Fans of ambient (or atmospheric, if we want to use a wider and freer term) music surely are a particular breed of listeners: they get excited and exalted by music that – let’s face it – most rock lovers would define as boring junk in which nothing happens, good at nothing but to provide a little disturbing background or fill someone’s horror vacui.
Without going into the rights and wrongs of such judgments, I’ve always thought that if there is an artist who can break down any prejudices or change the minds of listeners who find this kind of music deadly boring, it’s probably Tim Hecker.
But what’s so different, what are the characteristics that make the Canadian musician’s creations immune to the occasional shots of sleep?
First of all, it must be said that Hecker’s music cannot be associated in its entirety with the ambient genre (which in turn is now becoming more and more varied and difficult to circumscribe) because of personal training, complexity and above all because of the musician’s vision and intentions which go beyond the classical dimension of the genre itself.
At the same time, however, the ever-changing form of Hecker’s music presents undeniable structural similarities with ambient music: I am referring in particular to the absence of a traditional rhythmic pulsation, replaced by the very dynamics of sounds, be they noises, perturbations or simply drones. In Hecker this rhythmic pulsation entrusted to the dynamics of sound is much more evident than in classical ambient music and it is precisely this characteristic that can represent a perfect gateway for those who want to approach ambient music. At the same time, this rhythmic and material approach to a typically evanescent music can serve as a possible key to the work of the Canadian musician.
From matter to form
Tim Hecker’s modus operandi can evoke the image of a man in a shop, surrounded by all kinds of materials, wearing protective goggles and who, hammer and chisel in hand, meditates on which form to extract from shapeless matter. It doesn’t matter that reality is different and that Hecker produces his music almost exclusively in front of the computer and other electronic trickery.
In fact, his music has a physical dimension of its own. If ideally ambient music can be compared to pictorial art, like a large canvas portraying imaginary landscapes in which to immerse oneself, the Canadian composer’s music possesses the ability to add a third dimension, represented by a certain tactile and deeply involving sense. Have you ever found yourself in a room in the dark with no other guide than your touch? Hecker’s music can cause a sensation similar to that of groping, touching an unknown surface with your hands. You can then experience the pleasure of feeling a velvety surface under your fingertips or enjoy the roundness of the shapes, but also the unexpected and often unwelcome surprise of suddenly bumping into rough edges or areas. But, above all, moving in the dark without the certainty of knowing what is around inevitably creates a curtain of tension. Hecker’s music plays a lot on this subtle restlessness. The ability to create a tension in the fruition causes the listener to assume an attentive, almost guarded posture at the first approach, without abandoning himself totally as often happens in classical ambient music, but nevertheless continuing to feel an attraction towards it. This results in a vigilant, rational and extremely stimulating listening. One of Hecker’s secrets therefore lies in balance: his music is not as provocative or noisy as other experimental music, nor as enveloping as pure ambient music, but his identity is defined by the dynamic balance between these two components.
The other key to understanding the Canadian artist’s music is trust: music is the dark room, ears are our touch and Tim Hecker, the composer, is our guide. Once you learn to trust and be led, the darkness is less scary and you are ready to move more freely and enjoy contact with your surroundings, which is no longer perceived as a danger, but as a ground to explore; the edge is no longer just a surface that is unpleasant to the touch but, like the others, only one of the elements of a larger and more complex whole. This new approach makes it possible to sharpen the senses that are normally asleep or relegated to secondary roles and to savour in a new and stimulating way what lies before and around us. Hecker’s music can therefore be represented as a journey that takes place through an act of trust in the composer: the goal is the typical abandonment of ambient, but it is reached through a path that starts from a vigilant listening and passes through a process of awareness of one’s own senses.
From the Tundra to the desert
We were talking about the Canadian musician’s material approach. If we analyse his career we can, perhaps in a somewhat crude way but we think it is effective, divide the discography into two parts, one preparatory to the other. A first part in which Hecker learns and dedicates himself to sculpting and shaping bare matter and a second part in which, instead, the foundations are based on the manipulation of pre-existing forms. In particular, the Canadian artist’s first records seem to be dedicated to the morphological study of sound and noise.
Regarding the rhythmic approach mentioned above, we should not forget the beginning of Hecker’s recording career under the pseudonym Jetone, a more dance-oriented project between techno and glitch and therefore formative from a rhythmic point of view, in which the Canadian had already begun to insert some properly ambient elements.
