Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 - CD (2011)

Labels: Kranky
Review by: Alex Nuttall

It’s quite appropriate that an album called Ravedeath opens with a track (The Piano Drop) that sounds like a rave slowly sinking to bottom of the sea. Opening with static, shards of synth fade in and out and then in less than three minutes it’s gone. It’s brilliant.



There are two triptychs on the album, In The Fog (I/II/III), which is probably the weakest sequence on the album and then In The Air (I/II/III) which is a lovely twinkly swirling-wind bastard with the piano provided by Ben Frost (whose By The Throat album you should definitely check out).



If you were slightly disappointed at the niceties of his last album, An Invisible Country, then this one is a return to the darker stuff he’s best at. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the climax of the album, Hatred of Music, which has buzzsaw drones alongside a echoing organ that’s like listening to a bizarre church service from the inside of an oil drum.



My only criticism, and it’s more a criticism of albums like this in general, is that sometimes the ideas don’t get developed fully enough for my liking. A series of three to six minute songs with so many different sounds sometimes can feel a bit jarring. So tracks like No Drums, Analog Paralysis 1978 and Studio Suicide 1980, whilst having fucking amazing titles, tend to get a bit lost in the shuffle. That’s not to say they’re not good tracks, but sometimes they feel too short to get lodged into your brain as the best parts of the album invariably do.



If you’ve been lucky enough to catch Tim Hecker live, you’ll know that the best way to experience his music is in one big go with no pauses, allowing it to wash over you, something an album like this can sometimes fail to reproduce.



Saying all that, if you’re a fan of ambient music then I urge you to check this album out. It’s his best one yet, and that’s saying something.