William Basinski - Disintegration Loops

this vague platitude has been brought to you by troon communications

the box is beautiful btw.

  On 12/1/2012 at 4:55 PM, Redruth said:

existence is theory in itself

...not!

you will hear when you are ready to hear. you will see when you are ready to see.

  On 12/8/2012 at 5:07 AM, Redruth said:

you will hear when you are ready to hear. you will see when you are ready to see in bed

sweet dreams limpy. disintegration loops makes good sleepytime sounds

Night, Red.

May fortune caress the nectar of your sweet brow.

i think Redruth is William Basinksi and vice versa.

edit: holy fuck Redruth is almost at 10k marathon posting level, and i thought i was a gratuitous poster.

Redruth =/= 'The Baz'

Bump - It's now available as a slightly more affordable (though still a little too rich for me) 5xCD+DVD version - http://boomkat.com/cds/807567-william-basinski-the-disintegration-loops-special-edition

  On 11/15/2013 at 11:37 AM, mcbpete said:

Bump - It's now available as a slightly more affordable (though still a little too rich for me) 5xCD+DVD version - http://boomkat.com/cds/807567-william-basinski-the-disintegration-loops-special-edition

I ... erm - whit ?!

lol

*films self drinking beer and railing on basinski for being a new york loft guy*

I bought said 5CD edition yesterday! I've never heard these tracs before, so I am stoked.

  On 11/15/2013 at 5:23 PM, mcbpete said:

I ... erm - whit ?!

That's the [former pitchfork?] dude with posted a bunch of meta-critical essays on modern music 'journalism' on vimeo. I think they might've since been taken down (i vaguely recall a watmmer saying they were), but one in particular called bullshit on basinski & pfork for perpetuating the disingenuous 9/11 mystique surrounding this release.

(apologies if above is duh)

Ahh OK - I thought I was being called out as a cheapskate for thinking the pack was a little too expensive for me !

  On 11/15/2013 at 7:07 PM, mcbpete said:

Ahh OK - I thought I was being called out as a cheapskate for thinking the pack was a little too expensive for me !

It's a tenner cheaper on Amazon UK at the moment (even so, I think it's still a bit pricey)

ex pitchfork writer the guy who does Shallow Rewards told me that it's well known that William Basinski faked his entire back story and that his whole career is a clever hoax playing off the gullible masses, but i don't think this is a knock on him. It's actually pretty genius he managed to pull off such a massive hoax. but yeah of course the whole 'tape disintegrating' story is a total lie, it doesn't even sound like tape loops, it sounds like digitally processed material the whole way through to me.
In some way one could argue the 'real' art behind Basinski are the tall-tales he's invented and remarkably gotten many people to believe

( i messaged him personally after watching his video, shocked but also elated my intuition about him being a professional but highly successful bullshit artist may not be totally off base)

  On 11/15/2013 at 5:23 PM, mcbpete said:

I ... erm - whit ?!

sorry. that image was a reference to this video which bob was talking about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1H1nyNRWAw

without a single shred of evidence behind this "well known" fact why would you believe this?

it's more likely to you that basinski had a plan...and that plan was to create a series of loops carefully crafted to sound like tape disintegration, even going so far as to put in actual sounds of tape artifacts into the recordings...and then use 9/11 as a thematic competent...and this whole big hoax was far what purpose? to be a marginally successful artist who doesn't make enough money from music to live off of?

btw, his hoax also would have to include him getting npr in on the exploitation of 9/11...since they ran a segment on radiolab in which some one went to his house and he played them disintegration loops...and they sounded *exactly* like the sounds on the CDs. so, npr must have just pretended to go over to his house? or they just played some carefully doctored digital piece instead of the actual tape loop they claimed they were hearing while viewing with their own eyes?

uh, lol?

of course shallow rewards guy would spread this rumor bc his entire beef with basinski is that he "appropriated" 9/11, it serves his purpose to claim basinski did so in some New York loft artist guy way as some kind of cheap, insincere ploy.

I mean, i just really don't understand what benefit would come from getting people to fall for this exactly. it's not like basinski is even remotely as well known and praised as shallow reward guy's darling daniel lopatin. so, this whole big hoax is for what purpose? and after being in the public eye for a decade why is there no evidence that this is a hoax?

@john e

  On 11/15/2013 at 7:37 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

ex pitchfork writer the guy who does Shallow Rewards told me that it's well known that William Basinski faked his entire back story and that his whole career is a clever hoax playing off the gullible masses, but i don't think this is a knock on him. It's actually pretty genius he managed to pull off such a massive hoax. but yeah of course the whole 'tape disintegrating' story is a total lie, it doesn't even sound like tape loops, it sounds like digitally processed material the whole way through to me.

