Artist: Tim Hecker
Tim Hecker is strongly associated with the avant-garde electronic world of experimental ambient, glitch and microsound, along with artists Fennesz, Ben Frost, Oneohtrix Point Never and William Basinski. Although Hecker has a heavy reliance on synthesis for post-processing, his source material is often real instrumentation, such as pianos and guitars. On his 2016 album, Love Streams, Tim Hecker worked collaboratively with experimental electronic artist and classical composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and the Icelandic Choir Ensemble.
That Tim Hecker recently completed a doctorate on the history of noise in the Communications department at McGill University is fitting. Since 2001’s Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again, Hecker has been devoted to exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance and melody with his constantly shifting structures of sound. Hecker’s music, described variously as “tectonic colour plates” and “cathedral electronic music”, often takes instruments, such as choirs, pianos and woodwind instruments, and blends them with complex programming. Sometimes these experiments conjure cinematic post-human visions of the future. At other times songs feel almost prehistoric and even pre-human, conjuring a slow shift over textured landscapes millions of years old.
Hecker’s signature sound is achieved, in large part, through the adoption of granular synthesis. Within granular synthesis, incoming audio, such as a flute or choir, is broken apart and played back in millions of pieces, or “grains”. These grains can be played back at the same time, overlapped, reversed, or otherwise manipulated with their own parameters. Granular synthesis can be used to create bizarre pitch-shifting effects, complex drones, or stutters, amongst many other possibilities.
This multi-faceted use of granular synthesis, particularly in conjunction with real instrumentation, such as flutes, or pianos, is most clearly evidenced in Hecker’s 2016 album, Love Streams. “Obsidian Counterpoint”, the album’s opening track, begins with a rhythmic synthesiser heavily treated with delay and reverb. This serves as the track’s underlying rhythm and backbone.
At around 27 seconds, a flute suddenly enters. Although melodic in it’s own right, it’s original recording has been sliced into grains using granular synthesis, and it’s parts are played back at different times, often overlapping, and at different intervals, creating a glitchy, staccato-like tone. At the tail-end of these staccato-like stabs is another hallmark of granular synthesis — a metallic, hiss-like quality. By 57 seconds, the flute has become even more metallic, and several notes sound more like the clanging of metal-on-metal than a flute.
At 1:06, a loud marimba-type sound enters. It’s even more noticeably treated by granular synthesis. Rather than being chopped up for a glitchy, overlapping staccato effect, the original marimba-type sound has an accompanying hissing sound, something like a rain stick, but more metallic. The sound, overall, is very complex and hard to describe. As it develops over the next minute, some notes sound less like a marimba, and more like a heavily-hit piano. Around 2 minutes the marimba sound transforms into the piano, and the reverb decay is stretched, accentuating the metallic effect. Quick successions of tripled high notes, recognisably a piano, also enter.
By the 3 minute mark, Hecker seems to have grown bored of this interplay. His original structure fades and is replaced by a very low sub pulse and a high-pitched organ. This is a classic combination for Hecker, frequently featured on previous releases, such as An Imaginary Country. Soon though, the flute returns, although far more subdued, and the song becomes interspersed with cracking, fire-like sounds, or perhaps the banging of sticks on the wall of a deep tunnel. These cracking sounds also have the same microsound, metallic-quality so common in granular synthesis. They’ve also been treated with a liberal dose of distortion and bit-crushing.
Eventually the organ rises, and the song hits it’s apotheosis in a blaze of shifting, partial-organ, noise drones. It’s a fitting ending to a song that heavily works with the interplay between the real and synthetic, and a fascinating song throughout.
Check it out below:
