The Needle Drop Podcast - Episode with Tim Hecker

hey everyone Anthony fantano here internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for another episode of the needle drop podcast and uh if you want to support this podcast there are a couple ways you can do so you can do what you're doing now watching it on YouTube subscribing liking sharing commenting all that stuff and you can also hit up our Amazon Associates link linked down there in the description anything you buy off Amazon if you live in the US we get kicked back from it does not add to your overall price you can also subscribe to upto-date episodes of this podcast on our support page for a small monthly fee those episodes sent straight to your email inbox and you can subscribe to backlogged episodes of this podcast on iTunes in this brand new episode we are talking with experimental music artist electronic music artist Mr Tim Hecker now a couple disclaimers here some of you are thinking Anthony you didn't really like his new album why are you interviewing I still have great respect for Tim as an artist my enjoyment of his music doesn't boil down to what I think of his new record and also I had recorded this interview before I released that review and one more disclaimer is that we did this conversation over the phone the audio quality isn't the best it's a little choppy sometimes but a great deal of what Tim is saying pors through so we're going to leave it at that so listen to this new episode hope you enjoy it hope you get something out of it and uh have a nice day to the [Music] episode hi everyone Anthony fantano here internet's busiest music nerd you know who it is and it is another episode here of the needle drop podcast where we interview content creators and artists from across the globe and the internet and in this episode our very special guest is ambient and experimental music producer Mr Tim Hecker he produced my favorite album of 2013 vir as you may already know and he has a new album out now titled love streams so I'm very excited to talk to him about this latest record and uh anything else that kind of comes up in the midst of this conversation Tim thanks for uh thanks for coming on thanks for caring Anthony thanks for taking time on your day to talk to me no problem and uh and likewise um all right let's let's dive into the new record which is out everybody can hear it everybody can listen to it it's out on major streaming platforms and people can purchase it in their local record stores and whatnot um on on first impression uh this latest record seems to have I don't know a real strong note of warmth to it that I think your last two albums uh didn't have which were a little despondent I think a little apocalyptic in a way um you know was it a conscious decision to make an album that seemed a little bit uh I guess Less forboding in a way yeah I would say there's like an intention to like use a paintbrush to like paint a bit of like a a rainbow or some kind of like Horizon with unicorns versus you know some kind of nctr type of setting what I've maybe been more used to in the past and I would say it was semiconscious but it was also unconscious like it was just at this point where I didn't I wanted to avoid like overly you know making overly plotting music and so this is kind of like a frame or a pullback or something and also like fragmentation I was really into like trying to make works that were like you know had some interconnectedness but also seemed really disperate and disjointed and didn't make sense um so like trying to wrestle with a bunch of things that were um you know floating around my head at that point uh is is disjointedness a word that you would use to describe some of your previous material because at least in my personal opinion you know virgins and and Rave death you know your two most recents um they seem like pretty cohesive pieces with me for me I'm focused on trying to make cohesive like albums that work as a Unity or whatever at this point I was actually like well like how do you how do you make something that's a bit more fragmented how do you make something that's a bit more jarring or like has a bit more of a Prestige aspect to it um you know just collage of like black and white Xerox Xerox kind of photoc copies with like bright highdef overlays or just ways of thinking about things differently than integrity and unity and completed and you know trying to make them a bit more disfigured a little bit um yeah when you're talking about your own art which I mean obviously is is auditory uh you throw in a lot of language that to me sounds almost visual or almost like uh you're making references to uh to Artistic studies like painting um you know is is is painting and and color and uh sort of uh I don't know visual representations of the sounds that you're producing something that's in your mind as you're creating your music I mean it's something I really struggle with because on the surface it comes off as like super pretentious Like Music Makers above the music industry relies on visual metaphors to create his thing and that's partly true but it's also partly not you know I'm like it's honestly like I really do come at it with these kinds of visual overlays and like I think about like you know what does white neon look like sonifi or what does like a RoR squeegee painting look like as a musical composition and those are things that given me as much uh inspiration as my colleagues and friends and people working in music or whatever you want to call the Sonic art