Praise for Tim Hecker‘s Dropped Pianos from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Canadian dronescaper and ambient deconstructionist Tim Hecker’s most recent record, Ravedeath 1972, was, as we proclaimed in our review of that record a few lists back, probably our favorite yet, which is all the more notable for belonging to a body of work that impossibly seems to consist of nothing BUT favorites.
But there it is, Hecker has tapped into a unique sound that manages to evoke feelings of loss and memory, of some otherworld, some othertime, a music both modern and experimental, but still classic and timeless, deftly casting ambient music as something so much more than simple ambience.
Lush and textural, haunting and emotional, the rare sort of sounds that the listner can’t help but get gloriously lost in, this latest manages yet another remarkable feat, offering a glimpse into the process Hecker goes through to create his record, the most recent in this case, and offering those ‘sketches’ as just that, sketches. While presenting what is essentially, to these ears at least, another fully formed Tim Hecker record, one that had it been presented as just that, we most certainly wouldn’t have batted an eye. Which again speaks to Hecker’s sublime mastery over sound. That these tracks are ‘works in progress’, not the finished product they so appear to be.
As the title suggests, the focus here is on the piano, the sound minimal and spare by Hecker’s standards, trading the often think gristly walls of buzz and crumbling thrum, for something much more stately and sparse, washed out and delicate. But even so, this is not a collection of raw piano recordings, the sounds are already blurred and bleary, sun dappled and crystalline, seems impossible these could be untouched original recordings. But even with a minimal amount of processing, the tracks here have already been transformed, gauzy soft focus squalls of swirling piano, give way to haunting funereal ballads, rife with creaks and thumps and various other room sounds.
The low notes stretched out into deep resonant rumbles, laced with the subtle swoop of muted backwards melodies, hazy old timey shimmer drifts on the tinkling of music box like melodies, the notes heavy with effects, the sound seeming to melt under a warm summer sun. There are what appear to be solo piano pieces, but close listening reveals all manner of subtle sonic weirdness just below the surface, in many cases, those strange subtleties taking over completely, swallowing the piano whole, while other times the notes seem to bleed into one another, blurring into dramatic swirls of sound, tense and dark and very cinematic.
Most of the pieces here are brief, all of them could have been stretched out to fill up the whole record, and we would have happily blissed out to any or all of them, but even so, Dropped Pianos does not sound fragmented, the various pieces, even in their ‘sketch’ form, woven into an album in its own right, culminating in the final sketch, which is probably the most fully formed proper Hecker piece, the piano, maudlin and mournful, buried in buzz, a crumbling distortion that comes in swells, those heaving washes infused with their own melody, the sound shifting dreamily from blurred muted crunch, to ethereal drift, occasionally fusing the two into something darkly divine.
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Tags: Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Dropped Pianos, Kranky, Tim Hecker
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 11:21 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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