Tim Hecker
Konoyo
Kranky
/
2018
CD
17.99
KRANK219CD
2LP
27.99
KRANK219LP
Gatefold sleeve
Incl. VAT plus shipping / Orders from outside the EU are exempt from VAT
Tracklist
1This Life 8:42
2In Death Valley 5:36
3Is A Rose Petal Of The Dying Crimson Light 3:27
4Keyed Out 9:46
5In Mother Earth Phase 10:27
6A Sodium Codec Haze 5:46
7Across To Anoyo 15:26

Experiential composer Tim Hecker’s ninth official full-length, Konoyo (“the world over here”) was largely recorded during several trips to Japan where he collaborated with members of the gagaku ensemble Tokyo Gakuso, in a temple on the outskirts of Tokyo. Inspired by conversations with a recently deceased friend about negative space and a sense of music’s increasingly banal density, Hecker found himself drawn towards restraint and elegance, while making music both collectively and alone.

As with the Icelandic choir he arranged on 2016’s Love Streams, the heights of Hecker’s talent emerge in his manipulation of source material, bending and burnishing it into fantastical new forms. Keening strings are stretched into surreal, pixelated mirages; woodwinds warble and dissipate as fractal whispers of spatial haze; sparse gestures of percussion are chopped, isolated, and eroded, like disembodied signals from the afterlife. Both in texture and intent, Konoyo conjures a somber, ceremonial mood, suffused with ritual and regret. Visions flutter and fade; dreams gleam and decay.

Hecker will stage a series of special performances in tandem with the album’s release, featuring members of the gagaku ensemble on sho, ryuteki and hichiriki, accompanied by Kara-Lis Coverdale.