Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country

Anyone remotely interested in either ambient or electronic music should keep an ear out for the upcoming Tim Hecker release, An Imaginary Country. I’m not familiar with Hecker’s back catalog, so I can’t really get into how this release varies (or doesn’t) from the Canadian sound artist’s previous efforts. I can say though that An Imaginary Country is a hushed, gentle exploration of slowly evolving synthetic sounds that is as equally beautiful as it is entrancing - the soundtrack to being lost at sea in a peaceful, ghostlike fog. I don’t have a lot to compare it to in my personal library besides maybe Endless Summer, but even that seems like a too-easy cop out from a guy who doesn’t usually listen to this kind of music. To my untrained ear, An Imaginary Country sounds like a more minimalist version of the Fennesz classic, foregoing the acoustic guitars and hissing noise effects for something calmer, colder, and more eerily distant. Really, the song titles kind of tell the story here - “Sea of Pulses”, “A Stop At The Chord Cascades”, and “Currents of Electrostasy” all capture the atmospheric, serene nature of the album much better than I ever could. An Imaginary Country is available from Kranky on March 9.

MP3 :: Sea of Pulses
MP3 :: Paragon Point
(from An Imaginary Country. Buy here)
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