Revisit other SputStaff Top 10 Lists:

Bjork | Bon Iver | Kanye West | Metallica | Mastodon | mewithoutYou |

 My Chemical Romance | The National | Say Anything | Taylor Swift | Thrice

Foreword:

Tim Hecker’s discography is a patchwork of ambient treasures, as rewarding to the deepest pursuits of one’s navel as it is deceptively tourist-friendly. As such, in honour of his latest album, No Highs, the Staff team has undertaken to give it the Treatment. Here are our picks! Patience goes a long way with Mr. Hecker, and so we have taken a generous length of time to absorb No Highs and reflect on the rest of his corpus. We hope the wait has been worth it.

Honorable Mentions:

15. The Work of Art in the Age of Cultural Overproduction

14. Live Room

13. Castrati Stack

12. Song of the Highwire Shrimper

11. Azure Azure

Sputnik Staff Top 10 Tim Hecker Songs:

(10) “Music for Tundra”

from Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again (2001)

Tim Hecker’s music feels natural and synthetic at the same time; it’s therefore no wonder that he’s been drafted mercilessly into the ranks of Forward-Thinking Electronic Artists in the early part of the 21st century, with its various temporally specific concerns about the divisions between the kinds of artistic “decisions” made by a computer program and those made by those with eyes to see cathedrals everywhere. Having already made his bones a bit as the ambient techno artist Jetone, Hecker opts on “Music for Tundra,” the opening suite to his spectacular 2001 solo debut Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again, to inaugurate this new and exciting stage of his career with some of the most exciting and new-sounding shit imaginable, replete with glitch guitars and popping little air bubbles of sound and buzzsaw synths, all of them oriented towards a vivid sense of perfectly controlled chaos. Work ethic therefore seeps into thematic material.

The treatedness of Hecker’s various buzzy bubblepops is made to reflect on the 21st century human condition because of its apparent style dialectic of man and machine. Hecker’s structural and timbral means are so clearly drawn from classical techniques of underground electronic and ambient music (that is, it is digital/synthetic/non-organic in some fundamental sense), and yet the various maneuvers Hecker performs on these sounds feel like they must have been fussed over for years, if not decades—what other kind of process are we led to imagine when every individual bubblepop hits like a train?—which lends “Music for Tundra” that classic Heckerian, almost topographical bent, charting carefully the development of life, many lives, the structural persistence of a mountain over time. Hecker’s craftsmanship, on “Music for Tundra,” seems to draw less from Brian Eno’s musings on ambient music as background-and-foreground and more from Ru Paul: if you’re gonna evoke the life of a mountain in its entirety, you’d better work. – robertsona

(9) “Night Flight to Your Heart”

from Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again (2001)

Tim Hecker’s debut album hasn’t ever really “haunted” me, despite the suggestion of its title. While it’s a great record, my listening experiences are strangely bereft of emotion – the only real sensation which the album summons is a feeling of wintry coldness (presumably helped along by many of the track names). It’s also a bit disjointed, chock full of very short songs (albeit mostly collected into larger suites). Within this framework, “Night Flight To Your Heart” has always been a defining highlight, its two constituent tracks providing a much-needed sense of resolution and finality after the nearly hour-long journey Hecker has guided us through. As a closer, it delivers exactly what’s needed, tying into what came before through its gently crystalline but simultaneously slightly noisy nature, while also injecting an appealing hint of faint optimism which resonates strongly. Even given the difficulty of picking out highlight tracks in an ambient release, given the genre’s reliance on effortlessly flowing albums, “Night Flight To Your Heart” is an unavoidable standout. It’s been a joy to explore Hecker’s varied creations ever since, but the maestro found his (metaphorical) voice early on. – Sunnyvale

(8) “Boreal Kiss”

from Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again (2001)

“Boreal Kiss” (Pt. 1, 2, and 3) fills space in the air, but in a way comparable to how contemplation can occupy space in our subconscious. I mean this to the extent that trivial peripheral details like time and location are pushed to the back of one’s focus. It’s music that sounds just as suited to the morning, as it does to midday, as it does to midnight. It sounds like those five-ish-minute periods of time (regardless of it being frequent, or maybe just once a month or so) where you semi-regretfully succumb to existential ambivalence: at best, hope, but perhaps, indifference, and at worst, terror. It all averages out as a profound sigh of acceptance.

Just like the air after a rainfall, or after an exorcism, or after an atomic bomb, there is a lingering presence. It doesn’t look or smell that much different, but it just is different. Listening to “Boreal Kiss” (or much of Haunt Me, but this song trilogy in particular) seems to actually change the surrounding environment, in terms of a before/after comparison. It’s one of very few pieces of music that has occupied an essential place in my routine, many years after hearing it for the first time. I don’t mean as background music for chores, or jogging, or driving. It’s something I still pause my day for specifically, even if only once in a while. It is timeless. – Jots

(7) “In the Fog”

from Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)

As the suite that effectively opens Ravedeath, 1972, “In the Fog” is where it all comes together for Tim Hecker as a whole. This song/album is such a convincing showcase of the man at the peak of its powers that it’s more than a little tempting to look back on his earlier discography and read it as predestined: while his debut Airport Music 2Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again was a pleasant contribution to the tradition of ez-listening, fill-the-gaps-with-ur-emotional-radar ambient muzak, Hecker spent the rest of the ’00s toying with the granular pairing of melody and noise that would become his calling card. These works are all convincing and occasionally excellent on their own terms – who can forget Radio Amor‘s plaintive collage of the ocean expanse or An Imaginary Country‘s disarmingly vibrant chord progressions – but I think it’s credit to the breadth of the man’s imagination that none of them individually encompasses the full scope of his vision.

