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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Konoyo draws inspiration from Tokyo Gaksu, players of gagaku, a Japaneses classical music.
Konoyo is subtly emotive, its soundscapes cool and tranquil then swallowed up by blossoms of cryptic drama.
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.
This album is really interesting for two reasons: the type of sounds it provides and the fact that it always seems to build up to something and never does. After some research, I discovered Hecker based this album on "gagaku" (which means 'elegant music), a type of ancient classical japanese music. And I also discovered that the theme of this album is the "negative space" or, in other words, the place where you go when you die. An empty, dark but beautiful place. There's no ... read more
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
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.
This is probably Tim Hecker at his most abstract and otherworldly, I mean seriously the amount of patience this album demands at times is quite challenging. The sounds explored here exist in an almost 'negative space', I read that he based this on an ancient Japanese classical music called gagaku and you can hear that influence in the eastern instrumental elements on some of these songs.
I will always love how Hecker uses disjointed or jarring notes and inflections against the desolate ambiance ... read more
FAV: This life, In Death Valley, Is a rose petal of the dying crimson light, Across to Anoyo
LEAST: In mother earth phase
1 | This life 8:42 | 85 |
2 | In Death Valley 5:36 | 80 |
3 | Is a rose petal of the dying crimson light 3:26 | 71 |
4 | Keyed out 9:45 | 75 |
5 | In mother earth phase 10:26 | 81 |
6 | A sodium codec haze 5:46 | 77 |
7 | Across to Anoyo 15:25 | 81 |
#6 | / | The 405 |
#7 | / | Sputnikmusic |
#13 | / | Gaffa (Sweden) |
#21 | / | Tiny Mix Tapes |
#26 | / | Crack Magazine |
#28 | / | PopMatters |
#29 | / | Treble |
#35 | / | Bandcamp Daily |
#39 | / | No Ripcord |
#44 | / | Gigwise |