
An Integration Loop - benbreen
https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/integration-loop/
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ipnon
Basinski is famous for his Disintegration Loops. The cover art for them
features a photo of smoke coming from Lower Manhattan the night of 9/11.

Basinski was a struggling avant-garde musician who had been working on the
Disintegration Loops and similar projects for some period of time before
9/11\. None of the projects were taking off.

Basinski alleges to have performed Disintegration Loops (likely untitled at
that point) for the first time on his Brooklyn rooftop with some friends the
day of 9/11\. The idea is that they played this somber tape music an wallowed
in their collective grief.

The problem with this is that he took his amateur music (he was by no means a
celebrated musician at this point) and covered it with the trauma of a
national tragedy just to make it seem profound and stirring.

This isn't to say that Disintegration Loops isn't a decent tape project. But
it is by no means innovative or even exemplary for the time, except for the
extraordinary and painful circumstances surrounding its release. Basinski
failed here for trying to take credit for the character of these circumstances
as his own.

This is not my original line of thought. All credit here goes to Chris Ott
[0], that evergreen of music criticism.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGE7q0oDlEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGE7q0oDlEI)

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cenazoic
This is beautiful writing; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had an emotional
response to a piece of tech(ish) writing. Thanks for posting it.

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patrickyeon
Ahh, Robin Sloan's blog is such a treasure! I still deeply enjoy Dancing the
Flip Flop ([0], but also linked in this essay) every time I think about it,
never mind actually read it. Robin's perceptiveness and storytelling reminds
me of Bret Victor's work as well, and they are both so great at it

[0] [https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/flip-
flop/](https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/flip-flop/)

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tfcat
What a strangely gripping piece of text. This project is incredible.

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overthemoon
Fantastic. I absolutely adore Basinski, this is a very cool project.

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Archit3ch
This reminds me of Dopamine Neural Tape by Vult for the VCV Rack software
synthesizer.

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beckingz
This is really moving. A fantastic blend of storytelling and technology.

