- Tim Hecker goes back-to-basics for an uncomfortable ambient album that rails against a positive-vibes-only ideology and focuses on the mundanity and chaos of everyday life.
- Few ambient artists have reached the heights that Tim Hecker has in his decade-spanning career. Past albums have boasted collaborations with internationally renowned acts like Tokyo Gakuso (on Anoyo and Konoyo) and the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (on Love Streams), with Hecker transforming their sounds into an otherworldly whirlwind. With the release of his 11th studio album, No Highs, Hecker opts for a more subtle soundscape—focused more on the journey than the crescendo—that hinges on the simmering tension between minimal chord changes and purposefully strained and sustained synth lines. It's a subdued Tim Hecker album, but not quite easy listening. Meant as a riposte to "corporatized," feel-good ambient music, No Highs concerns itself with the mundanity and general disquiet of modern living through ambient music that never quite resolves or moves the way you think it will.
No Highs is Hecker's first LP in four years (not counting his forays into film and TV scoring). The LP starts with a single syncopated and softly staccato note on "Monotony," as other sounds are introduced judiciously, each having their moments of brightness—a high frequency note reminiscent of a siren, some uneasy strings, a melodic sub-bass that hints at a foreboding climax. But instead of getting there, "Monotony" fades almost seamlessly into "Glissalia." Anti-climax is a strong focus of this album, which masterfully focuses on narrative development over the usual form of climaxes and choruses.
The complexities of No Highs are masked by its minimalism. Hecker pairs expansive and bright songs with more repetitive compositions, capturing the beauty in uneasiness and vice versa, and keeping the album from blurring into an ambient haze. He does this most strikingly in the back-to-back tracks "Lotus Light" and "Winter Cop." The former similarly starts with a single synth line, before sharper and more metallic sound layers swoop in, introducing a sense of discomfort amidst the details of microtonal strings and the distant clangs of an industrial soundscape. "Winter Cop" is composed of a handful of chords and a single melody. With its whispery, choir-like synth, "Winter Cop" is as angelic as it is wistful. Coming halfway through the album, it's a brief pause from the controlled chaos and tension that prevails over the rest of the record. It presents the dichotomy central to the project, where melodic beacons ring out in spartan landscapes.
"Monotony II" presents a colorful swirl of saxophone courtesy of Colin Stetson, who playfully decorates the spare synth line of the track's predecessor, offering repetition instead of resolve—an ode to the cycles that define life and nature. The LP ends with "Living Spa Water," which sounds as murky as one could imagine spa water to be. It closes the album as elusively as it began, with several moments of brightness before ultimately retreating into the unclear trickle of synthetic strings and background ambience. Hecker has a knack for creating musical worlds that leave the listener's mind churning long past its end, grasping for resolution, when that very thing exists in its irresolution. His work creates sounds that will outlive not only the record itself, but Hecker too.
Tracklist01. Monotony
02. Glissalia
03. Total Garbage
04. Lotus Light
05. Winter Cop
06. In Your Mind
07. Monotony II
08. Pulse Depression
09. Anxiety
10. Sense Suppression
11. Living Spa Water