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Avg: 4.0 (99 ratings)
- Date Released: March 10, 2009
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Alternative
- Label: kranky / Iris
Canadian composer transforms his signature waves of processed sound into something nearly orchestral
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We Say...
A writer colleague recently summed up Canadian laptop composer Tim Hecker in a reductive — and Twitter'd — equation: "As always, shoegaze minus guitar, drums, vocals." Which, should your math skills fail you, leaves you only with smears of noise. Whereas guitar-based peers like Christian Fennesz continue to emphasize avant-pop substructures and Oren Ambarchi trolls deeper into black-metal overtones with their work, Hecker has maintained a singular sweeping vision that begins with Loveless yet continues to reverberate into the present. Though with the man's fifth effort, An Imaginary Country, it might be time to reconsider the genre tag getting distilled.
While still grounded in waves of pure sound (no doubt run through more filters than a Jersey water processing plant so as to become crystalline), An Imaginary Country feels like nothing short of an orchestral work, though naturally one minus the strings, toms, woodwinds and conductor's baton. Hecker leaves only the swells and crests of such massive symphonic peaks and movements intact. Much like the outstanding Harmony in the Ultraviolet, it's unhelpful to dissect this album into segments, though titles like "Sea of Pulses," "Paragon Point," and "Currents of Electrostasy" are evocative enough at capturing the natural forces coursing through the work. Abstracted yet curiously cartographical, it offers a glimpse of a breath-arresting vista in a new world of sound. -
They Say...
Tim Hecker's elegantly inventive way around sound art moved into a full decade of released work with An Imaginary Country, one of his most serene and, from its striking start "100 Years Ago" forward, uplifting albums. The power of feedback as exultant swell has had many iterations over the years and it would be understandable to call its use here shoegaze or something similar -- combined with the electronics on the appropriately named "Sea of Pulses" or "Where Shadows Make Shadows," the striking penultimate track, any number of superficial connections could be drawn to artists such as Fennesz and Ulrich Schnauss. But each of those performers has his own approaches, as does Hecker himself, and the breathless extended surge of the album as a whole takes the slow-rising-dawn power of such work down his chosen road, perhaps best summed up by the song title "Currents of Electrostasy," with piano and feedback turned into a blissful but still mournful whole. Hecker's ear for appropriate names for his songs crops up throughout -- the chilled emptiness of "Borderlands," chimes echoing off into an unguessed distance, may be the warmest dark ambient song released in 2009, though "Paragon Point" comes close for both steady looming power and an enveloping sense of atmosphere.
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| 01. |  |
100 Years Ago |
3:28 |
|
| 02. | |
Sea of Pulses |
4:41 |
|
| 03. | |
The Inner Shore |
4:18 |
|
| 04. | |
Pond Life |
1:25 |
|
| 05. | |
Borderlands |
4:46 |
|
| 06. | |
A Stop at the Chord Cascades |
4:44 |
|
| 07. | |
Utropics |
1:05 |
|
| 08. | |
Paragon Point |
5:04 |
|
| 09. | |
Her Black Horizon |
1:28 |
|
| 10. | |
Currents of Electrostasy |
3:43 |
|
| 11. | |
Where Shadows Make Shadows |
8:37 |
|
| 12. | |
200 Years Ago |
4:45 |
|
12 Total Tracks, 48:04 Total Length
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Credits
- Denis Blackham - Assistant // Harris Newman - Assistant // Radwan Moumneh - Mixing // David Milne - Cover Image
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