In some way one could argue the 'real' art behind Basinski are the tall-tales he's invented and remarkably gotten many people to believe

 

( i messaged him personally after watching his video, shocked but also elated my intuition about him being a professional but highly successful bullshit artist may not be totally off base)

I've said this elsewhere, but I bought it for 49¢ on emusic, so I kind of win in the end. I liked the sound of it well enough, but even then I was listening (had zero knowledge of tape music at time) I thought there is no way the tapes were doing that. If anything the audio of the loop gets more and more distorted, affecting the affected version again and again and again, but I don't really hear that either. I listened to that track for about 10 minutes one time and have revisited it a couple of times, but that is all.

I always found it odd that people talked about him like he was the Brian Eno of Brooklyn (or wherever he lives).

  On 11/15/2013 at 8:04 PM, Alcofribas said:

without a single shred of evidence behind this "well known" fact why would you believe this?

 

it's more likely to you that basinski had a plan...and that plan was to create a series of loops carefully crafted to sound like tape disintegration, even going so far as to put in actual sounds of tape artifacts into the recordings...and then use 9/11 as a thematic competent...and this whole big hoax was far what purpose? to be a marginally successful artist who doesn't make enough money from music to live off of?

 

btw, his hoax also would have to include him getting npr in on the exploitation of 9/11...since they ran a segment on radiolab in which some one went to his house and he played them disintegration loops...and they sounded *exactly* like the sounds on the CDs. so, npr must have just pretended to go over to his house? or they just played some carefully doctored digital piece instead of the actual tape loop they claimed they were hearing while viewing with their own eyes?

 

uh, lol?

 

of course shallow rewards guy would spread this rumor bc his entire beef with basinski is that he "appropriated" 9/11, it serves his purpose to claim basinski did so in some New York loft artist guy way as some kind of cheap, insincere ploy.

 

I mean, i just really don't understand what benefit would come from getting people to fall for this exactly. it's not like basinski is even remotely as well known and praised as shallow reward guy's darling daniel lopatin. so, this whole big hoax is for what purpose? and after being in the public eye for a decade why is there no evidence that this is a hoax?

 

@john e

i didn't say it was a big hoax, its a very successful hoax. Why do it? I don't know. I can't speculate on the reasons, until he comes clean :). I don't hear any tape artifacts on the Loops series, to me it always sounded like the process was a total lie. That was what initially made me question his whole career, because if his famous work is audibly not what it's represented to be then what other parts of his lineage are made up. I just find it interesting that I'm not the only person to find something very fishy about the whole thing. Before it was a 'conspiracy theory' that i had invented out of my own mind, and now I've found someone else who's validated the theory in it's entirety. I'm not saying this makes it true, its just really awesome. I will do more to prove that this is a hoax, because I know in my gut it is in due time.

I'd like to believe that I have a good eye for fakery, and maybe in this case I'm wrong.

I'm not sure what to make of this statement, sorry i missed this from your post

  Quote

 

 

why is there no evidence that this is a hoax?

a better question is where is there evidence/proof that it isn't a hoax? There is no way to prove his bio on wikipedia, it's all sourced new documentation that could have been completely invented. There is no proof of any kind that he used old or disintegrating/damaged tapes on his loops album. We going by his word alone. If you're sure you're hearing this sound in his album, I'd speculate that if you didn't know the concept before hand it would just come off as a straight forward ambient album. The concept is what makes it attractive, again an unprovable process that we have no actual evidence that he did this at all

i gotta say it's like the shittiest idea for an hoax I've ever heard of:

unknown artist creates half hour works of single short loops using "obviously digital" effects to distort them. tells everyone it was just crumbling tapes and uses 9/11 theme. releases 4cds of this.

if that's not a sure fire way to success idk wtf is.

step back a little bit from the loops thing and look at his wikipedia page again. Does any part of you believe that he ran some kind of underground ambient venue out of new york through the 80s? I mean just seriously read every part of it and tell me that it doesn't seem invented to you. In fact it wasn't even the Loops that got me curious in the first place, I think it wasnt until i read the Wikiedpia page where i started to think his whole persona was an elaborate hoax, not a 'good' hoax or a 'big' hoax, but an elaborately constructed and believable one. I think thats pretty impressive, that by making it low key enough it becomes totally believable.

but just for clarification on the Loops, to emphasize each individual made up component
- he did not do this during, on, right before or right after 9/11
- he did not use disintegrating tapes

- he may have used tapes but they are effected in post processing to the point where you can't really hear any proof of actual tape recording vs something completely digitally made.
- the cover is hilarious (this wasn't a lie i just feel this way)