hypersongs

The Disintegration Loops

Four volumes, nine tracks and about five hours of decaying tape loops.
William Basinski, 2002

Volume I came out in 2002 and Volumes II to IV in 2003, all on 2062. The nine tracks are dlp 1.1 (63:00), dlp 2.1 (11:00), dlp 2.2 (33:00), dlp 3 (42:00), dlp 4 (20:00), dlp 5 (53:00), dlp 6 (40:36), dlp 1.2 (21:48) and dlp 1.3 (12:00). The cover art is stills from his own video of lower Manhattan, and a DVD of the footage appeared in 2004. Pitchfork gave Joe Tangari's 2004 review 9.4 and Mark Richardson's 2012 review 10, and ranked it 196th of the 2000s; Uncut gave 10 of 10 in a 2025 retrospective, an arresting and singular document of music, memory, time and loss. The Arcadia Archive Edition reached 37 on the UK Independent chart and 6 on Billboard's New Age chart.

Track listing

  1. dlp 1.163:00
  2. dlp 2.111:00
  3. dlp 2.233:00
  4. dlp 342:00
  5. dlp 420:00
  6. dlp 553:00
  7. dlp 640:36
  8. dlp 1.221:48
  9. dlp 1.312:00

More from William Basinski

Shortwavemusic (1998), The River (2002), The Disintegration Loops II (2003), A Red Score In Tile (2003), The Disintegration Loops III (2003), Melancholia (2003), The Disintegration Loops IV (2003), Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive (2004), Silent Night (2004), The Garden Of Brokenness (2005), Variations For Piano & Tape (2006), El Camino Real (2007), Vivian & Ondine (2009), 92982 (2009), Nocturnes (2013), Cascade (2015), The Deluge (2015), A Shadow In Time (2017), On Time Out Of Time (2019), Lamentations (2020), The Clocktower At The Beach (1979) (2023), Passing The Cup Of Sorrows (2026)

Sources

  1. The Disintegration Loops, Wikipedia
  2. Classic Tracks: William Basinski, The Disintegration Loops, Sound on Sound