Top 5 electronic albums of 2013

Reviews by Chris Dart, Jesse Kinos-Goodin, Nicolle Weeks

1. Tim Hecker, Virgins

 

Tim Hecker’s Virgins is a lot of things, but an easy, passive listening experience is not one of them. Hit play, put on headphones and Hecker’s earthy electronic production permeates your head, forcing you to listen completely free from other distractions. Even if you don’t give in right away, over the course of 12 songs and 48 minutes, Hecker will fill your head with such a lush, cinematic soundscape that you won’t have much choice. Synths vibrate and soar, sounds fade between left and right ear drums, and mysterious noises are introduced as quickly as they disappear. His songs can be uplifting, moody or violent, sometimes all at the same time, and together it is nothing short of breathtaking. This is music at its utmost ambient. — Jesse Kinos-Goodin

LISTEN

audio Tim Hecker

Virgins

Tracklist

Streaming until Jan. 19

Musique Non Stop | eMusic Electronica

---

Tim Hecker, Virgins Posted: 14 Oct 2013 01:00 AM PDT A master craftsman of minimalist and thrillingly modern music Canadian producer Tim Hecker’s JUNO Award-winning LP from 2011, Ravedeath, 1972 was the (augmented) result of one day of recording in a Reykjavik church, the pipe organ both its foundation and the fount of the album’s malevolent darkness and breathtaking, cavernous intensity. With his follow-up, Hecker cements his reputation as a master craftsman of minimalist and thrillingly modern, deeply (if unintentionally) devotional music for our digital and secular age, of a kind that recalls an update of Debussy’s “Submerged Cathedral” by John Carpenter and Ligeti. This ecclesiastical ambience is underlined by track titles such as “Virginal I” (and “Virginal II”), “Incense at Abu Ghraib” and the two-part “Stigmata.” For Virgins, Hecker recorded mostly live during three sessions in Seattle, Montreal and again in Reykjavik, using piano, woodwind and synthesizers to his transportive ends. These 12 compositions have a simultaneous illusory, endlessly shape-shifting quality and a sharp-edged, crystalline brilliance, both of which have both been explored by other cosmic-house producers (Rustie, Oneohtrix Point Never, Blanck Mass), but it’s Hecker’s conceptual nous that puts him ahead of the game. Impossible though it may be to map the world of Virgins — with its radiant drone and urgent, interlocking rhythmic loops, its crosscurrents of joyously cacophonous harpsichords, its ominous, white-noise hissing, elegant piano interludes and occasional thick crackle which sounds like a radio transmission from deep space — that world has a monumental physical presence. Hecker’s latest is literally awesome.