Altered Zones

Ask anyone: Montreal soundscraper Tim Hecker is one of the great ambient artists of the last decade. We can't think of another producer in the field who's had such an unstoppable winning streak over the past ten years. Stars of the Lid had the highest peaks, but they only put out two (double) albums in that same time. William Basinski had a series of fantastic releases, but none touched his four-disc, tape-falloff epic, The Disintegration Loops. Fennesz and Max Richter are strong contenders, too, but when you line them all up, it's hard to argue with Hecker's consistent innovation.

From his windswept 2001 debut, Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again to the lost transmissions of 2003's Radio Amor-- and especially the blacklit buzz of 2006's Harmony in Ultraviolet-- Hecker's sound has subtly but distinctly shifted shapes, much the way his music does. You might not notice every nuance, but because ambient music expects passive listening, that's a big part of why you keep returning to it: every listen unlocks some new secret passage.

While 2009's An Imaginary Country found Hecker creating an album of pastoral beauty, he's always done his best work in the dark-- and, as hinted at by its title, Ravedeath, 1972 is his most ominous record to date. Recorded in an Icelandic church with assistance from like-minded auteur Ben Frost, the way Hecker scupts sound here is especially eerie. The urgent, vibrating arpeggio of the ravedeath-evoking opening track, the claustrophobic horror strings of "Studio Suicide, 1980", and the screaming, distorted bandsaws on the twisted, two-part centerpiece "Hatred of Music" all ache with chilling austerity. (The guy also has a fucking hell of a way with titles.)

But as foreboding as this music can be, it never aims for a conclusion as finite as death. The record's cover depicts a crowd of men pushing an upright piano off the side of an apartment building. That the album is accented by ghostly pianos, alternately struggling and mournful in tone, is no accident: the tension of that last moment, just before 400 pounds of wood, steel, and string shatters in the hedges below, haunts this album like a wraith, forever suspended mid-fall.

MP3: Tim Hecker: "Hatred of Music I"

Ravedeath, 1972 is out February 14 on Kranky, and available for pre-order here