Lazy.fm

William Bassinski.
I've been listening to a fair bit of music through awful in built iMac speakers recently. It's been surprisingly pleasant as long as you don't try to listen to anything dynamic. I'm doing this whilst stuck in a small office on my own, and so it's nice to have some ambient noise to keep me company. So I've been rinsing the ambient and classical sounds you can find on Last.fm. And very nice too.
One person I came across whose really rocked my world is William Bassinski. I'd had one of his tunes on for about 10 minutes, before I checked how long it was and realised I was only a quarter of the way though. I then glanced at some comments beneath the player, and found people complaining that it was just a loop... Now I'd had it on fairly quiet, and as I mentioned, on the shitty iMac speakers, so I hadn't really realised what I was listening to, and that it was pretty much a loop.
The track in question was D|P 3 off The Disintegration Loops II. What you hear is a warm, orchestral sound with two notes from a horn that loops over 10/12 seconds. Over time though sections of the sound start to degrade. This degradation is pretty imperceptible at first, but after 20 or so minutes is noticeable. The degradation gives the loop more rhythm, more obvious repetition and also makes the end of the loop (if that's what you choose to mark as the end) sound like a crunching finale. So every 10/12 seconds you get a crunching, collapsing finale. You start listening out - waiting - for the next noticeable degradation. How much will it lose next? How will it grow? But the degradation can take so long that there is no real change... and then something will go, something will give that kind of just destroys you. Very melodramatic this obviously. But as its an endless loop, going over a long time, your mind starts to rely on it, you start to know it and expect it. Instinctively, not mentally, I'd doubt you're aware of every nuonce of sound. But when something does go it can feel very sudden and dramatic. Which in a 40 minute piece of music built on a 10/12 second loop, is pretty amazing. I can't tell you what happens (as in I can't describe, not I'm not going to tell you), but something happens around 32 minutes 47 seconds, that is really crushing... I'm afraid you can't skip straight to it, it wouldn't work...
The tracks were made when William Bassinski was archiving some old audio loops he had on tape to digital. The archiving itself ended up destroying the audio itself. So what we are hearing is the destruction of the audio recording, from its continuous playing. And when the track ends, we 'know' that the original sound which was playing, is effectively dead. So we are listening to sound dying... and it sounds like it too. Dying with great dignity and poise it is too.