Tim Hecker – No Highs – Album Review
by Killian Laher

Canadian composer Tim Hecker has released multiple albums and soundtracks, in fact, this album follows up his soundtrack to Infinity Pool which came out a couple of months ago.  It opens with the nervous steady pulsing of Monotony.  Very much in the mould of a soundtrack, it’s a track that takes you on a ‘journey’ over 8 minutes. The motif returns later, with added sax on Monotony II.  The pulsing epic Lotus Light is close to loscil territory.

Some of it, while not exactly jarring, has the capacity to startle, such as the harsh-sounding, relatively short Total Garbage.  The calm Winter Cop strangely enough offers a chink of light and kind of cleanses the palette before the dark, foreboding In Your Mind.  Later on, at the risk of stating the obvious, Anxiety sounds every bit of its title with its insistent electronic motif, while Living Spa Water is the opposite, at times sounding like very little is going on under the surface of the blissed-out keyboards.

While definitely on the becalmed end of the Tim Hecker catalogue, there’s plenty here to hold the interest.

Lotus Light