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![]() ![]() Every track on this album feels not like an homage to death, but an homage to living with the knowledge of what will be. The album speaks more to the entirety of temporality than a single endpoint - death here is just as important as birth and the life between, where it can be difficult to see decay even as it’s happening to us. The work’s poetic destruction exists not as the centerpiece of this work, but as its conclusion, the final part of a process. But now, 20 years after its initial release, it continues to breathe and break beyond its tragic context. Not only as a memorial to those who died, but by literally performing the decay that all things must eventually meet. Which brings forth the other oft-talked about point of this album - this work is about death. ![]() The loops themselves, which deteriorate over the course of their runtime, seem to mirror the towers’ destruction. Allegedly, he finished the work the day of the tragedy, on his rooftop in Brooklyn. Basinski himself, in the liner notes, dedicates the work to the victims of 9/11. It’s nearly impossible to avoid - the cover of each of its four volumes depicts New York in the hours after the collision. William Basinski’s 2002 ambient album, “The Disintegration Loops,” is most often talked about in relation to the September 11 attacks. Photo by Danilo Pellegrini, courtesy of William Basinski.
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