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HECKER, TIM — No Highs
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"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.
https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/no-highs
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The veteran ambient musician pushes back at the hollowing out of the form with a burly, physically imposing release peppered with moments of gentle beauty.
Ambient music is in crisis. Passive listening is no longer an alternative or fringe idea but the model on which the entire streaming industry is built. YouTube radio stations guarantee hours of chilled-out, challenge-free audio, and albums on Spotify fade into endless loops of sound-alikes. How to preserve the tradition of thoughtfully made ambient music in a market inundated with corporate-friendly fluff, or to convince listeners of the importance of artistic vision when an AI program can churn out a perfectly good drone? On No Highs, a self-described beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient, Tim Hecker gives his answer.
The Canadian musicians first album in four years isnt a grouchy get-off-my-lawn statement, nor is it an abrasive audience-thinner like Vladislav Delays Rakka. In fact, its less confrontational than a lot of Heckers albums, even ones that dont seem intended to be difficult, like his recent experiments in Japanese gagaku music Konoyo and Anoyo. What No Highs argues for instead is the importance of a wizard behind the curtain. The album is strongest when it makes you aware of the artists invisible presence, standing behind the scenes and summoning thunder and lightning at will, playing the audience like the director of a good thriller.
The most satisfying passage comes less than two and a half minutes in. Monotony begins with one of the many Morse code-like, single-note sequencer patterns well hear throughout. Atop that, Hecker creates a wilderness of sirens and street sweepers that begin to slow and morph into grand minor chords. Thenhere is the momentHecker introduces the magisterial growl of a church organ, blowing the tracks low end wide open with vivid color and high drama. Its a sound hes used many times over, and it comes across here as a personal stamp, like Shinichi Atobes echoing piano or GASs kick drum. Its his way of saying, You are listening to a Tim Hecker album, a reminder that this stuff couldnt be made by just anyone.
No Highs can be physically discomforting to listen to, not because its particularly noisy or dissonant but because it seems to consciously resist syncing with the bodily rhythms of the listener. In Your Mind introduces a throbbing sequencer pattern in its first few seconds, but Hecker keeps slowing it down and speeding it up, fading it in out, preventing the brain from getting a foothold. Saxophonist Colin Stetson appears throughout the album, exhibiting his usual burly, physical approach to his instrument. As he commences his endless runs on Monotony II, the clack of his keys clear as day, the listener might actually find themselves contracting their lungs in sympathy with his gobstopping breath control. This music is not going to align with your chakras.
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The One Song Jeff Tweedy Wishes He Wrote
But No Highs can be beautiful in passing, and its last 10 minutes are devoted to two remarkable tracks that conjure the spirit of ambients early years. Mewling steel guitars make Sense Suppression a cousin of Daniel Lanois work on Brian Enos Apollo, a ghost of a country song drifting on the wind. Living Spa Water, meanwhile, is based on a metallic twinkle reminiscent of Laraajis zither, even if Hecker undergirds it with big synth blats that that gentle soul would probably find disquieting. These two tracks nod to ambient as a traditiona noun rather than an adjective.
For a state-of-the-genre address like this to work, the music has to present a viable alternative to whatever its railing against, and the physicality of Heckers approach allows the music greater range and freedom than if it were merely trying to set a mood. But Heckers primary concern here appears to be staking out a certain patch of turf rather than experimenting or expanding the possibilities of his music, and he shies away from extremes. No Highs is muted in comparison to the Gothic grandeur of Harmony in Ultraviolet, the buffeting noise of Ravedeath, 1972, the thorny ruggedness of the underloved An Imaginary Country. But Heckers title seems to already anticipate this criticism, and No Highs ultimately works as an example of what ambient music can be, rather than a suggestion of where it might go.
[ Daniel Bromfield / Pitchfork ]
https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/no-highs
#########################
The veteran ambient musician pushes back at the hollowing out of the form with a burly, physically imposing release peppered with moments of gentle beauty.
Ambient music is in crisis. Passive listening is no longer an alternative or fringe idea but the model on which the entire streaming industry is built. YouTube radio stations guarantee hours of chilled-out, challenge-free audio, and albums on Spotify fade into endless loops of sound-alikes. How to preserve the tradition of thoughtfully made ambient music in a market inundated with corporate-friendly fluff, or to convince listeners of the importance of artistic vision when an AI program can churn out a perfectly good drone? On No Highs, a self-described beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient, Tim Hecker gives his answer.
The Canadian musicians first album in four years isnt a grouchy get-off-my-lawn statement, nor is it an abrasive audience-thinner like Vladislav Delays Rakka. In fact, its less confrontational than a lot of Heckers albums, even ones that dont seem intended to be difficult, like his recent experiments in Japanese gagaku music Konoyo and Anoyo. What No Highs argues for instead is the importance of a wizard behind the curtain. The album is strongest when it makes you aware of the artists invisible presence, standing behind the scenes and summoning thunder and lightning at will, playing the audience like the director of a good thriller.
The most satisfying passage comes less than two and a half minutes in. Monotony begins with one of the many Morse code-like, single-note sequencer patterns well hear throughout. Atop that, Hecker creates a wilderness of sirens and street sweepers that begin to slow and morph into grand minor chords. Thenhere is the momentHecker introduces the magisterial growl of a church organ, blowing the tracks low end wide open with vivid color and high drama. Its a sound hes used many times over, and it comes across here as a personal stamp, like Shinichi Atobes echoing piano or GASs kick drum. Its his way of saying, You are listening to a Tim Hecker album, a reminder that this stuff couldnt be made by just anyone.
No Highs can be physically discomforting to listen to, not because its particularly noisy or dissonant but because it seems to consciously resist syncing with the bodily rhythms of the listener. In Your Mind introduces a throbbing sequencer pattern in its first few seconds, but Hecker keeps slowing it down and speeding it up, fading it in out, preventing the brain from getting a foothold. Saxophonist Colin Stetson appears throughout the album, exhibiting his usual burly, physical approach to his instrument. As he commences his endless runs on Monotony II, the clack of his keys clear as day, the listener might actually find themselves contracting their lungs in sympathy with his gobstopping breath control. This music is not going to align with your chakras.
WATCH
The One Song Jeff Tweedy Wishes He Wrote
But No Highs can be beautiful in passing, and its last 10 minutes are devoted to two remarkable tracks that conjure the spirit of ambients early years. Mewling steel guitars make Sense Suppression a cousin of Daniel Lanois work on Brian Enos Apollo, a ghost of a country song drifting on the wind. Living Spa Water, meanwhile, is based on a metallic twinkle reminiscent of Laraajis zither, even if Hecker undergirds it with big synth blats that that gentle soul would probably find disquieting. These two tracks nod to ambient as a traditiona noun rather than an adjective.
For a state-of-the-genre address like this to work, the music has to present a viable alternative to whatever its railing against, and the physicality of Heckers approach allows the music greater range and freedom than if it were merely trying to set a mood. But Heckers primary concern here appears to be staking out a certain patch of turf rather than experimenting or expanding the possibilities of his music, and he shies away from extremes. No Highs is muted in comparison to the Gothic grandeur of Harmony in Ultraviolet, the buffeting noise of Ravedeath, 1972, the thorny ruggedness of the underloved An Imaginary Country. But Heckers title seems to already anticipate this criticism, and No Highs ultimately works as an example of what ambient music can be, rather than a suggestion of where it might go.
[ Daniel Bromfield / Pitchfork ]