“In the Fog” goes that extra mile – this is the piece that melds the various layers of Hecker’s ambient/noise/drone matrix into a single grainy marble and rolls it off on the trajectory of a definitive career statement. It’s a gloriously simple piece in some respects – as per most of Hecker’s work pre-Virgins, it does as little as possible with rhythm, keeps its melodic qualities on the subtle side, and takes ever-shifting contrasts of timbre as its primary mouthpiece. Break it down to the most basic terms, and this is a suspenseful organ drone that gradually creeps up the pitch spectrum, accruing momentum without ever picking up pace, undercut by various increments of noise. It very much scans as an ascension, but the straightforwardness of that shape belies that the real magic, emphasised at every stage by the elegant friction of those tendrils of static, is the attention Hecker draws to the depth, the fullness, the tactility with which we process sound.

This suite drags us over a thousand fleeting contours, each a momentary lens that reinvents the elementary side of its progression as a creeping sensory overload. It – both song and the album it unfolds into – is not episodic, as per Harmony in Ultraviolet, and it never allows noise to play second fiddle to melody, as per An Imaginary Country; there’s something epic, seamless and ongoing to its arc, and the only bone I have to pick within the context of writing on this suite yes-this-suite-only for this list is that I can’t listen to it without requiring “In the Air’s” complementary descension-disintegration to complete the experience. More on that one later; “In the Fog” sets the stage just perfectly. – johnnyoftheWell

(6) “This Life”

from Konoyo (2018)

In the very niche but very cool “drone dark ambient single” category, “This Life” might well be the top dog. When it came out in 2018, it also confirmed Hecker thrived in embellishing aggregations of his past sounds with new musical identities. If “This Life” sounds like a mad merge between Harmony in Ultraviolet‘s melancholia and Virgins‘ gloom vibe, Hecker adds in some lil spice with the presence of Tokyo Gakuso, a collective playing gagaku – a traditional Japanese music genre that apparently means “elegant”. Elegant it indeed is, but its ancient character (peepz were shredding gagaku back in the 8th century BC) and its constant pulsation also give it an almost primal aspect. “This Life” is thus walking on a thin thread overhanging both Solemn Canyon and Creepy Valley, but Hecker keeps his balance thanks to his sound engineer experience. Cascading sub bass and strident strings clash so slowly that the track can fully explore the nuances of textures overthrowing melodies. The final result is thus unsettling: solemn and grave, yet extremely simple in the sounds it barks at you. That’s why it’s universal, why Tim Hecker has long been a Major Boi in the Nerdy Electronic Scene, and why “This Life” can at the very least pretend at the drone throne. – dedex

(5) “Hatred of Music”

from Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)

Ambient music is often less about musical things happening and more about creating musical places for listeners to inhabit. The place-making is kind of the easy part, though; it’s getting the listeners there that tends to reveal the catches. If you trade in transportation, sooner or later everything will turn into a limit or a roadblock. Every variable becomes a stormy sea of potential failure, every scrap of context and point of reference an impurity, a complication, a frustration. And if you trade in making things with some semblance of a connection to the real actual world, you’re now looking straight at an antithesis in dire need of some synthesis. Enter: Hatred of Music.

The cynical joke of this suite is that it’s a dead end that knows it’s a dead end, a snake swallowing its own tail out of equal parts death instinct, inertia and spite. “In the Fog”‘s tenuous balance between acoustics and electronics gives way to production so unremittingly destructive that at lower volumes it can almost-but-not-quite pass for gentle white noise. The piece’s first movement is chock-full of desperate kicking against the pricks, all white-hot spikes of digital interference and wailing synths and fluttering shreds of organ.

This caustic barrage is, ultimately, only half the story of “Hatred of Music”. This is an act-two low point (of sorts), not a grand finale, dang it! Cohesion must prevail- those organ shreds slowly but surely stitch back together, the chaos is muscled ever-further into the mix’s blinding high end until it finally succumbs to the placid, chilly “Analog Paralysis, 1978”. The tantrum is unable to sustain itself, and Hecker is once more the somber steward of Ravedeath, 1972‘s sonic world. In the end, The only way out is through. “Hatred of Music”‘s brutal charting of option paralysis is crucial context for not just the final rapture of “In the Air”, but for much of the space that realism now has in modern ambient.  – Kompys2000

(4) “In the Air”

from Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)