Already with the first record in his name, “Haunt me Haunt me do it again”, the Canadian almost completely renounced the use of traditional beats. This is a surprisingly mature record, where the basis of Hecker’s sound and conceptual strategy already clearly emerges.
The album is made up of evocative and vaguely spectral mini suites (as the title suggests) that operate on several levels: in the foreground is highlighted the classic Hecker conflict scheme where drones and environmental gusts are perturbed by external elements (which in this case are made up of glitch sounds, a legacy of the Jetone project), while in the background, low-frequency drones form the rhythmic structure, operating in a subtle and often imperceptible way. Among the songs we want to remember the environmental suggestions of “Music For Tundra”, where the combination of drones and glitch effects seems to materialize the desolation of those icy lands. Shortly after we find “The work of Art in the Age Of Cultural Overproduction” the first episode where we start to catch a glimpse of the Hecker of the following records: instead of placid ambient soundscapes we find layers of distorted and fractured electric guitar, but above all a darker atmosphere and a more difficult sound that we will find again in the rest of our career. The melancholic sequence “October” and “Ghost Writing” then brings the record back on the track of the delicate and enveloping but subtly disturbing sound that characterizes the album.
The second album “Radio Amor” takes up elements not dissimilar to those of the debut, but develops them in a more personal way. The glitch is still very much present, and Hecker goes deeper into its use and makes the concept his own, integrating it in a structural way into the compositions instead of using it as a pure element of interference. Take for example the first magnificent track “Songs of the highwire shrimper”. The piece develops around an arpeggio of what is presumed to be a manipulated piano: the sound of the instrument is dilated through reverberation and delay but, above all, it is the phrasing itself that is deconstructed and reconstructed to obtain an alienating and claudicating melody. The main theme is supported in the background by a curtain of sounds and disturbances that slowly take over the sobbing notes, until they are absorbed in a nebulous drone that finally recedes leaving room for the melody again. The other pivotal tracks of the album are “Spectral” based on an organ drone that comes and goes in a hypnotic way, perturbed by glitch effects and “Azure Azure”, in which the slow and inexorable crescendo of a shoegaze-flavoured guitar drone acquires a threatening and disturbing tone. “Radio Amor” in general shifts the focus from the more ambient and dilated perspective of the first album to a more dense and conflictual sound.
Then it’s the turn of “Mirages” which immediately opens with the bang of “Acephale”, a very important track where the guitar distortions encountered in the previous albums are deepened and led to the extreme. The result is an integration between shoegaze guitar sounds, deprived of a traditional rhythmic support, and dream-like emotional suggestions, then submitted to Hecker’s typical sound treatment. The guitar, or rather the guitar distortion, is certainly an element that plays a very important role in “Mirages”. Examples of this are the almost doom-like sounds (reminiscent of fellow countryman and future collaborator Aidan Baker and his Nadja) of “Aerial Silver” and “Balkanize you”, and the rattling ones of “Aerial Light Pollution Orange” and the finale of “Incurably Optimistic”. The rest of the album features songs closer to those of Radio Amor, but more airy and impalpable, such as “Celestina” and “Kaito”. Mirages may be considered as a transition album, although of good artistic value, towards the release of Hecker’s first masterpiece, “Harmony In Ultraviolet”.
From invisible to imaginary
Hecker’s album titles are never random and therefore “Haunt me Haunt me do it again” recalls the disturbing atmosphere, “Radio Amor” evokes the places where the album was conceived and that the record itself recalls, while “Mirages” describes the elusiveness and evanescence of the images evoked by the music. Thus “Harmony In Ultraviolet” describes the ambition of the album, that is to represent the invisible. The record in fact presents itself as the culmination of Heckerian abstraction and as the perfect synthesis of the experiences matured up to that moment.
