Review posted on beardrock.com
Previous to receiving the promo, I'd been checking Kranky's site every hour for a pre-order, looking around online for places that I might get to hear a brief sample and swearing at my laptop, basically anything I thought might get me closer to having the damn thing. I am not a music journalist and have no real intention of being one (this is the first review I've ever written), I am a listener. And it was in that frame of mind that I wanted to write this piece.
“Ravedeath, 1972”, the latest release by Canadian musician Tim Hecker, is for many, one of the most anticipated records that will come out this year. I'd already been given a slight idea into the direction this album was going to take at last year's brutal ATP performance, but if anything it merely showed half of the picture.
Hecker has really pulled off something magical here. Opening track “Piano Drop” sets the mood with a surge of overdriven bass gradually giving way to the shards of a looping melody that takes the foreground of the track and focus of the listener. The use of a church organ gives everything a really organic feel and while the original recordings have been manipulated into new forms, nothing strays so far as to forget what lies at the heart. The textures are as much abrasive as they are soothing, the bass notes envelop the listener, whilst the high end keep you on your toes, waiting for the next transition.
And it's the transitions that really make this album for me. The track names are, in the same way as previous offerings “Harmony In Ultraviolet” and “Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again”, separated into several phases, namely “In The Fog I-III” and “Hatred Of Music I-II” and the movements are so seamless that no sooner have you pressed play, you've reached the end of this 52 minute record, wondering where the time went.
Ben Frost is credited in lending a hand in engineering, as well as performance duties on the album and his presence is really felt on closers “In The Air I-III”. In fact when comparing “Ravedeath, 1972” to another release or artist, Frost might be a good starting point in describing the overall feel of the album, as both seem to have been preoccupied with a vision of using traditional acoustic instrumentation is creating a contemporary sound in recent releases.
I feel a bit cringe-worthy saying this, but for fans of ambient and Hecker's work, this album is faultless. I've listened to it on headphones, a stereo and through the terrible speaker on my laptop and it just seems that every single note was meticulously written in the perfect place. We are only in the second month of 2011 and I already feel like I will be hard pushed to find a better album to come out this year.
Writer: endote
