As William Basinski began his attempts to convert old reel-to-reel tape recordings into a digital format, and as he reconstructed his opus, The Disintegration Loops I, the then forty-something musician unconsciously began to document the death of music nearly half his age. He even puts it so bluntly that "the music was dying," but, even though he professes his uncontrollable love for these specific compositions in the liner notes of this album, he decided to sit down and allow the simple, elegiac melodies fade into nothingness. Much of the time you can hear the ferrite on the magnetic tape peeling off while Basinski's simple melodies echo and decrescendo into oblivion. Other times, they're interrupted by silence and the whir of machinery and the decaying tapes, and indeed the way that Loops was made only enhances its value; however, what truly makes Loops stand out as a heart-stopping, awe-inspiring stroke of genius is how fluid and beautiful Basinski's orchestration is.
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