Let’s take for example the track “Stags, Aircraft, Kings And Secretaries”: we find artifices already encountered such as the deconstruction/reconstruction of melodic excerpts, the thunderous and nebulous use of noise, the waves of low frequency pulsations; but never as in this case the different elements are synergistic with the formation of an ever-changing sound mass that goes beyond the environmental impressionism that was at the basis of previous works, to arrive at a somewhat intimate abstractionism. The album is structured in shorter tracks than usual: fragments that follow one another without interruption to allow the listener to enter this invisible “non-place”, which seems to live in the immaterial ravines of reality. Continuing from the above mentioned track and passing through the reverse piano and post-rock guitar of “Chimeras”, we arrive at “Dungeoneering”, a track where the same post-rock influences and the shoegaze stratification of the guitars inexorably kidnap the listener’s senses. But it is only the beginning of an inner sound journey that is symbolically divided between two extremes symbolised by two colours: the one closer to silence that cradles the listener in the intimist and contemplative minimalism of “Harmony in blue” mini suite and the one of the gusts of white noise that overwhelm and cloud the senses without ever annihilating them, of the two sections of “Whitecaps of White Noise”.
The mini “Atlas” composed of two long tracks, one more noisy and metallic, the other more ecstatic and the 20 minutes of live metallurgical casting of “Norberg” seem to seal the artist’s moment of grace.
The Canadian artist now seems to have achieved an almost absolute mastery in the control of sound matter and uses this skill and awareness to create a work at the same time similar and opposite to “Harmony In Ultraviolet”, that is “An Imaginary Country”.
“Similar” because in both albums the music tries to describe and transport the listener to an invisible place, but “opposite” because the object of “Harmony In Ultraviolet” is a real place, but not reachable through the senses, while “An Imaginary Country” opens to the suggestion of the imaginary landscape.
Thus was born, a record that brings Hecker back to a more traditional yet “three-dimensional” figurative style; the tactile dimension we talked about in the introduction is in fact fundamental in this album because it allows to materialize and give the sensation of touching this non-existent world. Hecker’s music is configured as music of the real even when the context is that of the imagination: a sort of paradox which however renders the power of his creative force.
We start from the windy flashes of “100 years ago” which, by narcotizing us, take us into another space-time to awaken in the sea of “Sea Of Pulses” which materializes through majestic organ drones and bass pulsations like waves in the bowels. Waves that take us to the beach of “The Inner Shore”, where we can breathe deeply and enjoy a breathtaking view, designed by evanescent guitars resting on notes repeated in a percussive way. The journey continues with the marvellous contemplation of the desolate immensity of “Borderlands”, the frothy and enveloping waterfalls of “A Stop at the chord cascades”, the suggestions of infinity of “Paragon Point”, up to the northern lights of “Currents of Electrostasy”. At last the shadows come to take us back to the sea, with its low pulsing that returns, to lead us to the end of a journey that in a circular way ends with “200 years ago”: the same initial theme, however, enriched by the sound (but not only) experience lived in the journey. And in the same way the piece also brings to a conclusion what we have defined as the first part of Tim’s career.
From piano to rave
Before talking about the second phase, it is worth remembering how Hecker’s music, although always changing, never proceeds by sudden changes, but shows a progressive evolution, even though it moves within a musical spectrum that may at first sight appear limited. Collaborations such as those with compatriot Aidan Baker and rising HD electronic music star Daniel Lopatin show Canadian’s desire never to stand still. So the division into phases is useful not so much to identify a break in the music itself, but to put Hecker’s artistic path and approach to sound matter into perspective.
In particular, we have seen how each of his works is characterized by a contextualization on the basis of which sound matter is shaped according to a different expressive need: from the ambient of “Haunt me Haunt me do it again” to the figurative one of “An imaginary country”, passing through the abstractionism of “Harmony in Ultraviolet”. Starting from a “raw material” that is chosen to characterize a project can limit on one hand the expressive possibilities (like sculpting a block of granite is different from a block of marble), but on the other hand it can stimulate the creative abilities of the artist precisely because of the restrictions it imposes, thus creating a virtuous circle. This allows Hecker to renew his inspiration at a time when the Canadian seemed to have explored every direction and reached a level that is difficult to overcome.
The roots of this strategy of regeneration and sound manipulation date back to 2002, just after his debut album. In that year a unique project entitled “My love is rotten to the core” was published with a cover depicting a sketch depicting David Lee Roth. It is a work on commission made exclusively through the assembly of manipulated clips of interviews, music (and various sounds) by Van Halen. The result is unusual and curious, and if perhaps it represents a simple parenthesis in Hecker’s discography, it may at the same time be considered the first application of the conceptual approach to the manipulation of matter that we will find in records recorded several years later.
But let’s go back to 2011.
