It's entirely about the backstory. I don't know what anyone would make of this without knowing any of the background. The Disintegration Loops is known as a music project, but there's footage attached to at least the first of the Loops, and so I guess it counts as a movie... or a documentary? The shot is just of the Manhattan skyline on September 11, 2001, with smoke billowing and the background going from day to night. I'd seen an image of this, while listening to the music before, but didn't know there was real-time footage that played alongside the album.
The music itself is simple. It's just a short piece of music that loops and deteriorates over the course of about an hour. It and the visuals do have a certain amount of power once you understand what you're looking at, what the music itself is, and how the recording was purportedly finished on the fateful day itself. The skeptic in me wants to doubt that, to some extent, given this whole project - in music form or as a documentary - entirely needs the context of 9/11 to resonate or even just connect in the slightest of ways. But it's interesting how it sounds and what emotions it evokes when you look back on the day itself.
There is undeniably something eerie about it, and I do hope it's not just exploitation, linked to the day's events by William Basinski in an attempt to bring attention to some experimental music that otherwise wouldn't likely get much attention.
