Kranky – 21st February 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
One thing you have to say about Tim Hecker is that his output has been varied, and his career interesting. This isn’t a case of damning with faint praise: it’s very much about highlighting what makes him such a remarkable artist – the fact he doesn’t simply mine the same seem in perpetuity. The difference between the organ-based compositions of Ravedeath, 1972 (2011) and the dark ambience of No Highs (2023) is vast, and is emblematic of an artist who simply cannot be confined within narrow constraints. Electronic music is an immensely broad church, and Hecker’s output ventures the field far and wide.
This is perhaps exemplified no more clearly than on Shards, ‘a collection of pieces originally written for various film and TV soundtracks Tim Hecker has scored over the last half decade. These compositions were originally written for scoring projects including Infinity Pool, The North Water, Luzifer, and La Tour.’
The album’s seven compositions highlight Hecker’s capacity to mould mood.
‘Heaven Will Come’ evolves and expands over the course of its four minutes and forty-eight seconds, growing from delicate but expansive elongated organ-like notes to a swirl of anxiety, with dank, rumbling bass lumbering around, as if without direction, amidst warped, bending undulations, an uneasy discord. ‘Morning (piano version)’ is very pianoey… but also brings booming bass resonance, and slight, flickering, glimmers of sound, almost insectoid, and mournful strings which bend and twist and ultimately fade… to be replaced by a deathly bussing drone and distortion which fills your head in the most uncomfortable way.
The hectically scratchy plink and plonk and looping delirium of ‘Monotone 3’ hints at the trilling of woodwind-led jazz, but there are menacing drones and weird shapes being sculpted here.
Hecker specialises in the disorientating, the unheimlich: the majority of the pieces here are superficially calm, tranquil – even the more brooding ones. But something about each isn’t quite right – there are dark undercurrents, or there is a twist, from out of nowhere. And herein lies Hecker’s unique skill as a composer.: he can twist ambience into discomfort, and at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways. Consequently, Shards brings many twists and turns: at times soothing, at others tense, and at others still claustrophobic and even almost overwhelming, and it completely take you over as you feel this range of different sensations.
Shards – appropriately titled in that it draws together splinters of Hecker’s diverse and divergent output is an exercise in depth, range, and magnificence. Sit back, bask, and take in the textures.
AA
Aural Aggravation 