Just like the country thought they were more sorrowful than ever after 9/11, but it was quite the opposite.

Social theorists agree it mostly comes down to the growing class divide and increasing emphasis on computer based friendships- ones that exist on an artificial level but defined on a substantial one, a contradiction that for the most part leaves people confused and lonely, even if they don't know it. Shift to the current, where there hasn't been a savage attack even remotely similar to 9/11 since then, and it seems people are sadder than ever in that country. All of which oddly, made them more happy as a nation. Furthermore it allowed people to direct their anger to a vague, faceless concept - again distracting themselves from personal anger issues and again bonding over a collective hatred. No longer was their sadness confined to a micro level, it got shifted to a macro one for a unified topic that everyone seemed solidified on. After that day, it seemed many people took their own internal depression, their own problems or anxiety that plague them on a day-to-day level, and attached it to the killings of 9/11. This bewildered many people at first, but if you think about it logically, it makes perfect sense. After examining large portions of the American population in the subsequent years after that fateful day, the levels of depression in the country were at an all-time low. Then, on September 11th, Basinski witnessed the morning's events from his roof in Brooklyn, a mile away from the World Trade Center, and proceeded to watch the fires burn into the night with The The Disintegration Loops playing in the background, the scene in front of him perhaps already forming itself in his thoughts as an inextricable part of the work' (from Temporary Residence, the label that re-released William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops in 2012).Īn interesting study emerged several years following the events of 9/11. 'Having unearthed in 2001 a set of analog tape loops from his archives (produced in 1982, the tapes had lain undisturbed in Tupperware containers for close to two decades), Basinski discovered that while playing them, the tapes were, in a sense, dying because the magnetic material containing the sounds was flaking off during playback (to preserve what he was hearing, he recorded the sounds onto CDs as they played) and turning the music to dust. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves.'Ī bit of background is necessary for anyone coming to William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops for the first time.

'There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. Perfect Sound Forever: William Basinski, the Disintegration Loops WILLIAM BASINSKI'S THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS

The disintegration loops