- For some time, experimental electronic musician Tim Hecker has been struggling with choice. His last record, Love Streams, was -in many ways- ruled by restraint, the work of a man who felt compelled to say no to an awful lot of what could have found its way into the music. The idea being that by digging through the detritus, distilling out all the impurities, what would be left would be truly meaningful. To hear Hecker speak of it, it sounded like a desperate search: to restore meaning to a world drowned in overabundance. As a fairly prolific producer, working in abstract, ambient, collage styles and in a time where making music, especially electronic music has become easier and easier, it’s, well, easy to see his point.
Hecker is an enthusiastic collaborator, perhaps it stems from the same urge: reaching out to find a meaning which he feels that he can’t provide himself. On Love Streams he worked with an Icelandic choir and searched for the elegance attained by renaissance composer Josquin De Prez. The results were quieter, sparser and of a more crystalline beauty than most of Hecker’s extensive back-catalogue, though much of that description -it must be stressed- can only be understood when judged against Hecker’s own standards.
I’d forgive you for thinking I’m reviewing a two-year-old record here, but it is quite useful in understanding Hecker’s latest, Konoyo. His search for meaning in clarity and simplicity has only become more urgent and poignant. Not least because he was inspired, perhaps driven, by recent conversations he’d had about -in his words- ‘the banal density of modern music’, with a close friend who’d subsequently passed away. Collaborating again, it almost seems too obvious, or overly demonstrative, for Hecker to move to a small temple on the fringes of Tokyo and work with the Tokyo Gakuso ensemble. Founded by contemporary imperial court musician Tadamaro Ohno and specialising in gagaku, the music of the court since ancient times, the name of the style literally means ‘elegant music’. Where else would you turn to find the simple, perfect, musical gesture?
As I said though, you have to judge these things by Hecker’s standards, filter it through the lense of his understanding. Hecker never was and by the evidence of Konoyo, is unlikely to ever come even close to being a minimalist. Much more than was the case with the choral voices of Love Streams the volume of Hecker’s music engulfs the contributions of his collaborative partner. Engulf seems like a great way of describing album opener and nine-minute ‘single’ This Life, which builds like the most epic post-rock, in amongst which you can hear all the different instruments surging back and forth with the electronics. It’s possible that much of Hecker’s concern for simplicity and elegance stems from an inability to resist just drowning his music and that of his partners in an ambient chaos.
This isn’t to say that Konoyo doesn’t work, a track like This Life seems more like a nirvana of moving parts, contributing to a neatly revolving cosmos of sound. I was a little surprised when I thought about it: for all of the noise, this is an elegant gesture. Konoyo, which means ‘this world’, does indeed appear to try and illustrate all there is: from the savage, metallic stabs of Keyed Out, to the vanishing, elegaic ambience of A Rose Petal Of The Dying Crimson Light and the calm, river of sounds that is Mother Earth Phase.
I don’t know where Konoyo will satisfy Tim Hecker in his own journey, searching for meaning in music. For my own purposes and to harp on a point, there’s an awful lot to digest for something which was conceived as a work of minimal gestures. However, the moments of revelation, where the pattern coheres, are worth the price of admission alone: how many ambient artists can actually say they successfully demonstrate their concepts in their music? I hope Hecker can find some satisfaction in that.
- Chris Cobcroft.