TIM HECKER Vinilo y CD

Review: Noted as a "beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue" (we're looking at you, Spotify) Tim Hecker's No Highs is a righteous paean for what ambient music should be. And that certainly isn't mindful background music for turning you, the listener, into the best and most productive capitalist you can possibly be. Instead, Hecker's latest invites considered and focused listening; an alternative to the mediated, telescreeny musical SSRIs that impose on us today. A world turned upside down, the album presents highlights such as 'Lotus Light', 'Pulse Depression' ad 'Winter Cop', which suggest anarchic themes, while also fastening a sense of jaggedness and tumult, in a style of music that is so incorrectly expected to be neither of those things.

Review: A curveball for the ambient artist, 'No Highs' represents the longtime Tim Hecker's focus on the present state of the world. Compared to the textural blissouts of his earlier work, the clue for the meaning of this album is in the title. 'No Highs' is rather bleak and unsettling, reflecting the polluted and chaotic state of many parts of the world - all of it if we continue on the same path. Hecker's usual sonics are replaced with distortion, noise and dissonance, using electronics, saxophone and strings. Not intended to soothe or distract, as is often assumed with much 'ambient music', this is an album that succeeds in confronting and challenging instead.