TIM HECKER

1. "Rainbow Blood" (1:52) What if the bells at Edinborough's St. Cuthbert's stopped ringing? 2. "Stags, Aircraft, Kings And Secretaries" (4:30) feels like the sounds (and smells) inside London's Victoria Station, around 10:00 AM on any weekday, c. 1980. 3. "Palimpsest I" (0:35) Lost in the fog on the Shannon Estuary. 4. "Chimeras" (3:13) the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy, seen walking on the Moors, of course. 5. "Dungeoneering" (5:24) cycling in County Donegal in the night time with only a headlight to give light to your path. 6. "Palimpsest II" (0:38) shoreline is nigh. 7. "Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight" (3:11) walking home from the pub with the dulcet tones of Maíre Brennan's voice still ringing through your head. 8. "Harmony In Blue I" (1:31) walking briskly through the seemingly-endless wheat fields of Saskatchewan, at dusk, in late September. 9. "Harmony In Blue II" (1:52) lead on by the ghost of Jon Hassell, one's brisk walk turns into a run as one feels closer to the source of the Malayan Dream Theory trumpet. 10. "Harmony In Blue III" (2:41) sitting on a wet park bench in the cold fog of Christmas morning in the near-empty Stefansdomplatz in Wien, watching the locals walk by in their heavy green boiled-woolen overcoats and Hutmacher Zapf feathered hats. 11. "Harmony In Blue IV" (2:02) standing on a railway quay in rural England, early on a foggy winter's morn, waiting to catch the first train. 12. "Radio Spiricom" (4:52) view from the train window fast-forwarded 32x. 13. "Whitecaps Of White Noise I" (7:29) standing on the edge of the tarmac at Shannon Airport, watching a plane on the runway take off and then recede into the distance while the next jet lines up to repeat the same. 14. "Whitecaps Of White Noise II" (5:57) deja vu! (More planes. It's a busy afternoon in Shannon!) 15. "Blood Rainbow" (4:06) ? and then the bells came back! How long before we'd stop noticing?

Total time 49:53

My respected and quite prolific (if breviloquent) compatriot from ProgArchives, Arthur "Warthur," King of the Britons, Brit Tonnes, and British "tons," concisely nails Tim Hecker's talents with the comment that "[the artist] gets that 'ambient' does not mean the same thing as 'featureless', and that a good ambient album should exist in a curious space where it simultaneously fades into the background but also calls the listener's attention without ham-fistedly grabbing or demanding it." Arthur then appropriately posits his opinion that Harmony in Ultraviolet "offers a Rorschach test for the ear." I like both of these assertions very much: they feel spot on. (No pun intended.)

As with many of the albums in the Progressive Electronic sub-genre, the instrumental, often "ambient" music offered can be quite challenging to bring words to. For me, this is more the case with brief "tests" of the mind and ears than the long mesmerics provided by so many of the other artists of the subgenre. As Arthur pointed out, the pieces of Tim's music offer tests in which the listener is provoked into an mental-emotional/psychological or psycho-spiritual response. In the case of much of the organ- and computer-treated music of this album I can honestly say that my response has been fairly uniform: feelings of general agitation and discomfort pervade--not quite enough to make me run away (though in times of old this may have been my response). I made it through. I can't say that I actually enjoyed it--that is, I can honestly say that I never felt any joy commencing to gush up from within the wells of my being--but I did find the music--the process

The surprising and obviously incongruous feature of my review is that almost all of my Rorschached-up memories/projections are of scenes from my many trips to the British Isles whereas Tim is Canadian!

A-/4.5 stars; a near-masterpiece of inventive Progressive Electronic music from one of the sub-genre's envelope-pushers. If it weren't such a typical (though wonderfully consistent) Tim Hecker album, I'd might be bold enough to proclaim this a minor masterpiece in the sub-genre.

After two albums as Jetone which were based on minimal ambient techno and IDM, HECKER shifted gears once he began to release albums under his birth name. HAUNT ME, HAUNT ME DO IT AGAIN was a huge leap in sophistication where HECKER mixed the digital signal processing of glitch with post-rock structures and melodies. The album also debuted his mastery of electroacoustic as the sounds on this album originated from the guitar and piano and with a laptop were manipulated to craft some extremely atmospherically diverse sets of soundscapes.

The beauty of HAUNT ME, HAUNT ME DO IT AGAIN is in how the melodic underpinnings that are obscured originated from various samplings such as the track "Ghost Writing Pt. 1" samples the TV show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" except the main melody is dropped and a new set of contrapuntal sound effects swarms around it and crafts some sort of effect where the main melody hits your subconscious even when the audible sounds are unrecognizable, a feat that is the real magic mojo of crafting such amorphous ambient electronica.

