6/27/2023 0 Comments Disintegration loops![]() To illustrate the visual, Wexler’s documentary features a short albeit hilarious animated educational video circa 1970’s style Disney instructional films. ![]() Notably, on that morning of 9/11, Basinski had a job interview in one of the towers but couldn’t motivate himself to make the journey into Manhattan, and instead witnessed the terror from his Brooklyn rooftop.īasinski, whose personality seems incongruous to his music, explains in simple terms why tape is ephemeral. The completion of the recordings coincided with the morning of the 9/11 attacks. ![]() The subsequent ambient soundscape became a seminal tribute to the Twin Towers, especially when juxtaposed with footage of smoke engulfing the Manhattan skyline as dusk descended on 9/11, and Basinski released the work as a series of four albums. As it played back, the tape literally started to disintegrate, hiccups of silence enveloping the music. Sometime before 9/11, Basinski, who has worked with tape loops for over thirty years, digitized a bevy of loops from the ’80s. The story of The Disintegration Loops is enthralling. ![]() During the opening montage, the eerie “ dlp 1.1” plays parallel to images of desolate NYC streets and signs warning people to stay six feet apart - as if the city Basinski’s captivating music are forever intertwined. You can hear the entire webcast at the link above.An introduction to Disintegration Loops, a documentary about avant-garde composer William Basinski that premiered at SXSW, through an interview with its director, David Wexler, and producer, Brad Coleman…ĭavid Wexler ‘s new documentary The Disintegration Loops, a 45-minute film constructed via Zoom, draws haunting parallels between New York-based avant-garde composer William Basinski’s 9/11-inspired art and the pandemic lockdown in New York City. The "Remembering September 11" concert webcast was hosted by NPR Music's Anastasia Tsioulcas and WQXR/ Q2's Helga Davis. 11 unfolded he watched from his Brooklyn roof, just over the river from downtown Manhattan. He was finishing work on The Disintegration Loops as the destruction of Sept. In the midst of archiving and digitizing analog tapes from the early 1980s, the composer realized that his material was literally disintegrating, leaving eerily silent passages in the midst of lush, pastoral music - "my paradise lost," he says. For example, Golijov - with the violence of historical and contemporary Jerusalem in mind - loops melismatic quotations from Baroque composer François Couperin's somber Troisieme Leçon de Ténèbres.īasinski's The Disintegration Loops had its genesis in the physical process of decay. Now surrounded by a reflecting pool - evoking the waters of the Nile and housed within a glass atrium that overlooks Central Park - the temple is a space which lends itself beautifully to musical contemplation.Īll the works on this program are haunting reflections on loss, grief and remembrance, interweaving past and present in hypnotic and moving arcs. The concert was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur, a Egyptian sandstone edifice from about 15 B.C. The concert also included three pieces for string quartet: Ingram Marshall's Fog Tropes II, Osvaldo Golijov's Tenebrae and Alfred Schnittke's Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled With Grief, passionately and movingly performed by violinists Keats Dieffenbach and Caroline Shaw, violist Nadia Sirota and cellist Clarice Jensen. The program featured the world premiere of Maxim Moston's orchestration of an arresting work by William Basinski, The Disintegration Loops. Led by the dynamic conductor Ryan McAdams, New York's Wordless Music Orchestra performed four works centered on the idea of loss and remembrance. The concert, presented as a live webcast by NPR Music and Q2, can now be heard as an archive stream - and it is an unmissable event. 11, the audience responded with utter eloquence: two minutes of astonished silence, followed by wild applause. At the conclusion of the astonishing "Remembering September 11" concert, held by the Wordless Music Orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Temple of Dendur on the 10th anniversary of Sept.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |