There have been precious few albums in my life that I can say have truly challenged my concept of what music can be, of what it should be. That it does have the power to fundamentally change our notions of how music affects us. The Disintegration Loops series by William Basinksi had that effect on me. It wandered around in my subconscious and found the nooks and unexplored regions of my mind and settled in, never to leave. The ever changing though superficially drone-ish tracks wove a picture of musical decay and destruction and forever altered my perception of music. And few other albums have so affected me.
The Disintegration Loops have had the same influence on countless musicians as well. Whether they'd already been releasing albums or were still working on their debut, artists took the surreal imagery and masterful technique of Basinski and molded it into something personal, something intrinsically important to them and therefore of great intertest to us as listeners. These artists took to the material in various ways and to varying degrees of success, but the repect and rightful humbleness with regard to the music was there, even if the talent was not.
If this seems like a discussion of The Disintegration Loops, I couldn't fault you for thinking that. That Ravedeath, 1972 owes more to Basinski than to any other musical influence shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who is familair with Hecker's oeuvre. Because to be honest, Hecker has been working within this genre for years and his material has always been challenging, creative, and, above all, has maintained a consistent musical direction. The fact that he has been able to keep his focus and continually release albums of gorgeous, though often fractured, sounds is a testament to his determination as an artist and proprietor of an idea of something which means more to him than anything--this idea that music can, and should, naturally evolve and in that evolution can fundamentally alter our perceptions as a listener.
Hecker builds his latest release on the brief time he spent in an abandoned church in Reykjavik, Iceland. Set down as basic tracks of church organ and built up digitally later in a studio with Ben Frost, Ravedeath, 1972 takes the natural beauty of the organ and has it go head-to-head with the digital manipulation common to his previous releases and naturally allows the confrontation between the organic and synthetic to proceed seemingly without his involvement. Though of course, we know that he carefully placed these sounds and tracks to further his own musical ends, whatever those might be. He's never quite forthright wth the listener but this music never particularly lent itself to that kind of detailed examination anyway. It should just be felt. The album even resists track by track criticism because for all of the specific examples critics are wont to point out, this album thrives on the combative nature of its split personality. The flow from track to track feels so natural that it feels like a disservice to Hecker to pin it down to segmented pieces of music. But to put it in context, the organ ripples and flows around the digital alterations like smoke, never settling in one place for long, always enigmatic, always moving. The synths and drones come at the organic sounds like an ever surging tide, persistent and never yielding, creating a constant push and pull between the alternating textures of the songs. And if you're wondering how best to approach the album simply permit the record to play in its' entirety and feel the enormous power that the album displays and allow yourself the privilege of knowing that artists like Hecker exist, that there are still people taking that next step and pushing music further into the realm of the senses. We'll be following you every step of the way.
Tracklisting:
01. The Piano Drop (listen to the mp3 below)
02. In the Fog I
03. In the Fog II
04. In the Fog III
05. No Drums
06. Hatred of Music I
07. Hatred of Music II
08. Analog Paralysis, 1978
09. Studio Suicide, 1980
10. In the Air I
11. In the Air II
12. In the Air III
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