stepping back I do honestly still feel myself as part of a like um a contemporary art milu as much as I do music industry like I'm really not into defending any notion of how the music apparatus should work like I really dream of another state which is not like words like merch like I used earlier on an interview did not exist like I dream I dream of the obliteration of the word merch and I don't know and also like a lot of my friends would just like visualized as much as I'm friends with musicians you know like I'm I'm speaked in those discourses like um I studied art history like those are just things that have always interested me and I hopefully that comes off in an Earnest way and it's not pretentious you know um because that's the truth of it really when you get down to it well the I mean the the musical arts have just always had a very close history with especially the visual arts I mean especially in uh the the modern music industry I mean just the album cover itself just kind of seems like something that is inseparable from the current Day music world you know if you don't have an album cover slapped onto this uh group of songs that you've put together it's almost as if you didn't try hard enough or something yeah just like you know like like you looked back the early Philip Glass albums like music for 12 uh music in 12 Parts I can't remember exactly how the cover was done by solo wit you know there's like a very much like a kind of downtown man p like community that was like not segregated into these discreet industries that for me is like really tedious like um I like that kind of weird inter relationships with people that do other things you know and getting inspiration from it so um yeah it's just like it it could be a deeper relationship in some ways then it is it feels really superficial sometimes um yeah all right um moving further into the instrumentation on this new record uh kind of one of the big to-dos about what you're doing on this record instrumentally is that you have worked sort of a coral group into your pieces on this album and they and they come up again and again throughout the piece throughout the entire record um you know tell me a little bit about the incorporation of these vocals into your work and sort of you know where where they were kind of driving the creative process um they kind of came in as like an early idea um that came up just like thinking about like what you know how to like what's like the next like problem to solve or like what's the next object to create and it was like it came up through talking with my friend Ben who I work with on a lot of my records just to like approach vocals and so I kind of started just by like working through choir pieces and writing um a really bright digital spin versions of these medieval CWS and I am at some point I brought in uh Johan Johansson who did some vocal Arrangements off those early like pieces and studio recorded everything together and you know took that back to my studio and worked on it for a while like almost like Ping you know paint from a cave I described earlier like it's you know went back to these beautiful blues and Brilliant titanium whites or whatever and then just started you know working on these pieces and finishing them um yeah and uh uh you you you're talking about sort of bringing them in as like oh it's sort of a a problem to solve or something to sort of you know figure out was was there a problem there that the vocals were kind of a solution to uh with the music that you had been working on problem I mean problematic like in like a Phil off sense like just an object of interest and concern you know like how the would you deal with vocals like I've avoided the voice because the voice is loaded with meaning and text and and like Focus things that I wanted all my work but cried to break free from and so you know the earliest idea was like let's try to reverse L him let's try like B sound let's try to be Iceland Icelandic choir you know like how do you how would you do that and then the whole like question of like vocal treatments like how would you deal with the voice would you leave it there would you um obus skate it do you it doesn't even you know sound like it's a human at all um you know these are all the kind of questions that were swimming to their head and you know in the end it kind of settled on some kind of path through that dance along these kind of rdge lines between like semblance and blurriness or whatever and meaning and not meaning you know just just ways of found pie of like problems whatever you want to call it yeah it's it's uh it's rare that these days you sort of hear the voice used as like an abstract sound or piece of instrumentation as you would with um you know like like a violin or just any other uh piece of instrumentation I guess um the the point I'm trying to make um is that usually with western music in in terms of vocals the voice is the carrier of uh the the Persona the personality the message and now in your music that you're producing over here the vocals are just kind of uh no more than just another piece of sound in the mix they're not necessarily trying to give you a uh direct linguistic message or anything like that not to say that you know that's disrespectful of them in any kind of way but it's just kind of refreshing to hear vocals in that way when they're just usually not treated that way in the Modern Age yeah no for sure and I mean I'm not the first person to treat the voice in in a way that like makes meaning unclear I mean