A photo in sepia tones with a frame showing a group of people about to throw a white piano from the roof of a building; to the left of the photo, as a caption, the name of the author (Tim Hecker of course) and a mysterious and evocative title “Ravedeath, 1972“. This is the enigmatic cover of what is generally recognised as the Canadian artist’s best work..We have already said how the titles of Hecker’s albums have an intimate connection with the content, but this time the Vancouver native goes further: with a simple suggestion in the cover picture and the choice of a title manages to create the suggestion of a multimedia work.
The ambiguity of the name Ravedeath (is it a place or is it a reference to the culture of the rave and its death?) and that of the picture (is it a riot, a party in which euphoria has made people lose control or what?), as opposed to the specific temporal reference (1972), create an atmosphere of curiosity: what is Ravedeath 1972? A documentary, a fictional story or a MacGuffin?
Hecker immediately plays with ambiguity in the first track, “The Piano Drop“, where a limping electronic pattern emerges from a cloud of noise that almost seems to emulate a techno track at high bpm without any beats to support it: could this be the death of the rave? A suggestion that is amplified right from the title also in the “No Drums”, where a muffled techno pulse “hauntologically” appears like a ghost of times gone by under the nebulous surface of the tapestry of sound in the foreground.
“The Piano Drop” celebrates in its title one of the instruments that, together with the organ, characterize the whole work the most, that is the piano played by Ben Frost, which is constantly transfigured by the remodeling operated by the hands of the Canadian sound designer.
The heart of the album is represented by three suites characterized by the same sound elements (manipulated piano, organ drones and a coming and going of waves of noise) but used to obtain different effects: “In the fog” describes a journey that starts from the desolate scenarios painted by reverse piano and organ and overcomes hypnotic pulsations and menacing waves of noise until showing flashes of light represented by the melody. “The hatred of music” declines the ingredients in a decidedly more emotional context, between post rock and shoegaze crescendo and delicate soundtrack atmospheres, while “In The air” starts from scattered, dilated and reverberated piano notes and, crossing curtains of metallic (sometimes almost doom) guitars, noise disturbances and glitches, finally reaches silence.
The mystery of what Ravedeath 1972 represents is therefore never revealed, perhaps precisely because the album feeds on the enigmatic nature of the project, launching allusions and suggestions that recall in equal measure both the crowd on the roof and the desolation of the surrounding environment.
While (at least apparently) the work does not add substantial novelties to Hecker’s sound, it does seem to fulfill a process for which the music is no longer merely abstract and imaginative, but it’s substantiated in form. As in a sort of Lynchian mockumentary, the images that Hecker evokes seem to compose a framework in which suggestion and irrationality replace the linearity of narration and the logic of understanding.
To understand the record better, it could be very useful and complementary to listen to “Dropped Pianos”, taken from the same sessions, where only Ben Frost’s manipulated piano appears.
From Iceland to Japan
In 2013 comes “Virgins”, where the manipulation methodology used in the previous album is further developed: the core of the disc is in fact represented by the live sessions performed with acoustic chamber instruments such as wind instruments and in particular the virginal, a type of harpsichord with reduced dimensions with which it is possible to play only one note at a time. Continuing his bond with Iceland that began with the recording of Ravedeath and the collaboration with the “emigrant” Ben Frost, Hecker gets help in the mixing from Valgeir Sigurdsson. In the first part of the disc the protagonist is the percussive and resonant sound of the virginal. The instrument is now used as a base made up of arpeggios reiterated in a minimalist key and disfigured by noises and distortions generated by the manipulation of the other instruments (“Virginal Pt. 1 and 2”) or, on the contrary, it is transfigured as a glitch disturbing element, as happens in the fractured opening of “Prism”. A great novelty is represented by the numerous episodes that propose a sort of chamber ambient in which the melody and the suggestive atmosphere are not (or are rarely) torn apart by the noisy stabs of the Canadian, which, however return again at the end in the aptly titled “Stab variations“.
“Virgins” is yet another heavyweight record, in which the Canadian turns the ability to manipulate matter, to show the hidden and deep side of it, transforming it into something else into art.