One of the lengthier pieces in Tim’s catalog, “In the Air” stretches over three parts, building a shy yet lush ambiance in the process. The late night piano chords and discreet strings start growing in the first part, only to unfold a meandering drone that segues into the second one. The synth washes and sound manipulations leave some hazy note changes to carry you along. As they gently fade, the final segment brings forth glacial piano leads alongside haunting electronic bits that have since become one of Hecker’s trademarks. This three-part suite offers a good summary of what to expect from his music and the beautifully confused state it often leaves you in. – insomniac15

(3) “Borderlands”

from An Imaginary Country (2009)

Rap game Tim hecker haters stay sayin gotta hand it to him

Man folds bucks like a buckwild Benedict Anderson saying shits imaginary can’t say that’s panderin

Maybe that’s why ladies always sayin I’m not a fan of him

Y’all pickin from a slim deck young tim heck I’m the commander man

Scarin the hoes like I was Danny brown

I’m a man of many sounds polyambient

All my haters listen to pan American y’all better learn how to be a man again

Crossin through the borderlands I’m like throwin more than hands. not even a sorta fan.

Wrote the book on piano gore that’s inherent in the hammer.

My musique concrete turn any field recording into a slammer.

No highs, my phone book got like no guys, imma throw dice until the right decision is made

It’s a mix of random and ordered man.

That’s how all art is all art is a borderland

It’s just about who can afford to hand over the requisite level of uhhh responsibility

While keepin open the uhhhh possibility that like your instincts might be on point like Jokic’s.

My sounds resonate in all directions and my phone book got like no bitches

It’s empty my music cause like ten thousand erections due to the low pitches and twenty other sonic strategies I deploy to create physical reactions.

Y’all acting like literal batshit the piano is a literal captive of the intentions of the humans who play it.

Y’all don’t gotta say shit if you don’t like the game quit.

I’ve been on my fame tip if you identify as a lame you better dip before I aim that shit.

Black Francis couldn’t tame this whip.

Kevin Parker couldn’t order this borderline.

Timothy Hecker, new age Hannibal Lecter, work smart not hard stay playin checkers

I wouldn’t expect her until next time.

Always focused on the next scheme rhyme or otherwise.

I always get mad when my girlfriend hang out with other guys but it’s like whatever dude.

Yeah that’s bars. – robertsona

(2) “Dungeoneering”

from Harmony in Ultraviolet (2006)

Tim Hecker’s forebears imagined, nay, recognized music as something that could flourish by fading into the background while you think about and do other things, at the dawn of what might fairly be called the ‘age of cultural overproduction’. In the thick of said age, Hecker masterminded another paradigm shift, realizing the extent to which music can consume you entirely when you think and do nothing at all. “Dungeoneering”, an immediate album highlight in a genre built not to have any, expands on his early experiments with rhythm- “I’m Transmitting Tonight” and “The Work of Art…” both prickle against their core pulsations, attempting to evade concrete tempo even as they define themselves by it. The breakthrough here is in learning to let go: rather than disrupting the throbbing keyboard line that introduces the track, Hecker surrenders to it, inspecting it closer and closer until it blurs out into every corner of his vision. Follow it closely, and the whole thing opens up around you. Let your mind wander for even a moment, though, and it’s suddenly a dazzling sleight-of-hand: at first, there was a meter, and now there seemingly isn’t. Either way, it’s a dungeon crawl you won’t soon forget. – Kompys2000

(1) “I’m Transmitting Tonight”

from Radio Amor (2003)

Inside a room, that might be in Belarus, or Kosovo, or in a basement five blocks down from your own abode, a piano starts playing. Tuning one’s radio to the correct frequency may yield access, but it also may not. A stately, urgent allegro, the inelegant twitter of grace notes, an instrument aware of its own ephemerality – minor deviation in tuning will impair the vibrant, plangent sounds, creating something that sounds blurry, indistinct. Is it decay? Broken, interference – A small town in Ireland, local legend / lore: one year the church bells failed. A locally-living recording enthusiast, who committed natural sounds to tape, offered a recording he had made as a placeholder measure, but his replication was so good that visitors to the town – and indeed some of its residents – thought the bells working, and the sonorous comfort of “their” chime was often commented on. It was only with a decade’s worth of repeated plays that it started to degrade, as it inevitably had to. The bells have since been replaced. This seems profound to me, though I cannot articulate why. I grew up in a place where life was almost dictated by church bells, insidiously, as one stops noticing their tintinnabuli until lonely snatches, when the air is still and the moon blazing, at midnight, in perfect fidelity, making one recall what was underneath all along, but suppressed, a love, a love lost, a hatred, a grievance, so enmeshed that it exists inside you always, noticed only in rare times of solitude and self-reflection. The piano plays on. The melody lingers in the mind’s recesses. It plays long after the need for it or interest in it has peaked or reached final denouement. The same pirouette, again and again and again, only now it’s no longer for you, and it plays and it plays and it plays until:. The piano stops playing. The only evidence it was ever there, of the specific congregation of notes, is in memory; whether dimly recalled or rendered in rich vividity, and the room is silent, though some swear, late at night, they can hear echoes. I’m transmitting it tonight.  – Winesburgohio

Listen on Spotify:

Follow us on…

Facebook
Twitter