Tim Hecker now. On Kranky, finest purveyors of sonic avant-rock
& deep, spectral space folk (not to mention incredibly absorbing mood music)
Ant likes this so much he's floating around the office on an invisible carpet.
I'm afraid to say this lovely sounding CD, 'Harmony in Ultraviolet' would
probably be AOTW if it weren't the turn of some old codgers from Brum to rule
the roost for a change. I seem to remember being rather floored by the last Pan
American album & this surpasses it easily. So many textures, sounds
& ambient loops combined to make something thoroughly gripping. It's like
moving through corridors of velvety pulsing sound, reverberating off the thick
steel walls whilst stuck in a looping dream where you are freefalling off a huge
waterfall in New Zealand. Well, that's the image that the first few minutes
conjures up. This recording makes me want to glide through hyperspace, dive off
the great barrier reef, Go hot air ballooning or just close my eyes, lie in a
hammock & dream of beautiful, intense things. Anthony's album of the week
Love this record? Hate it? Tell us.
What their label says...
Harmony in Ultraviolet is Tim Hecker's sixth album. It is a continuation of Hecker's interest in spectral communications, noise, impressionist musics, thresholds of listening pleasure/pain, and the limits of digital composition. This album is a significant development of his song-craft, challenging the usefulness of descriptors such as ambient, drone, metal, noise and even electronic music. If references are necessary it could be described as a sonata for the elements, songs of crackling embers, tidal pools, spruce skylines and autumn winds. Gerhard Richter's abstract paintings are also a fair orientation. Materially speaking, it is a record of whirring drones, whispering fissures, dense disintegrating chords, late-night noise and truth-telling harmonics. Yet this record follows no overarching process, no underlying narrative. It is both a homage for the Italian partigiani and also not at all. It is songs about ghost writing and midnight whispers but then again it isn't. In many ways this album can be viewed as a work of total destruction, embracing indeterminacy as an aesthetic ideal.