On his 2001 debut, Tim Hecker utilizes electroacoustic manipulation of guitar & piano alongside fluttering synths, booming drones, and computer-generated garble to create a living, breathing, flowing piece of music. The atmosphere here is fragile, frigid, and hazy. You can feel the chill of loneliness emanating from the blurred, glitchy instrumentation as it entrances you into its wintry and spectral world. The warped soundscapes are incredibly dense in headphones—every throbbing glitch and thick drone shivers through your entire body, shuddering through your core like a ghost passing through a host’s body. This music very much haunts you.
Hecker is incredible at creating such complex and flowing tracks that vacillate from far-off & otherworldly to visceral & in-your-face. On some tracks, distant voices echo through an empty, abandoned house. Elsewhere, drones and synth swells dominate the frequency spectrum, making the speakers shake your room. The compositions on here are usually broken into multiple tracks which signify their gradual deconstruction or utter disintegration. The structures feel very planned, yet flow and flutter like improvisation. At times the listener may find themself transformed into a ghost, a soul leaving the body behind to explore the world once walked as a mortal man. Nothing feels entirely real as you dance and drift along in a place you no longer belong to.
Review written by Jack Von Bloeker
Edited by Ash Jacob Ingalls
