In 5th grade, I watched the fatally tragic events of the 9/11 attacks unfold before my eyes on a TV screen. I did not understand the seriousness of the situation, and being a kid trying to be funny, I even made light of it. Little did I know that this was easily one of the most horrific events I would ever witness in my lifetime. The event is a reality Americans still struggle to fully process, 20 years later.
It's difficult for me to think about 9/11 without thinking about death. An event like this proves that our normal lives can end in a split-second, even on a mass level. What do I do with my normal little life? Mostly listen to music.
While the details behind the creation of The Disintegration Loops are well-documented, I myself find the story extremely hard to explain. One September morning in 2001, William Basinski was wrapping up an experimental music project he'd been working on all summer in his Brooklyn loft. That same morning in Manhattan, a terrorist episode of mortal devastation had begun. Something that can't be described with words.
Backstory: A 43 year-old Basinski decided he'd convert his 80's cassette tape recordings of minimalist compositions into digital format. Turns out, these old tapes had decayed and deteriorated over time. He decided he'd experiment with this situation. He transferred the tapes anyways, despite their destroyed audio quality and persistent looping, which kept getting slower as he furthered his transferring process. You can even hear the music take brief pit-stops of silence toward the end of certain tracks. He gave these weird recordings some tactical reverb treatments, and decided to release them online as The Disintegration Loops. These were (unofficially) released in 4 separate sections, between 2002 and 2003. Because the entire project is 5 hours long.
I've yet to ever hear any other "album" this long. Mind you, it took me years to try out all 4 sections of this. And I've never listened to it all in 1 sitting. If anything, I'll never forget my first time listening to the 63-minute opening track "dlp 1.1."
It was a Saturday night before my 25th birthday, November 2015. I had a crush (from Chicago) on my mind. Too scared to give her a text or a call or anything, I used my nervous energy to go for a run. It was already pitch-black outside, and cold enough to give me some surprise snowfall during my run. To make the run more unusual, I started with a $5 bill in my pocket. I ran from my apartment to the Lyric Rep, where my fellow students in Utah State University's theatre program were putting on a talent show for donations. I gave someone the 5 bucks and explained I couldn't make the show tonight because I had homework to do, but had just enough time to give them a cheap college kid's donation. I ran back home feeling like a good person, and sat down at the kitchen table to do homework. Or, at least, try to.
I had recently came across some positive press for this old William Basinski album. A 10/10 from Pitchfork. Ranked #10 album of the 2000's by Tiny Mixtapes. Never even heard it before. Why not try it out tonight?
I did a Wikipedia search for the album, which covers all the bases on how this was recorded. And of course, the fact that he finished it in his New York flat on September 11th, where he'd end up spending the whole day staying safe inside with some friends as smoke and debris increasingly warped the view outside his window. The cover artwork for all 4 sections are different photos taken by Basinski from his apartment on the night of 9/11.
In 2022, it's difficult for Americans to talk about the 9/11 attacks without including a dose of personal political perspective on the "post-9/11" world we still live in today. But this musical experience is a far cry from that. Not intended to be a soundtrack for a real-life apocalyptic scene in New York City, this just happened to be Basinski's brand new artistic accomplishment as he watched the ashes of demolished buildings and fading human lives roll past his window. This work of art is no exploitation of a tragedy. As weird as the music sounds, it's an introspection on the thin line between our connected lives on earth and our no longer existing. So when I sat in front of my homework and listened to "dlp 1.1" for the first time, I did not think about music. Or 9/11. And certainly not about my homework. I thought about life and death.
I had a relatively small knowledge of droning ambient music going into this. But this made me feel things I had never felt before. I've gained some music knowledge over the years, and while that feeling I had that night is impossible to replicate, I still think it at least sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. But dang, that night. I think I was about 10 minutes into the song and my body felt naturally inclined to stand up with my head held high. Which is a really weird thing to do in your kitchen. But I stood for a while. I did not get any homework done. These notes just keep repeating at a snail's pace for an entire hour. And you notice other little instrumental parts pop up at-random, as well the sporadic crackling of the disintegrating tape. An unexpected out-of-body experience for me.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a take on The Disintegration Loops was performed by a live orchestra at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Which is actually kinda strange to me. Because heck, I love this music. And yet I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. Like, this is the opposite of entertaining music. One might say this doesn't even count as music at all, and it's more just some weirdo's musical experiment that coincidentally turned into something grim. Every track is somewhere between 10 and 64 minutes. But I mean... If your mind goes deep enough into existentialism... Wouldn't you want to hear the opposite of entertaining music?
Life is short. Too short to listen to 5 hours of boring repetitive music. But then again, did you work 8 hours today? Isn't life too short for that seemingly meaningless jargon too?
Hear me out on this. There were an excess few thousand people who were alive on September 10th, 2001, but were no longer alive by September 12th. That's instant. That could happen to any of us. We live our lives surrounded by other real people, yet loop through the same subconscious habits on a daily basis. What am I taking taking for granted during this lifetime? While I guess this applies to everyone, I actually take a lot of life for granted. So I feel particularly guilty regarding this topic. We're only on this world for a short time. And your world could end just like that.
I know I'm a downer. But this is a new level of that. Why am I promoting this album that sounds like every year of your life fading before your eyes in slow-motion? Because your mind needs to go there sometimes. Reflection. Reflection on yourself, on others, on the fragility of life. I totally understand if you quit listening to this project after getting a mere 30 seconds into it. For me, as a college guy on the verge of entering his late-20's, hearing these musical moments repeated into infinity, as if being dragged along the way, was an ultimate moment of reflection.
Here's a link to "dlp 1.1" for anyone interested.
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