Anoyo delves into a different side of the worlds established on Tim Hecker's Konoyo, taking its time with a murkier, nuanced journey into the most distant recesses of its creator's mind. It is, quite simply, astonishing.
While Hecker continues to be a paradigm in formulating how sound exists, he proves with Anoyo what it means to extend his means and throughout its cleansing spirit, Hecker evokes a bewitching status, serving as one of today’s continued and top creators of elysian odysseys.
With his second record featuring a gagaku ensemble, famed experimental artist Tim Hecker produces a very different facade that shines through a beautifully minimal perspective.
Despite its brevity Anoyo contains some of the most straightforwardly beautiful music Hecker has made in some time, and makes for a strong companion and continuation to the themes and sonic developments made on Konoyo.
On Anoyo, Tim Hecker stretches out his heady winning streak for another 32 striking and captivating minutes.
The follow-up to last year’s Konoyo—recorded, like its predecessor, with a Japanese gagaku ensemble—functions as a counterbalance to that album: a kind of photo negative, more subdued but no less overwhelming.
Going back to make a new album from sessions that had already been used could have ended up sounding overworked. Instead, Anoyo is the counterbalance to what has been done. These albums shouldn't be compared, but taken in together.
The work exists as something greater than the sum of its parts, an emergent property of the dynamism at work within each track.
Anoyo succeeds on its own terms too: the combination of sounds is still captivating, especially recommended for anyone who feels to this day that new age music was underrated.
Compared to the astonishing Konoyo, Anoyo does feel a bit like less focused variations on the same ideas, but as it stands, it's still an intriguing, otherworldly blend of ancient instrumentation and technological exploration.
While Anoyo's showcase of Hecker's ambient textures, paired with Gagaku, is organic and interesting, it feels like a retread of ideas or an assemblage of scraps from the recording of Konoyo.
Konoyo impressed because it felt as though two diametrically opposed forms of music were coming together; here, they simply fit together as natural accompaniments.
As listenable and engaging as much of the record is, it lacks the transcendent quality that has marked his formidable discography.
Tim Hecker - 10/10
EDIT: 80 - 70
There are scarce moments of incredible beauty to be found here but overall it’s nothing too special. The more intense passages are pretty underwhelming as well.
"Anoyo" stands as the last studio album Tim Hecker has put out (at the time of writing), and man is it quite the way to close off this discography!
Though it shares similarities with its predecessor, this album has lots of aspects that separate it and make it its own unique thing. To ... read more
For twenty years now, the Canadian Tim Hecker has been interacting with sound material through his albums, starting mostly with a concept, an image. After his very successful album "Konoyo", Tim Hecker shows here a clearer and less tortured facet. The album "Anoyo" having been recorded during the same Japanese sessions as "Konoyo", it relies on the same bases as the latter. We are here again dealing with the reinterpretation of a traditional Japanese style, the ... read more
Can’t say I’m too transformed by this, though it’s very cool. I honestly can’t help wanting some bouncy, jumbo beat to burst in all of a sudden. This even goes by too fast, as if it was a book with half its pages missing at random. Not understanding the motives behind what Tim Hecker composes and the order in which things unfold. Not even something I want to reverse engineer and explore its meanings.
Suspense and mystery is certainly delved into. “That ... read more
This album sees Tim Hecker utilize the same sonic ideas he had on his previous album Konoyo but with him returning to his more ambient roots. The album is a lot simpler, stripped back and straightforward and it's all the better for it. The songs and transitions feel a lot more integrated and focused which is great because at this point in his discography Hecker is very well settled into his ultra esoteric aesthetic.
I also really appreciate how this album uses more of the eastern elements and ... read more
1 | That World 9:10 | 89 |
2 | Is But a Simulated Blur 4:10 | 74 |
3 | Step Away From Konoyo 4:38 | 80 |
4 | Into the Void 4:48 | 79 |
5 | Not Alone 3:10 | 70 |
6 | You Never Were 8:30 | 81 |
#45 | / | Obscure Sound |
#56 | / | Drift |
/ | XLR8R |