Tim Hecker

Tim Hecker – Radio Amor (2003/2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 20, 2023 · Comments off

Tim Hecker’s first album for Mille Plateaux, Radio Amor, follows two excellent efforts for the relatively smaller yet similarly prestigious Substractif label, and accordingly consolidates that pair into his most inclusive and presentable recording yet. It merges the haunting majesty of his debut full-length, Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do It Again (2001), with the loose conceptual framework of his follow-up EP, My Love Is Rotten to the Core (2002), and does so without being quite as overbearing as those two releases may have felt to listeners interested in simply engaging music rather than far-fetched conception. There are thus two primary sides to Radio Amor: its sounds and concepts. The sonic palette Hecker draws from here is strikingly reminiscent of his previous work. Heavily manipulated waves of drone again clash and splash against one another, often doing so with near yet subtly off synchronicity in the right and left channels. The effect is slightly disorienting, and that’s precisely the point, as Hecker’s overall aesthetic seems centered upon an otherworldly style of sound manipulation meant to baffle even the most seasoned digital-music listeners. The conceptual framework he builds upon is likewise hazily vague, and no doubt purposefully so. The track titles don’t allude to much on their own, yet when coupled with the album’s remarkable packaging, a whispered narrative begins to shape, one involving remote seafaring, faint transmissions, compass guidance, and a third-world locale. It’s perhaps fitting then that the album’s climax, its most deliciously harrowing seasick moment, “Azure Azure,” comes late in the album, following “The Star Compass” and preceding “Trade Winds, White Heat.” By that point, Hecker has once again swept you away with a seamless album that demands beginning-to-end listening, and this time he does so with the timeless grandeur and universal appeal of a Hemingway-esque lost-at-sea novel narrated from the omniscient perspective. This is far, far from your ordinary ambient album – if you’re willing to dive into its depth rather than merely skim its surface, that is.

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Tim Hecker – Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again (2001/2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 20, 2023 · Comments off

On Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do It Again, Tim Hecker downshifts from his minimal techno alias, Jetone, to create rich, textured ambient music of the highest order. Despite the infusion of glitch elements like static and electronic interference, Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do It Again sounds deep and wide, like it was meant to bounce around a cathedral, or as an accompaniment to a planetarium show. There are nine titled pieces here spread across 20 tracks and one bleeds into the next, lending an unusual sense of continuity for an experimental electronic release of this length. Glistening drones are threaded with deliberate hiss and ghostly voices and the occasional treated piano and percussive elements crop up here and there as accents. While the tracks vary in approach and character, the overall mood is consistently one of contemplation, wonder, and awe, with vague hints of dread and violence appearing in the periphery. Picking out individual highlights is difficult because the album is so consistent, unified, and whole; suffice to say that Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do It Again is a brilliant album of subtle, evocative mood music.

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Tim Hecker – Love Streams (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 19, 2023 · Comments off

Hecker’s newest opus, Love Streams, takes as its cue from the avant-classical orchestration and extreme electronic processing of his previous full-length, 2013’s Virgins, but shaped into more melancholic, ultraviolet hues. Its power accrues as it unfolds. Inspired by notions of 15th century choral scores transposed to an artificial intelligence-era language of digital resonance and bright synths, the album was assembled gradually, with layers of studio-tracked keyboards, choir and woodwinds being woven into the mix, then molded and disfigured through complex programming. The effect is similar to hearing some ancient strain of sacred music corrupted by encryption. Hecker admits to thinking about ideas like “liturgical aesthetics after Yeezus” and the“transcendental voice in the age of auto-tune” during its creation.

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Tim Hecker – Virgins (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · November 17, 2023 · Comments off

In a year where much critical attention focused on rough-edged, dark electronic excursions from the underground, Tim Hecker’s “Virgins” proved a startling and beautifully persuasive anomaly. The album showed the influence of collaborative work with Daniel Lopatin on 2012’s “Instrumental Tourist” in its lucidity of sound quality, with Hecker allowing a previously degraded acoustic presence to take the fore in an album dominated by plaintive pianos, sharp brass, and warm harmoniums.

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Tim Hecker – No Highs (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 1, 2023 · Comments off

The latest by Canadian composer Tim Hecker serves as a beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue. Whether taken as warning or promise, No Highs delivers – this is music of austerity and ambiguity, purgatorial and seasick. A jagged anti-relaxant for our medicated age, rough-hewn and undefined.

Morse code pulse programming flickers like distress signals while a gathering storm of strings, noise, and low-end looms in the distance. Processed electronics shiver and shudder against pitch-shifting assemblages of crackling voltage, mantric horns (including exquisite modal sax by Colin Stetson), and cathedral keys. Throughout, the pieces both accrue and avoid drama, more attuned to undertow than crescendo. Hecker mentions “negation” as a muse of sorts – the sense of tumult without bombast, tethered ecstasies, an escape from escapism. His is an antagonism both brusque and beguiling, devoid of resolution, beckoning the listener ever deeper into its greyscale alchemies of magisterial disquiet.

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Tim Hecker – Infinity Pool (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 26, 2023 · Comments off

Milan Records will release a soundtrack album for Brandon Cronenberg’s sci-fi horror thriller Infinity Pool. The album features the film’s original music composed by electronic music artist Tim Hecker (The North Water, Luzifer, The Free World).

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