MB Mixtape 2011 .04: Tim Hecker, "The Piano Drop"

No, no, it’s not another list. It’s a mixtape, the finest in innovative, future-forward sounds assembled by your pals at Motherboard. You get one track a day from now until the end of the year, and then it all comes together into the best document of the future of music seen from the year 2011 on the internet.

The cover of Tim Hecker’s gorgoeus and sad 2011 record Ravedeath, 1972 is a black and white photo of the first MIT “piano drop,” in which students push a piano off a roof to watch it fall and break. The foundation of the record is reportedly actually an old church pipe organ, but maybe don’t dwell on it too much. The falling piano or at least the idea of the falling piano seems a better starting place as album opener “The Piano Drop” stutters like a lost transmission, or a dying transmission of something very beautiful.

Earlier this week Motherboard asked Hecker about that cover and what it means. “Certain images just sort of stick with you and convince you on their own that they are the one — that they need to be on your cover. This was one of those things that had a sort of zeitgeist quality, that reflected my own weird feelings about being a musician in 2010.”

Asked what, if given the choice of anything, he would throw off a building to watch fall and break, Hecker responded, “Computer. Because as much as I love them, I also despise them. The computer gives me everything — all my work oscillates inside one of them. But they are also an imperial chain shackled upon the world.”

The Piano Drop – Tim Hecker by Porchnight

Enjoy more selections from Motherboard’s 2011 mixtape right over here.