Tim Hecker

Conversely, I’m really digging Konoyo in a way I’ve never dug Hecker before. Starting to wonder if I need to go back and revisit past albums.

Harmony In Ultraviolet is the one to go for if you haven’t listened to it much before

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I never really connected with a Hecker album before Lovestreams. But I absolutely adored that album and had a cursory listen to a leak of this last week. It attracted and repulsed equally, which is usually a good sign for me. Looking forward to diving in more when i’m back at work next week.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on at The Skinny?

As soon as I say there was one lukewarm review (in yellow) on AOTY…I knew it was these guys

:+1::+1::+1:

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Why I oughta!

Kinda underwhelmed based on my first listen. Think my issue with it is the same as Ravedeath where every track so far has sounded like a closer, like the music is in a perpetual state of collapse.

I’m not saying that it’s bad… just not sure it’s for me. The albums in the first half of his career felt like they had these grand narrative arcs to the music.

That Skinny review sums it up perfectly for me in fact.

Every element in his songs fight for control of the centre before inevitably decaying together like racing pennies in orbit around the centre of a funnel.

Clearly many of you love that vibe. Not working for me, even though each individual track is packed with things I like.

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Enjoying this a lot. Wasn’t really a fan of Love Streams and prefer him at his droney side, a la An Imaginary Country, but could stick this on repeat all day.

On my first listen, so I’ll give this the benefit of the doubt for now, but it is Ravedeath-esque (in its swirling, spiralling misery). I think it lacks the rhythm and structure that some of his early / best records had. If I was being uncharitable, I’d say it sounds like the nauseating death-farts of an old-synths’ home. If that was a thing.

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Hmmm, this seems like Ravedeath - The Indulgence to me, with the same sound pallette stretched over long run times, and it really does seem formless compared with his earlier stuff. There’s little in the way of dynamics of volume / abrasion and very little variation in texture or rhythm. It feel like something of a backwards step to me.

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I’ve only listened to the first three or four tracks but I love it so far. On first impression, it has that feeling that Virgins had to me: less airless - and not that Hecker’s electronic music is particularly airless generally, but there’s a real feeling of a “room” almost amongst all the electronic manipulation.

Also, it’s an HOUR long. Quite happy for Hecker to be back to making longer albums.

One of these days I’m going to admit to the fact that my favourite Hecker lp is dropped pianos. Not today though.

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Still haven’t listened to that. Or An Imaginary Country

Rhythm is key. There’s a really subtle ebb and flow or pulse in his earlier work. This is definitely more formless, but not in a way which hovers (like, say, hotel neon). More like brownian motion. Again, not bad per se, but not for me.

is that a euphemism for “sh*t”? Because if it isn’t, it should be.

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That’s interesting; one of my favourite things about Hecker is his control of formlessness. Like I think he does a version (a very different version) of what late-period Autechre do; where a lot of Autechre’s more recent stuff leaves me kind of cold (I suspect, deliberately so), I have a weird affinity to what Hecker does.

I think it’s certainly been an influence to my music; I really like that tension between the precision traditionally associated with electronic music (which wrt Hecker is VERY present in the textures) and a kind of freedom from structure (considering the maybe stereotypical idea that computer / electronic music = mechanically precise in structure, snapped to a grid, etc.)

None of that makes sense

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this bit of ‘in mother earth phase’ is fkn bliss

Speaking of electronica, in many ways I wish he’d go back to some of his Jetone work, with static and texture over something heavily beat based. Aerial Red from Ultramarin is still one of my favourite pieces of his (the first track on this):

Keep meaning to listen to Jetone. It’s weird there’s a whole project of his that I’m not familiar with

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Like there’s a track on Haunt Me that always surprises me a bit cause there’s beats on it