The Disinitegration L0.0ps
A straight rant on the legacy of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, with background on my time at Pitchfork and as a loop musician.
Celebrating the days of advertised oversampling ratios.
A straight rant on the legacy of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, with background on my time at Pitchfork and as a loop musician.
I don’t know man. Your points are all valid and for the most part based in sound logic but I think you’re not considering the music on the album enough, the very thing of which you accuse Richardson and the music writer crowd.
A couple of thing I want to address: firstly, maybe the music just simply doesn’t suit your taste. While the public opinion of TLD may have been considerably clouded by the album’s backstory and Pitchfork’s initial reception, I still believe that a multitude of listeners enjoy the music on its own merits. I know I do. Barring bullshit contrived artsiness for a moment, I think it’s a supremely relaxing listen, and I enjoy the subtle mutations of the recordings over their runtimes. Not everyone who enjoys the record buys into its mythos.
I also find issue with your claim that Basinski’s story of the album’s recording process is entirely false. The base of all the songs is indeed slowly degrading tape looped repeatedly with post-production embellishments. He’s never said that the songs are entirely made of the repeating tapes, or that he didn’t modify them in any way. After the initial recording process, he added synths and reverb to fill out the sound and create a more grand aesthetic. Your point that the music is less valid because it supposedly tries to fool the listener into a false narrative of its recordings is patently untrue.
Anyways, I enjoyed the episode as usual. Keep on.