(untitled) halo’s “aimee lou wood freestyle” is a jerk-inflected snapshot of life in LA

A recent guest of the Talkhouse podcast, avant-garde composer William Basinski spoke out about completing his seminal ambient album The Disintegration Loops, stating: “My work had to collapse in front of me for anyone to get what I’d been working on for 20 years.” The Disintegration Loops, briefly defined, was a project that hazarded its claim to the art of degradation. Basinski, in his 40s and in debt, had recovered some recordings he’d set to magnetic tape decades earlier. He also realised, as he attempted to archive the sound digitally, that the tape was physically breaking down before his eyes. He would go on to document the sound of collapse through four LPs of droning loops that riff on single melodic lines. As the tape plays, the tape degrades. So does the sound itself, perhaps imperceptibly, at first, thanks to the oppressive repetition, but assuredly. On the morning of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, just six weeks after he discovered the old tapes, Basinski finished the recording. He sat on his roof and played the disintegration loops. For (untitled) halo’s drummer and producer Jay Are, repetition, and therefore collapse, is a methodol...