William Basinski

William Basinski's epic The Disintegration Loops began as a troll through reel-to-reel tapes he had recorded 20 years before. But as he began playing and editing the material -- loops and passages sampled from radio and classical recordings -- the tapes themselves began to disintegrate. The resulting analog hiss and crackle lend an even more ghostly feel to his already melancholic music. As in all his work, chords gently swell and slosh like a river's waves, creating ambient atmospheres that trigger long-lost memories as melodies surface and disappear. Simply, heartbreakingly beautiful.