The Disintegration Loops

by Stephen Cramer

In The Disintegration Loops Stephen Cramer attempts to uncover the music within the world's dissolution and fragmentation, from Italian masters painting over the work of previous artists, to the innocence of childhood giving way to scars, to the description of badly stored tapes being looped and played over and over again until they begin to flake. In the last of the three, silence eats the music from the inside so that by the final loop, the listener hears not the soaring themes of the beginning, but an homage to loss and stillness. The book insists that music, and maybe even life itself, is made more dazzling and precious because it "falters/ & staggers/ forward. The broken/ melody limps & surges on."

104 pages, Paperback

Published February 26, 2021

Reviews

[Dearwassily · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There’s something dazzling
about hearing
your own creation dissolve

back into the primal
hush, something absolutely
appalling about watching silence

eat its way
through the music
like moths into old silk.”