Tim Hecker
No Highs
Kranky
/
2023
CD
18.99
KRANK239CD
2LP
36.99
KRANK239LP
Gatefold sleeve
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
1Monotony 8:22
2Glissalia 2:58
3Total Garbage 2:41
4Lotus Light 8:32
5Winter Cop 2:36
6In your Mind 3:35
7Monotony II 2:58
8Pulse Depression 2:28
9Anxiety 8:17
10Sense Suppression 2:05
11Living Spa Water 6:47

The latest by Canadian composer Tim Hecker serves as a beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue. Whether taken as warning or promise, No Highs delivers – this is music of austerity and ambiguity, purgatorial and seasick. A jagged anti-relaxant for our medicated age, rough-hewn and undefined.

Morse code pulse programming flickers like distress signals while a gathering storm of strings, noise, and low-end looms in the distance. Processed electronics shiver and shudder against pitch-shifting assemblages of crackling voltage, mantric horns (including exquisite modal sax by Colin Stetson), and cathedral keys. Throughout, the pieces both accrue and avoid drama, more attuned to undertow than crescendo. Hecker mentions “negation” as a muse of sorts – the sense of tumult without bombast, tethered ecstasies, an escape from escapism. His is an antagonism both brusque and beguiling, devoid of resolution, beckoning the listener ever deeper into its greyscale alchemies of magisterial disquiet.