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by Bootleg Al Every now and then you find an album that just transfixes you for the duration. Upon listening to Tim Hecker’s sixth and most accomplished album Harmony in Ultraviolet I became totally motionless, trapped within layers of white noise, dense decaying chords, whirring harmonic drones and violent washes of synth. It’s a world that I don’t manage to escape to very often. A world where for 50 minutes nothing exists but you and your thoughts. A world of passion. A world of creativity. A world of fear. And above all a world of desire. People say that when you die you pass through a corridor, recalling your life’s memories as you move towards the light. Well I believe that if that’s true then this is the music that will be piped through, the soundtrack for a million emotions. It’s the soundtrack to the life you’ve lived and the life you’re yet to live. It’s equal parts life affirming and life disparaging. It’s a battle between your conscious and your unconscious. It’s the warm feeling that everything is going to be ok but could change in a moment. It’s the mythical look into the enchanted pool of the future. It’s being taken to hell only to prove how amazing heaven is. It’s warm and comforting yet painfully demanding at the same time. By the time you reach Harmony of Blue it’s as though you’re finally past your demons, you’ve reached the afterlife and you’re in that Hollywood state of limbo where you’re confused yet peaceful, the ghostly sound of a ball bouncing on the ground as you revisit your mourning friends. But then there’s the realization that life will inevitably go on without you. The realization that the world is such a huge place that we are all but part of the cycle of nature and the continuation of life. By the albums close as we hang on the final dying echo we all realize just a little too late that this was our purpose, this was our reason for living. Drawing upon ambient, drone, metal, noise and electronica, Harmony in Ultraviolet confronts our thresholds of listening pleasure and pain as it challenges the limits of digital composition. Much like life Harmony in Ultraviolet forcibly lacks structure. At one moment soothing and another disturbing. Harmony in Ultraviolet follows no overarching process, no underlying narrative. And in that sense this album can be viewed as a work of total destruction, embracing indeterminacy as an aesthetic ideal. |
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TIM
HECKER - HARMONIES IN ULTRAVIOLET