The Disintegration Loops

During Basinski's time in the University of North Texas in the 1970s, he was taught about avant-garde music, including the works of John Cage and recording music with radio and prepared piano. His peers introduced Basinski to the composers Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass. It was at this time when Basinski created his first tape music experiments, using a Sony Walkman. He would move to Brooklyn in 1980,^[3] near the Empire State Building.^[4] In the 1980s, Basinski recorded from found sound sources, shortwave radio and delay systems, influenced by musicians such as Reich and Brian Eno.^[5] Decades later, he found magnetic tapes of these in a room of his loft, nicknamed "The Land That Time Forgot" by Basinski, where old works were put.^[6] These recordings, recorded in 1982^[7][8] as part of a CBS Radio broadcast of Muzak music,^[3] were transferred to digital format using a Norelco tape machine,^[1] and Basinski found that the tape had deteriorated; as it passed the tape head, the ferrite detached from the plastic backing. He allowed the loops to play for extended periods as they deteriorated further, with increasing gaps and cracks in the music.^[9] The tapes' length ranged from 6 to 15 inches, resulting in short loops.^[10] He further treated the sounds with a spatializing reverb effect.^[9]

Basinski started the project in August 2001, finishing it on the morning of the September 11 attacks in New York City, while sitting on the roof of his apartment building with friends as the World Trade Center collapsed.^[11] He filmed the fallout during the last hour of daylight from a roof, and the following morning he played "dlp 1.1" as a soundtrack to the aftermath. Stills from the video were used as the covers for the albums, and several weeks later Basinski dedicated the work to the victims in a postscript in the liner notes. He said that the attacks recontextualized The Disintegration Loops as a work created from decay.^[5]

Critics have categorized The Disintegration Loops as experimental, ambient,^[12] drone,^[13] and tape music with influences from process music.^[7] It consists of nine tracks: "dlp 1.1", "dlp 2.1", "dlp 2.2", "dlp 3", "dlp 4", "dlp 5", "dlp 6", "dlp 1.2", and "dlp 1.3" in order,^[10] forming around five hours of runtime. Each track utilizes different loops, described by Stylus as simple and pastoral.^[11] Loops do not decay linearly, instead they start to decay after a few minutes and the process speeds up near the end.^[12] The Disintegration Loops has been compared to be similar to the works of Gas, the Caretaker's An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, Yellow Swans's Going Places, and Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.^[12][14]

"dlp 1.1"

The Disintegration Loops is built on tape loops which degraded as they played. "dlp 1.1" uses an unknown source with horns and strings.

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"dlp 1.1" uses an unknown source with horns and strings, composed such that it suggests "neither sadness nor ecstasy but a kind of uneasy limbo". After around twenty minutes, it starts to noticeably decay, adding gaps inbetween loops.^[15] It is the longest track in The Disintegration Loops with a duration of about sixty minutes.^[16] "dlp 1.1" is continued on the last installment as the last tracks of the series, with "dlp 1.2" and "dlp 1.3". These use loops similar to each other, which Stylus describes as "soft, warm halos of sound".^[11] "dlp 2.1" is the shortest track with a runtime of eleven minutes^[16] and has a metallic drone, which Mark Richardson on Pitchfork found evoking anxiety and dread. "dlp 3" uses a clip similar to the works of Debussy, "stretched to infinity and then lowered into an acid bath". The loop for "dlp 4" was noted by Richardson to sound like the early works of Boards of Canada;^[12] the second half of "dlp 4" is almost completely composed of cracks and noise, which some interpret as relating to despair, loneliness, or the end times.^[10]

The four installments of The Disintegration Loops were released individually from 2002 to 2003,^[10] on Basinski's label, 2062.^[17] These were CDs packaged in plastic sleeves.^[10] In the back cover of the first installment, Basinski can be seen with a "lost expression" and arms positioned that implied "he was descending into a void". This is a reference to the painting The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis, which depicts the poet Thomas Chatterton committing suicide. Basinski elaborates, saying: "He was a brilliant artist that killed himself before anyone discovered how brilliant he was. A fallen angel."^[1]

