Tim Hecker - Love Streams (4AD) 2016
8
Here is the sound of a dark angelic mass crowding out the light from the sky while ruptures shake and quake under the listener. There is quite a strain of blockbusting maximalism in electronic music today, whether it be in headphones-shaking chart fodder or the batter and slash of grime reborn, and the work of Tim Hecker continues to play ever increasing odds on building its own apocalyptic levels of dimensional instability. If Love Streams was a film, it would be akin to the beautifully rendered but spiritually bereft manifestation of pain that was The Revenant. As with the music of Visionist and Burial, disembodied voices tumble like lost souls into your head, but here they come in waves which aim to batter and overwhelm with IMAX precision and fury. The grandiosity is bracing, but can’t help feeling ever so slightly empty.