He lost his religion, but this electronic artist is fascinated by the transcendent tropes of sacred music. Now he’s using it to explore new frontiers – and creep you out on the way
In the white-stuccoed nave of St Martin-In-The-Fields, cloistered from the late afternoon traffic of Trafalgar Square, a choir is performing one of the canticles of Evensong. Their voices meld and magnify in mid-air. Across the church, heads bow and eyes close – except those of a dark-haired man in jeans and a black bomber jacket, who Instagrams the altar window, drums his fingers on a prayer book and, finally, grips the pew in front as if he’s bracing against a storm. His mind, he’ll later tell me, is “swimming on a whole bunch of powerful things”. Tim Hecker, it seems, just doesn’t do quiet contemplation.
A Canadian electronic artist recently signed to indie label 4AD, Hecker is in the business of making experimental music for the unconverted. Love Streams, his new album of beat-free, long-form compositions, is complex, evocative, arrestingly beautiful and disquietingly intense. It’s also built around the pillaged scores of 15th-century sacred choral music – hence the Guide inviting him back to church for the first time since he was 14.
Related: Unsound Adelaide: Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin; Robin Fox; Raime; Trinity
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Continue reading...by Bella Todd via Electronic music | The Guardian
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