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TIM HECKER
tim hecker - Radio Amor
'Radio Amor' was originally released back in 2003 on the Mille Plateaux label and was for many people their first encounter with an artist who would come to define a sound and outlast a dying genre. At the time, electronica was in its prime and Mille Plateaux were at almost cult status, with fans rushing to buy each and every release, no matter who was producing. 'Radio Amor' slipped out without fanfare, Hecker had released albums under the less interesting 'Jetone' moniker before, and had one previous solo album but there wasn't a huge amount of interest in him - all this was about to change. People began to talk about this album that was kind of like ambient music, but different, kind of like electronica but not, kind of like... well, nothing else we'd heard before. Tim Hecker had taken his first steps into crafting his own sound, a sound defined by stuttering granulated samples, bending and distorting sound in the same way that Earth bent and distorted their guitars. He would eventually go on to refine this sound even more with later albums, culminating in last year's unsurpassable 'Harmony in Ultraviolet' for the Kranky label, but to hear 'Radio Amor' again now is just marvellous. It's the sort of album that you can't believe was ever allowed to go out of press - it just has a sound, a timelessness that you know gave it life far beyond the status of a tired genre. The record was apparently based on Hecker's travels in Honduras, and the tracks definitely convey an element of sea travel, of disparate elements drifting in and out of the horizon. Shortwave radio transmissions buzz into the soundfield and then disappear again forever, traces of music bubble up out of the swamp of distortion, harmonies and melodies swirl around like whirlpools. It's a distorted vision of somewhere quite beautiful, and when you get to the heart of that beauty it's almost impossible to prize yourself free. An important part of electronic music history that still sounds as good today as it did four years ago, you know you need this in your collection...
