Review Summary: Shards feels like Tim Hecker's most prominent musical statement in years - one in which he fuses his core artistic spirit with the experimental out-pouchings that have defined his past dozen years of work. Ultimately, it is a challenging listen but a deep
One way to conceptualize ambient music is to think about it as being environmental - establishing one's baseline surroundings. Often, music in that genre can feel light and airy (this, of course, can be lovely). Even richer and more psychedelic environs painted by ambient music classics (such as Brian Eno's masterpiece Ambient 4: On Land) establish their compelling environments in a way that feels voluminously sparse, akin to otherworldly bog-swamps, but with breathable air nonetheless.
In this sense, it's easy to see why Tim Hecker rejects his frequent classification within the ambient genre. “Breathable air” is – quite simply – not the best way to describe most of his discography.
To me, Hecker is, was, and always has been an ambient musician. But one with a unique penchant - while other ambient artists introduce us to voluminous spaces, Hecker submerges us in a wash of sonic media. At times, his discography can feel emotionally overwhelming…even smothering. It's not for the faint of heart. Far from being free to explore a landscape, Hecker subjects us to submersion after submersion, enveloping listeners completely. His music haunts and holds us, utilizing strategically overlayed combinations of sounds generated both acoustically and electronically to bathe us in minor scale after minor scale (indeed, for those unfamiliar with his work, Hecker's most grounding trademark is often this dedication to tonality).
Hecker's musical career arc is worth recalling as a roadmap to help us digest his newest effort, Shards. He rose in popularity dramatically in the late 2000s and early 2010s; his three best known releases came out within 6 years of each other (2008's Harmony in Ultraviolet, 2011's Ravedeath, 1972, and 2013's Virgins). Subsequent releases have not garnered the same kind of attention. To some extent, I believe this was by design; Hecker's musical palette on releases such as Konoyo and Anoyo embraced aesthetic elements from the far east - East Asian court music instruments and gamelan sounds. Western audiences tend not to tolerate these sounds with the same ease as someone who grew up with them – to even a trained Western ear they might sound harshly percussive and out of tune. The past 3-5 years have seen Hecker release music at a more prolific pace. However, much of it has been in the form of soundtracks (these efforts shouldn't be overlooked, but they also tend to constrain an artist like Hecker). He has also been creating more music with others - especially wind players.
Enter 2025’s Shards, an album with hodge-podgy cover art suggestive of a compilation. But Shards is anything but – rather, it feels like the most prominent statement he's made in years - one in which he fuses his core artistic spirit with the experimental out-pouchings that have defined his past dozen years. Moreover, it masterfully weaves us through a contiguous progression of sonic submersions in a way that also - almost paradoxically - feels more environmentally diversified, as if we are being pulled through a massive ocean of different liquids of different densities, some of which sit on top of each other.
Hecker's harmonic progressions largely resemble his minor-key inclinations, although he deviates more notably from this in "Monotone 3" and "Sars Requiem." These tracks are uniquely tense and dissonant, yet effective nonetheless.
For those of you that haven’t heard much since Virgins, note that Hecker has been re-upping his musical toolkit over the years. On Shards, it feels both formidable/strategic and fresh. He brandishes two newish devices with stunning precision throughout the record:
1. Abruptness: Hecker played with this more during the Konoyo and Anoyo records. Shards feels like he's swapped out a swiss army knife for a mesmerizing collection of deadly broken glass.
2. Pitch-bending: This is the newest skill Hecker seems to have optimized for integration into his art.* He started exploring it more prominently on No Highs, but on Shards it's less like tinkering and more like refined building. The pitch bending is a sonically defining feature of the record, and one which will likely draw mixed reactions given how unusual it is (oddly I can think of only one song that predates Shards which uses pitch bending more prominently in an effective way: "tide pool" by Deep Copy - the electronic musical alias of Drake Andersen, professor of musical composition at Vassar).
Add Hecker's rich pitch bending to his broken glass abruptness and Shards essentially bathes us in a distortion of extreme funhouse mirrors – though with a much richer maze and sans whimsical qualities. Again, not for the faint of heart.
Ultimately, the diverse sonic palette that sets Shards apart from most of Hecker's discography is also one of its few weaknesses. There is some semblance of continuity, but it is often vague. In some respects, the continuity recalls a lesser album from Hecker's 'peak' years - An Imaginary Country. We see glimpses of continuity, and ultimately every element of the album references some other element of the album, though these references are far more likely to lurk in the deep oceans of our subconscious than they are to rise to the level of awareness. Shards also features an even more significant change in timbre: “Morning [Piano Version]” is one of Hecker's skeletal piano fragments (akin to the ones he released on Dropped Pianos). Yet it too feels oddly connective within the context of Shards’ hole journey. And indeed, its harmonic progression is strikingly similar to the album's final track, “Sunset Key Melt.”
Remarkably, however, in some ways the disappearing-reappearing connectivity on the album, coupled with Hecker’s more diversified palette of timbres, actually creates tiny glimpses of ambient ‘space.’ In that sense, perhaps Hecker has found a means of delivering microdoses of ‘breathable air’ to us on our journey through an otherwise-breathtaking (and suffocating) artistic ocean.
Ultimately, Shards is a challenging listen but a deeply rewarding one. It is capable of Hecker’s trademark emotional envelopment yet feels as distinct and original as anything he’s ever released. Many mainstream Hecker bandwagoners may miss out on it due to its less-accessible surface elements. However, I encourage even the timid Tim Hecker fan to give it a few tries before reaching your conclusions. After all, if you've made it this far in my review, then you've proven yourself capable of total submersion in opaque media.
4.4 out of 5 stars
*I've seen Hecker perform twice in the last three years, and in hindsight, the most recent performance did feature more pitch-bending than I expected. Hecker's sonic submersions, in person, by the way, are orders of magnitude more spectacular than even what his finest releases can bring us at home. Feel free to bring earplugs to better tolerate the high end; you'll still be bathed in rich harmonic progressions and vibrations that resonate throughout your body.
