January 24, 2012
#15: Tim Hecker - Ravedeath 1972 I’m not typically an ambient/noise-music sort of guy, but the fact that Tim Hecker’s latest album is thematically based around a 1972 incident in which a group of MIT students dropped a piano off the roof of a university building is enough to catch my interest right away. This “piano drop” became a yearly tradition, after which Hecker named the album’s opening track. Much of what can be heard on the album comes from a day-long expedition to a church in Iceland, where Hecker, with the aid of microphones strategically placed all around the cavernous space, wrung huge sounds from an ancient pipe organ. Later, he and producer Ben Frost fed these tapes through tons of effects and added synth sounds to create a dark, humming cavern of sound.  Ambient music carries with it associations of pleasant comfort, like a sort of sonic pillow on which to lay one’s head, but for the most part, Hecker’s work on Ravedeath 1972 has the opposite effect. This is a loud, challenging album which evokes intense negative emotions and creates the same sort of musical feeling that is usually generated by much heavier music. Sustain and decay are the most important building blocks of the sound here, as Hecker has clearly built these songs around the echoes of what he played in that church that day. As the sounds diminish, artificial studio effects boost them until the way the sound fades away begins to have a presence of its own—a harsh, frightening presence. This record has much the same visceral appeal as the black metal of Liturgy, though it is generated through a completely different approach. If ambient music is indeed contemplative by nature, then Ravedeath 1972 is likely to inspire much more unsettled contemplations than what is standard.

#15: Tim Hecker - Ravedeath 1972

I’m not typically an ambient/noise-music sort of guy, but the fact that Tim Hecker’s latest album is thematically based around a 1972 incident in which a group of MIT students dropped a piano off the roof of a university building is enough to catch my interest right away. This “piano drop” became a yearly tradition, after which Hecker named the album’s opening track. Much of what can be heard on the album comes from a day-long expedition to a church in Iceland, where Hecker, with the aid of microphones strategically placed all around the cavernous space, wrung huge sounds from an ancient pipe organ. Later, he and producer Ben Frost fed these tapes through tons of effects and added synth sounds to create a dark, humming cavern of sound. 

Ambient music carries with it associations of pleasant comfort, like a sort of sonic pillow on which to lay one’s head, but for the most part, Hecker’s work on Ravedeath 1972 has the opposite effect. This is a loud, challenging album which evokes intense negative emotions and creates the same sort of musical feeling that is usually generated by much heavier music. Sustain and decay are the most important building blocks of the sound here, as Hecker has clearly built these songs around the echoes of what he played in that church that day. As the sounds diminish, artificial studio effects boost them until the way the sound fades away begins to have a presence of its own—a harsh, frightening presence. This record has much the same visceral appeal as the black metal of Liturgy, though it is generated through a completely different approach. If ambient music is indeed contemplative by nature, then Ravedeath 1972 is likely to inspire much more unsettled contemplations than what is standard.

10:20pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z-FUayFKGUb1
(Notes: 6)
  
Filed under: Top 20 of 2011 
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