Tim Hecker’s Spiritual Transition Through Life And Death In Konoyo

Tim Hecker | Konoyo | Kranky

Release Date: 28 September 2018

Written by Jenna Dreisenstock

Konoyo; the living – an intangible atonement, tender repentance and anxious summation of a soul in limbo – to resolve and make peace within the shroud of isolation; the opportunity so gracefully afforded to the acceptance of death as a phantasm in the other-world. To explore the tasks in which the space of limbo resolves, and allow a final chance as a transition to Anoyo, the land of the dead looms ever faster. A spectral lucid slumber in loving embrace; to those whose hands shake and fade as the light engulfs, to know they are leaving – resolved.

Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker returns with his album ‘Konoyo‘ steeped in the narrative of a film which itself lies in limbo; Konoyo sculpts the spirit world within his exceptional sound artistry as the album transitions from the living the dead; in both anxiety and acceptance, Hecker produces a score to the spectres who are passing between unknown worlds.

Spectral swells in a phantasm glow, iridescent in apparitions trapped in ambience opens ‘In Death Valley’ the eerie cold-body illuminating in polyphonic experimentation; the seemingly sporadic yet placated traditional samples chiming in an unearthly, progressive soak as the studded wooden radiation spills in raw experiments with timbre – the firefly cry of the electronic moon beaming. Self-assurance in a curious strength, the statement of heavy percussion peering through; the one stop of a heart-beat, the double bypass into a tender ambience. Honeyed in a melancholia within the chest, the track allows a sense of hopeful observation, science-fiction mesmer within a strange planet – a planet of one’s own. The ambient drone in blood-clot stop haunts in alien abduction, a cautious examination of the desolation and simultaneous wonder in a new world.

‘Keyed Out’ introduces itself with a supernatural drone; the gaze as one shivers in the eerie slender of the calm in afterlife shock. An otherworldly suspicion is the realisation of the shroud, the ghostly ambience of the track humming in a pervasive underground vibrate; a chilling oscillation in the melancholic chime of lost spirits – an anxiety shimmering in chill beneath the skin. The icy fingers crawl inch by inch down the protrusion of an illusory, pale spine, sci-fi synth buzz in climatic drive. The tinkering of chimes as broken, restless souls engulfed in an underworld-soundscape – the use of both electronic and traditional instrumental dynamics in a shattering transition.

Beckoning celestial in both the burn of ice cold lightness; a feather being reach graces the introduction of ‘A sodium codec haze’ – the chill of angels crying out, ritually, in gothic phantasm; drawn, hand by hand, into a blinding light: a loving yet woeful repentance as a shrill anxiety of the atmosphere draws the listener in; toward a nervous yet insightful understanding of peace in the incorporeal – the metaphysical. Rest. A climatic cry stuns as an engulf of searing light, deities calling in both repentance and resistance; the layered, electronic ambience an atmospheric embrace of atonement in a heartbreaking narrative. The transition between life and death spiritual both in terror and an understanding that lies with the fading ribcage. An anxiety so precious, the textural world tender in it’s terror as one crosses the border.

The narrative in which Hecker has created through his willingness to explore such a raw darkness and bittersweet light, leads the listener on a journey through a world imagined yet anxiously relatable. The transition in time, in limbo – in the unresolved and fear of unknown; to acceptance and eventual transition; Konoyo produces a true artwork in narrative, with a story so carefully and beautifully crafted one is engulfed in it’s haunting atmosphere.

With each track of the album, the narrative runs clear.
To follow each track as a narrative we read:

This life In Death Valley Is a rose petal of the dying crimson light Keyed out In mother earth phase A sodium codec haze Across to Anoyo.

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