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Music

Tim Hecker Taps Into The Khora Wave

We spoke to the ambient musician about how he's able to keep the audiences attention while performing a live set.

Self-described “sound painter” Tim Hecker says he moves sound like it’s a “plastic medium”. The highly ranked ambient/noise demon, composer of highly-praised and award-winning albums like Rave Death, 1972 and Harmony in Ultraviolet is accustomed to playing in churches and cathedrals but tonight, he's playing at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of their First Thursdays series.

He describes his live shows as a sonic “onslaught” played at “such a volume so people are decapacitated from being able to talk to each other or get distracted. It’s a different experience from when you listen to it on your headphones or you’re in a mall where music’s playing. It’s a real onslaught. You have to make the willing twist to go and be subjected to it. “

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Audiences are literally pummeled with sound. It’s pretty amazing that despite it all, he’s able to tap into what he calls a “khora wave” and read the crowd. “You can tell when there’s no energy, or when people aren’t focused. There’s like some kind of khora wave that I’m perceptive to. You can’t see them but you can tell when it’s not working for people because you can see the dumb glare of them flipping through their phones.”

But he’ll be trying out something new this time. Instead of playing shrouded in darkness and mist, like he is accustomed, he’ll be playing a live score to a 1913 French silent film. Since the show is indeed Hecker’s performance, he’ll be taking some artistic liberties with the screening, creating more of a sound installation than a typical movie.

“I’m going to try to turn down the projector, so that it’s barely visible and hopefully distort the image. Sound is often second fiddle to visuals so I’ll try to flip that around. I want to make it more about the sonic force and the physicality of the sensory experience. “Hecker’s signature sonic assault is in contrast to his new digs in LA where he’s “in a meditative phase between working on new albums, working slowly, aimlessly and joylessly.” You know? It’s like “when things start to calcify into a structure that can’t change,” he says.

When asked if his new environment has affected his mood and brought him to a “sunny” phase, it’s hard to tell if he’s joking, saying he might be working with “brighter palates” than he would if he were living in Berlin, where he might use similar melodic structures but maybe with use a low pass filter on the music to make it more “wooly.” Environment seems to be a moot point for Hecker, as he counters, “I know lots of Goths that live in the most tropical places and make the most miserable music, but I also know people that live in the most miserable places and make the most liberated, luminous music.”

Jesse Ship is a writer living in Toronto - @jesse_ship