Music of September 11th - New York City Musicians Respond to the Historic Event

William Basinski – Disintegration Loops

The most ambient response to 9/11 somehow seems the most appropriate. William Basinski was completing the transfer of these tape recordings in August and September of 2011 and listening to them from his Brooklyn rooftop as he watched the towers fall.

On September 11, 2001, as he was completing The Disintegration Loops, he watched these towers disintegrate. He and his friends went on the roof of his building and played the Loops over and over, all day long, watching the slow death of one New York and the slow rise of another, all the while listening to the death of one music and the creation of another. – Haunted Ink review

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Steve Reich and Kronos Quartet – WTC 9/11

Steve Reich recently released this avant-garde piece for string quartet combined with recordings of emergency transmissions and phone calls from 9/11. The album gained media attention when it was announced that the cover image of the second plane crashing in to the south tower would be changed to a less “distracting” image.

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Sonic Youth – Murray Street

Sonic Youth’s recording studio from 1996-2006 was located on Murray Street, a few blocks north of the World Trade Center site, and served as the title of this release, which was recorded immediately after September 11th.

“We really didn’t get to look at the studio until a few weeks later,” he says, noting that a 16-man decontamination crew had to be called in to restore the equipment to working order. “Eventually, there was a certain desire to reclaim our workspace in the face of this neighborhood being destroyed. Our mood in approaching this record and actually executing it was certainly different than what it would have been prior.” – Jonathan Cohen – Billboard Magazine

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