This style of music is almost impossible to convey in words because it has to be experienced with the right mindset to fully comprehend. While ambient glitch electronic music is hardly my bailiwick, i can instantly recognize music that is more intelligently designed as opposed to mere noise and although it's almost impossible to ascertain where an occulted sound originates from, something is recognizable on some level as to give it a deeper meaning. Overall HECKER delivers these sounds in a beautiful post-rock format where the individual sound effects conspire to craft a larger listening experience. A beautiful debut from HECKER.

As you may have intuited from its (horrendous) cover art and song (?) titles this work is structured around some kind of Van Halen related voice samplers & soundbits of course transmuted by Tim Hecker´s electronically filtered/cut up/distorted/noise enhanced & reduced/re-arranged & reloaded experimental hand.

I read somewhere that this could hardly be called music, if so, Mr. Hecker should feel more than proud because this his 2nd output My Love Is Rotten To The Core (2002) EP was certainly pointing out at his personal quest in finding his own electronic music language and in doing so he also updates, without plagiarising, the not so famous nor money hungry and still obscure side of the Berlin School of electronic music of which Conrad Schnitzler, Master Noise/Glitch Maker, was also one of its original founders and the not Berlin School at all but early in his career (and also later) electronic/acoustic music composer & musician Steve Reich with his astounding , way ahead experimental recorded vocal works like Come Out (1966) or My Name Is (1967).

So, not all that glitters is gold and gold not always glitters.

Therefore I will not try to encourage or discourage you about this EP. Tim Hecker´s music language is not for everyone that I know but this work is certainly for me, who by the way could not care less about David or Eddie, but that is exactly what art is all about.

In my collection 4 PA stars, in yours?, I really don´t know, unless you already know.

In able to review it, I inevitably, have to compare it with his previous release of which this one is a kind of an offspring or to put it in other words in the same tenor.

Anyway, I found in this Anoyo an enhanced poetic/nostalgic imprint & a far more palpable closeness to Classical Japanese music canons and their respective instruments, which by the way, in able for you reader to get a clear picture of what goes on here, are transfigured into new hazy electronic music realms with a detached yet deep feel of sacredness.

Therefore there is a clear contrast between both albums and their respective approaches. Nevertheless both works counterbalance each other as it could have turned out in a single release of a (perfect) double album, but each album withholds its own charm and yes somehow different yet fraternal results.

A more than honorable sequel to his past masterwork. 5 PA stars.

Konoyo (2018), has its conceptual inspiration taken from his visits to Japan, but do not expect Mr. Hecker to actually recreate what is not his, that is why it all turns out to be just a reference music composition wise. Let me say that he envisions his language in an interpretation of what Tim Hecker will sound in a totally opposite geographical context and of course with different musical canons.

And oh surprise! This transfiguration turns out to be one of his friendlier outputs, of course in his own terms.

Konoyo is a 7 instrumental tracks release with consice & varied as creative acoustic/electronic music compositions perfectly timed without expendable moments.

To set this album, Progressive Music sub-genres speaking, it is a merge between the atmospheric/cosmic/drone/noise world of Prog. Electronics & enough "old school" Rock in Oppostion/ Avant-Prog daring songwriting impetus to create a unique 5 stars masterpiece.

So, expect to travel these foreign sonic lands, Tim Hecker´s way and no one else´s, and enjoy the ride!

Five star songs: 10. "In the Air (parts I, II, & III)" (12:21) (10/10); 5. "No Drums" (3:24) (9/10); 6. "Hatred of Music I" (6:13) (9/10); 7. "Hatred of Music II" (4:22) (9/10); 8. "Analog Paralysis, 1978" (3:52) (9/10), and; 9. "Studio Suicide, 1980" (3:25) (9/10).

Four star songs: 1. "The Piano Drop" (2:58) (8/10); 2. "In the Fog I" (4:52) (8/10); 3. "In the Fog II" (6:01) (8/10), and; 4. "In the Fog III" (5:01) (8/10).

A solid four stars; a very good album well worth recommending to others.

Tim Hecker is an iconclast, his broken musical idiom is not for everyone, yet, he because of the same, is always pushing his own experimental spirit beyond comfortable zones, and in the same way "comfortable" audiences.

