Your Review
CRITIC REVIEWS
90
While carrying over many of the practices of his previous record, Tim Hecker shifts his perspective away from the dreamscapes of Love Streams and explores a darker spiritual realm on Konoyo.
1mo
90
Hecker's clever ability to shift and adapt is clearly on display with Konoyo. A dreamlike song cycle, the album is more than an extension of the grandeur of Love Streams. It's a refined, focused exploration of traditions both adhered to and transcended.
1mo
90
Each time I’ve listened to Konoyo, there’s been one moment (of sorts) that catches me off-guard and cements it as one of Hecker’s greatest achievements.
1mo
90
By destroying, contorting and reconfiguring these sounds, Hecker draws out the most visceral emotions in himself via soundwaves -- his music being his therapy, and us, the audience, being his witness to his solemn excursion into his very soul. It's all too beautiful.
1mo
90
For once, Hecker has not conquered; he has submitted. Whether the gorgeous, tumbling music is an ascent or descent, we’re probably not meant to know.
1mo
85
While Konoyo achieves divine quality, it’s Hecker’s meticulous scrutiny of himself that allows new modes of delivery to shine through the confines of his music.
1mo
85
On the least dense and most inquisitive album of his career, the experimental musician creates a fascinating dialogue between his technology and some of the world’s most ancient instruments.
1mo
85
That you may find yourself frozen in a listening state is evidence of Hecker's genius and there's always something more profound about finding yourself in that state unwittingly. He reaches for and finds spaces on shelves in a cupboard behind a wall separating you from a dimension you didn't know existed. Konoyo represents his farthest reach.
1mo
84
Hecker remains irreducible as a composer. At times, he brings to mind an ice sculptor, carving out staggering shapes from giant blocks of sound that feel crushingly heavy even as they seem to melt away.
1mo
80
Konoyo takes several listens to fully appreciate, as do most Hecker releases, but it's another excellent example of the distinct mixture of bleakness and majesty which he excels at creating.
1mo
80
Having created his own particular aesthetic over nearly two decades – imagine an ambient dreamscape in the rain-soaked alley between a church and a nightclub – the Canadian composer Tim Hecker continues to hone and broaden it out.
1mo
80
At its best ... Konoyo exists as a glorious symphony that brings together the starkness of electronic experimentation and the human warmth of traditional acoustics into an astonishing whole. As ever with Hecker, essential listening.
1mo
75
For Konoyo, Hecker takes simple song ideas and runs them until they become a totally new experience. Though Hecker ends up repeating himself at times on this album, there’s something mystifying to his sense of sound.
1mo
70
The Canadian electronic auteur spent time in Japan for his ninth record, ‘Konoyo’ (translated ‘the world over here’), and the effect is as challenging and transcendent as anything in his back catalogue.
1mo
70
Bringing a new sonic palette into his discipline of manipulated notes and overwhelming whoosh, Hecker gushes, drones and distends in ways that are both new and familiar.
1mo
70
'Konoyo', Tim Hecker’s ninth album, is a balanced, thoughtful record that can feel at points both joyous and suffocating.
1mo
60
It is remarkable and sometimes terrifying, but ultimately not as impactful as the fleet of musical hammers that dominated his last three albums, each of which raised the stakes for Hecker and pushed the frontier of his imagination.
1mo
60
Among Tim Hecker's least direct efforts, Konoyo at its best is sonically and conceptually rich thanks to contributions from gagaku ensemble Tokyo Gakuso. Unfortunately, the sound-play is lacking on a few of the pieces.
1mo
Hey! It leaked.
"This life" remains the same.
"In Death Valley" the reverberations of "This life" become swallowed by structure and purpose.Where doom and despair reigned freely, now caged and trapped within a body, there's a more natural growth. the track truly builds from what was the remnants of the overlapping sounds of "This life" and ages it into a mirage of water across what is feeling like Heckers most distanced piece. Things begin to fall apart ... read more
"This life" remains the same.
"In Death Valley" the reverberations of "This life" become swallowed by structure and purpose.Where doom and despair reigned freely, now caged and trapped within a body, there's a more natural growth. the track truly builds from what was the remnants of the overlapping sounds of "This life" and ages it into a mirage of water across what is feeling like Heckers most distanced piece. Things begin to fall apart ... read more
You can't expect a build up or a prelude with Tim Hecker because if you expect anything, you'll be disappointed. The experimental, ambient production is sharp and manages to boil up any anxious feelings from deep inside anyone. Although I'm not the biggest fan of this kind of sound, it's intriguing nonetheless and the artistry is something I can admire.
Sorry to all the artsy fartsy critics and stans out there if I’m not too keen to revisit a straight hour of a buildup to a subsequent track that never comes. Tim Hecker is the Samuel Beckett of music.
Oh look another bad album cover from 2018. The album is supposed be good though, right?
EDIT: Right :)
EDIT: Right :)
A good release, not quite the masterpiece some are claiming it to be.
Track List
- This life
- In Death Valley
- Is a rose petal of the dying crimson light
- Keyed out
- In mother earth phase
- A sodium codec haze
- Across to Anoyo
Added on: July 31, 2018
