southern records

Highly anticipated after his critically acclaimed Harmony In Ultraviolet, Tim Hecker is back with his seventh release of abstract, shifting soundscapes, his second release on Kranky. An Imaginary Country continues from the trajectory of his last album, while also showing us a few more tricks. Incorporating more pulses into his work, expanding his sound palette with over-driven mellotron strings, synthesisers, pianos and guitars. A continuation of Hecker's interest in spectral communications, ambient noise, impressionism and the limits of digital composition, the album is perhaps his most accomplished work to date. Merging from crumbling towers of noise and feedback to gently throbbing bursts of colour, the record is an epic, dreamlike journey that further pushes the boundaries of abstract music, challenging the very definitions of genres such as 'electronica' and 'ambient', and providing an enthralling ride for the listener in the process. At times this album is less overtly aggressive than previous works, but the notion that this is pastoral work would be dead wrong as there are plenty of the agitated crescendos for which Hecker is known. This music backs off from the void of immensity in favor of a terrain of lushness and warmth.

This heat, this work of musical abstraction is largely made possible by the tools of digital technology that Hecker employs. Is it a means of musical production that allows for the obliteration of questions of representation or instrumentation. Synths, strings, pianos and guitars fade away onto the fog of what they once were. A tropical mist (or a northerly breeze) of sound is also a musical resonance of imagination.

The French composer Claude Debussy once said "The imaginary country... one that cannot be found on a map", with regard to the state of musical affairs at the time, arguing music was in dire need for alternate worlds of possibility, this is where Hecker found his title and in some ways the quote resonates through the album as a utopian work, in the sense of the term meaning that of 'no-place'. All the tracks are landmarks in a dream cartography.

Track Listing

1. 100 Years Ago
2. Sea of Pulses
3. The Inner Shore
4. Pond Life
5. Borderlands
6. A Stop at the Chord Cascades
7. Utropics
8. Paragon Point
9. Her Black Horizon
10. Currents of Electrostasy
11. Where Shadows Make Shadows
12. 200 Years Ago

The album is available from the Southern webshop. Cheers!