William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops (Arcadia Archive Edition)

Description

8LP BOX SET or 4CD BOX SET

You likely know very well what this is, and if you don’t, you’re equally likely not to be spending on a deluxe 8xLP boxset (though perhaps the slightly more accessible 4xCD format might be set at a low enough bar to entice any newcomers…). The music itself, in terms of both initial impact on first release in 2002 and enduring legacy, has been well documented by numerous sources, not least here in the new 1000-word essay provided by Laurie Anderson. The synchronicity of its completion with the events of September 11th of course remain a corollary for its overall value – what was already a profound statement about impermanence and mortality took on a further emotional weight that establishes the work as one of the great compositional statements of the 21st Century. I’d argue this is now a fairly widely accepted canonical truth, as its repeated presence in various ‘decade best’ lists attests. If you’re to part with your money, then, what mostly requires elucidation is a little more prosaic: just what comprises the ‘Arcadia Archive edition’? Aside from the minor shift in front cover, restoration of the original artwork and Anderson’s aforementioned contribution, the main difference to the 2012 boxset is the Josh Bonati remastering, an endeavour that feels perfectly on point for what is clearly a living – and dying – text. Mutability is at the conceptual heart of Basinki’s work, so it tracks there might be revised versions as it ages. Is it ironic that a body of work so shrouded in decay might possess such an enduring influence? Listening again now, its footprint is certainly evident throughout so much of contemporary electronic production – The Caretaker, Huerco S, Actress, Ulla, Civilistjavel, Hamilton Tapes, Burial and so forth. It feels like a defining aesthetic for this age, where the utilitarian utopianism of bricolage, reanimation, collage and even nostalgia have slowly ceded to a sense of finality, of end times, the feeling that the best might already be over. The Disintegration Loops arrived in tandem with the birth of what history was telling us was to be the Long Century and continues to prove itself that most human response to the persistent inhumanities that have comprised its era.