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Jun 18, 2019 Web Exclusive By Stephen Axeman

Have you ever seen an electron? Naturally, no. It doesn’t even exist perceptibly. It is something that only exists theoretically, in a state that is constantly in flux, with a definite location notoriously hard to pin down. But taken as a facet of a whole, the experimental evidence is solid. Like all human understanding, ultimately, that which we comprehend is based on a void, with appeals to metaphor and explanatory models that rest on assumptions impossible to justify at their core. Tim Hecker’s tenth studio album, Anoyo, is an invitation into such a world, one scarcely perceived in our day to day interactions, but instead lurking underneath, like so many layers of bedrock we take for granted. Give them their due he says.

With an opening track that sounds like spirits collapsing into coalescence at the core of a black hole, the bass opens chasms into another realm as peripheral will-o-the-wisps flicker around its center. This sets the tone for the rest of the album that guides us through a meditative journey into the darkly textured, sparse orchestral soundscapes. As with its counterpart, 2018’s Konoyo, Hecker is accompanied by a Japanese gagaku ensemble, which adds an additional degree of rarefaction to the dense atmosphere. As with the actual titles of the tracks, the tracks themselves are only fully comprehensible when placed in relation to one another, illustrating an underlying theme of unity through multiplicity. The work exists as something greater than the sum of its parts, an emergent property of the dynamism at work within each track, where the tension of the parts is as perfectly balanced as a thread pulled until its threads separate at the middle, revealing the multitude and the void that exists at the heart of things. (www.sunblind.net)

Author rating: 7.5/10