This process is even strengthened in the subsequent “Love Streams”, where the “raw material” is the Icelandic Choir Ensemble, which boasts the arrangements of Johan Johansson (once again Iceland). The unprecedented (for Hecker) use of voices and the transition to the dream pop label par excellence, 4AD, may suggest a further transition towards a more ethereal sound. But once again the Canadian shows himself capable of showing what cannot be seen (or better, cannot be heard in appearance) by concocting a hitherto unprecedented strategy of transformation: the pure sound of the voice is in fact transfigured and often made unrecognizable through a sampling and manipulation technique that seems to recall (in the method more than in the result, let’s be clear) that of hip Hop. In particular, “Love Streams” is the album with the highest rhythmic rate of the artist. The manipulated vocal material although sometimes used to create soundscapes (“Castrati steak”) often assumes the role of structural rhythmic element of the songs, as in the case of of the autotune processed voice of “Music of the air”, of the vocal scans of “Violet Monumental I ” and “ Black Phase ” or the robotic mutations of “ Voice crack ” , which create a striking contrast with the pure voices of the choir. Elsewhere we find pieces where the characteristic disturbing role is less and less entrusted to lashes of noise, but to rhythmic elements such as in the atmospheric “Obsidian Counterpoint”, in the alienating “Bijie Dream” or in the suggestive “Collapse Sonata”, with the result of a fractured sound that brings it closer to certain HD electronic music (perhaps not surprisingly, because among the various collaborations Hecker also includes a record with Daniel Lopatin). So “Love Streams” shows an artist once again restless and in motion, but also a tendency towards a less harsh and more melodic sound that will be brought to completion with the next project.
From Iceland we move to Japan with a double release: the album “Konoyo” (Japanese for “the world around here“) in 2018 and the mini “Anoyo” (“the world over there”) in 2019 again for Kranky. Two records that appear more than as opposites, as complementary or rather intimately intertwined works like Yin and Yang. The project revolves around the instrumental performances of Tokyo Gakuso, a gagaku ensemble, the oldest form of classical music in Japan.
This music is performed by a variety of acoustic instruments including winds, strings and percussion.
In “Konoyo” the treatment applied to the performances of the Tokyo Gakuso ensemble is often extreme, to the point of making them unrecognizable, while on the contrary in “Anoyo” Hecker’s hand is light and delicate as it has never been until now, so much so that it is almost invisible and incorporate pure or almost pure sounds. This is the main difference and an example is provided by the opening tracks “This life” from “Konoyo” and “That World” from “Anoyo”, mirror titles (this and that); the first is one of the most complete and exciting pieces by Hecker, which begins with a light tapestry of sound, where an arpeggio scattered with typically oriental notes emerges among sounds similar to howls of wind, followed by a crescendo where noises are stratified in the classic Canadian artist’s style , even if they lack the usual abrasive dimension. A song that from the title makes one think in its sounds of the accumulation of those of everyday life, from dawn to dusk and capable of enveloping and hitting the listener’s sensitivity without overwhelming him, thanks to that sense of measure of which we now know Hecker to be master.
Specularly in “That World” we find a dynamic where on a quiet basis, the untreated sounds of Tokyo Gakuso and calibrated effects emerge, until a melodic theme that echoes that of the complementary piece appears from afar. This theme is presented in a muffled way and leads to a very delicate crescendo of caressing sound waves, scattered notes and gentle melodies to which abandoning oneself seems inevitable.
Here is the interconnection and mutual dependence between the albums; the world seen from below shows us only a partial image of itself, of which we are unable to grasp the true essence but which instead appears clearer from distance and therefore complete, only if we try to “embrace” it from both points of view.
In general these two tracks summarize the musical approach that characterizes the Konoyo / Anoyo duo, which, beyond the differences, shows a more pacified Hecker.
The sounds are in fact manipulated and assembled to create a more harmonious and less angular whole than usual. All this without giving up a bit of one’s identity. In fact, in the two albums we find all the constituent elements of his compositional art, from the glitch perturbation to the rigorously and dynamically balanced sound and noise waves, but in this case aimed at reaching a contemplative and ecstatic dimension, which we had glimpsed from “Virgins” onwards and which here finds its complete realization.
Precisely the hint of inner peace that this yin and yang records leaves behind suggests the closing of yet another chapter in the career of this extraordinary musician and therefore ignites even more the curiosity about the future and the direction in which Hecker will orient his music. If there is one thing as beautiful as listening to music itself, it is the expectation it creates towards future works and from this point of view it is difficult to find an artist capable of giving us as much beauty.
