Album Reviews

Kranky

The beautiful and transcendental Konoyo is the ninth studio album from Canadian experimental composer and producer, Tim Hecker. Two years on from his last record, the much-lauded Love Streams, the prolific sound artist veers down a vastly different and untrodden path with Konoyo. Drawing heavily from a form of Japanese classical music performed at the Imperial Court, gagaku, Hecker creates a fascinating hybrid soundscape that straddles the ancient and the modern with electronic abstractions and psychedelic minimalism.

Having built a pool of source material through various trips to Japan where he worked with members of Tokyo Gakuso, a gagaku ensemble, in a temple on the outskirts of Tokyo, the innovative producer manipulates and reconstructs this material to form a captivating, surreal and hazy record. Stretched out, eerie strings, faint woodwinds, gently whirring synths, fluttering melodies, jangling tones and fractured percussion bend around one another, creating a textured soundscape that seems to encroach like a low, heavy fog. Dreamy, otherworldly and completely of its own time and space,

Konoyo builds a fascinating sound palette, rich in harmony, droned noise and off-kilter melodies, which feels sombre, formal and intimate all at the same time. The gentle, floating instrumentation of the traditional music merges with Hecker’s signature brutal and decayed production style, creating a cerebral jostle of sonic forces that plays out in your mind. A wonderfully daring and ambitious project executed with style and subtlety, Konoyo is another reminder of Tim Hecker’s limitless and ever-evolving talent.