On September 4, 2012, New York-based record label Temporary Residence reissued the series as a box set, marking its tenth anniversary and its introduction into the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The collection, which was remastered, was released in a limited edition of 2,000 copies, with 9×LP and 5×CD versions, a 63-minute DVD, and a 144-page coffee table book with photos and notes from Basinski, Anohni and the Johnsons, David Tibet, Ronen Givony and Michael Shulan.^[18] It also included two orchestral renditions of "dlp 1.1": one performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the tenth anniversary of the attacks and one at the 54th Venice Biennale on October 18, 2008.^[18][19][16] Previous reissues as remasters were previously made, though the Dusted writer Marc Medwin found these to have negligible changes, compared to this reissue, which they described as having more depth.^[16]

In 2022, The Disintegration Loops served as the soundscape of Lashing Skies, a 45-minute exhibit of five fictional stories unfolding amidst the events of September 11. The artwork, exhibited at Centre Phi in Montreal, was designed and directed by the multidisciplinary artist Brigitte Poupart.^[20] On November 7, 2025, Temporary Residence released The Disintegration Loops (Arcadia Archive Edition), a remaster of the series done by Josh Bonati, under 8×LP and 4×CD. The reissue also included a 1,000-word foreword from the musician Laurie Anderson, where she analyzes the progression of the loops.^[21]

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	(I)[7] (II)[8] (III)[22]
Mojo	[13]
Pitchfork	9.4/10 (2004)[23] 10/10 (2012)[12]
Spectrum Culture	[24]
Stylus	A+[11]
Uncut	10/10[25]

Close

Critics have regarded The Disintegration Loops as a significant release in ambient and electronic music^[1][2] and as one of the most important works about the attacks.^[26][27] It has also been credited for popularizing Basinski's works.^[27][28] The nature of its background has become of note in critics. According to The New York Times, artists like Burial, the Caretaker, and William Tyler have been influenced by The Disintegration Loops.^[1] Prompting if The Disintegration Loops would hold up without its context of the attacks, Rodger Coleman of Spectrum Culture says that it would, arguing the medium being the destruction of tapes can be viewed as about death,^[24] while Textura says the series would have not gained its prominence without it.^[16] In a review by Michael Pementel on Treblezine, he writes on loss as a subject of the series: "The Disintegration Loops aren't just a elegy for a specific tragedy, they're an elegy for time lost, a confrontation of our limited window of time here".^[28]

Various publications have given positive reviews for the project, including some which rate it with a perfect score. Pitchfork gave it a score of 9.4 out of ten in 2004; author Joe Tangari described it as a "soundtrack to the horror" in context of the recording.^[23] In 2012, the publication gave it a perfect score on a review from Richardson of the Temporary Residence reissue; Richardson remarks that while it follows the core idea of ambient music, there is "something uncanny" from its progression and background.^[12] Writing for Stylus, Michael Heumann calls it one of the best tributes of the attack. Heumann also categorizes it as "natural music", because it was made coincidentally and is dedicated to that nature.^[11] In AllMusic's reviews for the first and second installments, Fred Thomas writes that the music is expressive, despite being made through simple means.^[7][8] A review for the third installment was written by James Mason, where they described it as more accessible than other parts.^[22] In a retrospective review from Uncut, which gave The Disintegration Loops a perfect score out of ten, Daniel Dylan Wray writes: "it still sounds like nothing else: haunting, celestial, overwhelmingly immersive. An arresting and singular document of music, memory, time and loss".^[25]

The project has been featured in multiple lists. Pitchfork named the series the 30th best album of 2004,^[29] the 196th best album of the 2000s,^[30] and the third best ambient record of all time.^[31] It was named the 86th best album of the decade by Resident Advisor,^[32] and the tenth best by Tiny Mix Tapes.^[33] Mojo listed The Disintegration Loops as the best drone album of all time.^[14] "dlp 1.1" was called the 31st best electronic track from the years of 2000–2025 by Resident Advisor.^[34]

• On Time Out of Time, an album by William Basinski
• Everywhere at the End of Time, often compared to The Disintegration Loops