Hear the sound of music disintegrating on Shattered Streams

I really want to hate Red Bull Music Academy – and I say that as someone who drinks more than their fair share of Red Bull – but whomever is behind their music programming and educations component has consistently neat ideas.

And now there’s this, Shattered Streams, a commentary on the ephemerality of all music media (even digital) and, arguably, on the collector mentality too. Which sounds arch as fuck, I know, but there is a stellar cast of musicians contributing to this project. 

Inspired by William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, the premise is this: Invite 31 top-shelf electronic/experimental musicians (Basinski included, interestingly) to submit a brief piece of new, loop-based work (one for each day in May), stream each artist’s contribution for one day ONLY accompanied by video art, BUT allow the listener/viewer to specify the length of time the loop will “play” – from one minute to 24 hours – so during that chosen listening duration, the loop will decay over each iteration until it simply fades away. This is what the digital equivalent of having your car stereo eat your tape sounds like. Listen and watch.

This article appears in May 4-10, 2016.