholy drone. The process of deterioration is slow (the shortest piece is ten minutes; the longest just over an hour) to the extent that it's possible to barely notice. That is, until the final minutes, when it feels as though the loop, faltering, stumbling, hanging on for life, will surely sputter out completely. It makes for a listening experience that is both heartbreaking and profoundly moving.
The Disintegration Loops Deluxe Box-Set is available from Temporary Residence Ltd
