In judging this album, you can come upon a question. What is the relationship between music and the context of its development and release? It's interesting to me the varying opinions that people can have about this here.
The Disintegration Loops was finished on the day of the September 11th attacks. Basinski watched the attacks from his apartment in Brooklyn, and played the first song off this album on the following morning as a soundtrack. He also dedicated this album to the victims of the attacks and wrote about it further in the liner notes.
Obviously, this contextualizes the music to a great extent, and for some this contextualization enhances the experience of this album. I find it interesting that this very calm, somewhat serene experience, is now so much associated with the very chaotic and tumultuous events of 9/11. Perhaps the almost sepulchral feeling of this album translates well to the aftermath of the attacks, with the effect of death and destruction sinking in.
I guess the main problem with this is of exploitation. It's not really like the attacks influenced the composition here at all, so you can't really bring that up in terms of influence. So the only other option is that this album serves as an after-the-fact "soundtrack" to the US after 9/11, in which you get the issue of exploitation. Was Basinski exploiting the tragedy of 9/11 for his own benefit? There's a lot of different opinions on this, and they all come from different places, and I find that they are valid to some extent. The straw that broke the camel's back for me, personally, was when I searched up the full album cover for this, and I suggest you do the same. Yeah ... VERY tasteless.
So let's now take the other route, divorce the music from the context that didn't affect its ultimate composition. So now, I actually like it a decent bit, some parts more than others maybe. The concept of musical decay and ambient tape recordings of found sources are cool, and I believe these ideas are utilized quite well here. I think this approach of long-winded ambient music that decays has ultimately become much more prominent in the modern musical consciousness, and this album is somewhat responsible for that. Basinski jogged so that The Caretaker could sprint. There's a lot of good ideas here, but also some moments which I feel could be gutted.
At the end of the day, people pour their own meaning into music, and it's up to you to decide here. Is this album a tasteless exploitative cash-grab of artsy, pretentious bourgeois NPR-core bullshit, of little note and effort, or a revolutionary and quintessential encapsulation of the post-9/11 world in music? I can see both sides here. This album is of historical note, sure, but it is also can be seen as exploitative, this album is very interesting in its instrumentation, but it also can come off as pretentious in its styling, and this feeling is perhaps further augmented by the aspect of possible exploitation.
The art, the event, and the artist.
B