Critiques CD: Tim Hecker | Virgins

With every new Tim Hecker album, hope springs eternal. The Montreal-based composer and musician has placed himself at the forefront of the new music electronic movement worldwide, and with «Virgins» he solidifies his hold as one of this planet’s foremost boundary pushers. His seventh full-length record – alongside countless EP’s and collaborative efforts – was recorded around the globe in 2012 (Reykjavik, Montreal and Seattle) using primarily live musical ensembles with a focus on woodwinds, piano, and synthesizers, the result something rarely heard in the broadly-defined electronic music genre.

Hecker is a master sound shifter, capturing the essential detailed elements of these instruments and twisting them into tunes at once recognizable, and at once completely mysterious and forgotten. He has managed to blur the lines almost completely between the blips, bleeps, and washes of computer music and the minutiae of contemporary classical compositions, piloting his sound ship into the beyonds of a hazy psychedelic ambient shimmering atmosphere.