I have a bad habit of using Tim Hecker comparisons in this blog as kind of a lazy shorthand for a really full kind of ambient drone, the sound that fills the spectrum, fills the sound-stage, and fills every last cubic millimetre of your brain cavity with a giant pulsating fuzz monster. This is largely based on a phenomenal 2010 live show and on 2011’s brilliant Ravedeath, 1972. And it’s kind of embarrassingly out of date: with its moments of sparseness and its recognizable instruments 2013’s Virgins was quite different, and 2016’s Love Streams even more so. (I’m not sure whether it’s because that gig had made such an impression on me that I couldn’t get my head around the change of direction, or what, but I didn’t rate either of those two albums enough to actually buy them.)
Well, maybe this is the record to change all that for me. It has intense wall-of-sound bits, but also plenty of stripped-back bits, actual quiet bits. The ‘recognizable instruments’ element here consists of the Japanese courtly form Gagaku, played by the members of Tokyo Gakuso on hichiriki, shō, ryūteki, and uchimono (percussion), plus Kara-Lis Coverdale on keys and Mariel Roberts on cello. But you still shouldn’t come here looking for a rollicking good melody: the key elements here are the texture and the dynamics. And while, okay, I obviously don’t adore this like I adore Ravedeath, it is a very pleasurable chunk of noise, especially the serene 15-minute closer Across To Anoyo. And you know what? Despite the more restrained and collaborative approach, this sounds not really Western or Eastern but very very recognizably Tim Hecker.
I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.
dogrando writes about some records 