Therefore his electronic music resembles none. To cut it short, and relate his language somewhere in this PA's Progressive Electronic neighborhood, he is more in tune with Conrad Schnitzler's streets than Klaus Schulze's or Tangerine Dream's avenues.

In this 2016, "Love Streams", Tim Hecker's approach is closer to classical/contemporary composition stylings and 15 century like chorals, blended into one singular mixture, transfigured with his broken radio electronics (broken electric guitar solos included here and there), his own understanding of the Berlin School methods, his own manufactured style and his keen sense of music writing.

Aided by the Icelandic Choir Ensemble and some other instrumentalists, this release is a tornado of fresh air in this PA's sub-genre. full of Tangerine Dream's copycats. Opposite to that proving that in fact there is life after T.D, in this electronic world and, above all, a highly recommendable acquisition for daring P/E enthusiasts which can enjoy order as they can enjoy chaos!

****4 "full" PA stars.

There are some obvious advantages we have over goats we as people should cherish like the very earth we roam. First of all, hands. I love my hands - in fact so much so, that I've been known to clap furiously into the night, applauding the very instrument at work with a fierce and burning love that sadly would've been lost on the aforementioned hoof bearing critter.

One thing that has always puzzled me about goats is their ability to devour whatever their cruel and, let's face it, rather poor cuisine oafs serve them with. I remember visiting the zoo back when I was a wee kid. I had on my beloved KISS t-shirt, which I wore proudly and with much gusto - until I thought I'd run into a snag of some kind. I froze instantly, reminding myself not to panic - maybe Gene Simmons tongue hadn't been stretched even more than what it already was. I then turned my head and saw a small goat chewing happily on my shirt.... It proceeded to do so until I found something else eatable to stuff in it's face. Chance would have it that I was standing on top of some rather foul smelling cardboard, which I then force-fed into it's lazily chewing jaws.

Now what on earth does all this talk of goats and cardboards have to with Canadian electronic wizard Tim Hecker and his new release 'Virgins'? Well we, as a species, have evolved from the stage of merely feeding ourselves for survival. Hell, more than anything else, It now seems as though we're on the brink of eating ourselves to an early grave.... anyway we've refined our eating habits and the way we prepare our meals. We got so much going for us that our tasting buds have reached a powerful sensitivity to everything we decide to stuff our faces with. So why on earth would we ever go back to eating cardboard?

Well the same goes for music. We have so much to choose from these days, it literally boggles the mind, and maybe that's why I find it increasingly perplexing to see this album heralded pretty much everywhere on the internet as some kind of prodigal modern electronic release. Personally, I'd pretty much call it cardboard muzak. Now before I go into all of this, I'd like to point out my natural affinity for the more out there music. I loooove strange unorthodox sounds and tapestries and am furthermore an electronic junkie always itching and scratching for the next fix - the next trip that takes me completely elsewhere.

On 'Virgins' there's a sense of an omnipresent stagnant droning atmospheric going down. Much of the time I am reminded of Lustmord and his unique ways of pushing these mountainous drones forward, yet with Hecker the overall emphasis lies elsewhere, meaning that you just get this wall paper like entity hovering quietly in the back like some shy ninja with a fear of knives. Then you get the touch-and-go piano clinkering. "CLINK CLINK.......CLINK CLINK" -Frequently used as a way of incorporating a bit of beat into the mix, yet with the intonation and rhythm sense comparable to that of a chicken, the outcome comes across crudely and perhaps more important: drearily. Even when the piano decides to dive head first into small melodic segments, it takes on the form of those adverts on tv which promote health, sound economics and intelligent housing. Yawn!

Then there's the static noise - the television sound that suddenly got hugely influential in modern electronic music sometime around the turn of the millennium. Hecker though tries to implement these white noise walls of sound at the tail end of the occasional synth squeaks, making them crackle and pop like old wiring gone bad. Other times he plays around with them - fiddling about with the volume making them appear as fragmented rhythms and, at times, something akin to melodies.

This is all about atmospherics though. It's about moods and gentle unmelodious waves of sound. Sometimes it sounds like a factory hall getting cleaned out with a couple of brooms whereas there are other moments, where I feel transported into a piano tuning shop where this old dude sits around and clinks away on arbitrary tangents.

I am so disappointed with this thing. I was hoping for something special and new - something that rivalled all those fantastic reviews I'd read............but no dice - no cigar - no real zing was to be found. Listening to this album all the way through makes me feel like a goat, -and not one of those fine-dining buggers who hang out at the local Burger King - no the very same that keep munching on KISS t-shirts and cardboard.