there's been junkies muttering in like you know rock music for you know decades you know there's been like deep forms of like himnos that you know muttering or kind of murmuring or Whispering was also the way so it's not like there's any new ground broken here you know what I mean I'm just that was just something I was really interested in in pursuing well the way the way that you had framed it earlier uh yeah sure I mean you know no new ground broken uh okay I agree with that but it seemed almost as if the way you were kind of framing the introduction of these vocals it was almost as like uh it was a personal artistic challenge to yourself yes but in the end that's all it is in the end like that the pink and blue like CD or vinyl or MP3 is just you know just a document of you know a few months of my life and so a work that I made to like make peace with myself and like just try to make something that you know is an offering to the world and I felt was like something uh you know that just made me contend maybe not exhilarated but I feel like it was good enough that it wasn't a total failure you know it's like it's good enough to go out into the world and that's all that's all these documents that's all these albums are you know it's just like a little piece of work um I I want to kind of get back to the the the idea of music and and painting later because I think there are some interesting sort of comparisons that you can make between the two but when you tour behind this material live do you foresee uh yourself incorporating live vocals into the set when you're playing this material hly uh I I did a concert I tried uh I like workshops for vocalists and um had them walking around wireless headsets in the fog and it was like quite amazing thing it was like they were singing through like you know treatment change that I had made and they were like walking amongst people in the audience and it was it was really fantastic but the logistics of like doing that like touring with five musicians is just not tenable like like literally it undermines one of the reasons you go out on the road which is to make a living like partly I mean obviously do it to like perform and enjoy and meet people and things like that but it's fin it's not viable to like travel with that many people for me um and meeting four singers in each town like the kind of D Suzuki live Jam kind of way um purely improvisational is just too much work I would say so for the time being I'm deing with just power instrumental versions of some of this music um I use some vocal treatments but it's going to be um more of a sedgehammer approach I would say for the most part uh all right my my next question is uh uh you know you're talking about this music kind of being a documentation of a few months out of your life sort of creating something and uh you know you're also creating this music within a certain space too uh this is the third album I believe that you have recorded in Iceland is that correct or have you done more yeah uh I've done I think three I mean you should say there been like three that I've like recorded por I like a lot of the time like I mean this is like you're talking about a couple days out of the month or something that occurred there with he you know Studio sessions were done for the most part the direct have been done in Montreal and this one was finished in LA but a lot of you know the early sessions where I go to kind of break away like I I go probably once or twice of a record and it's' taken from a St for sure well I I guess my question is you know what what kind of continues to make Iceland such a prime uh location for you in terms of sort of recording at least your recent records you know I mean is it a uh certain collaborators or resources over there or is just kind of the area over there like it's the above it's all the above it's like first and for friends it's like people I work with and trust and enjoy and fight with and love and and have Vision with that that makes um something interesting L of um also it's like one of the you know great they have a really worldclass Studio that I use and just everything is like is very able and in quality and see it's like a place to get away where you remember what you're there for you know you you're less prone to be on the internet half the day answering email and some you know kind of you know like just distraction it's like it's all melted away you're like you remember after you go swimming in the pool or the hot spring you're like I'm there for music you know and and kind of forces you into writing and commit to something you know if you you don't have infinite time you can't did there for five years Sho I mean some people do but for me like I just wanna I want to work for a while and then move on you know I don't want this some huge burden of like some unfinished Mega projects lasting 10 years Peter Gabriel kind away or something um you know I like I like to get clean and cut my losses and move on and and stay lean and not you know have like intellectual or like work below you know where things are just kind of like pain there so I like to go and just burn it hard and then like move on like it's um been effective and that kind of setting really Fosters that well that that's kind of an interesting look at your I I guess your creative mindset and your creative process I mean uh some some people do kind of thrive in the hustle and bustle of the the internet age and the information age uh but it sounds like you know you personally need some uh separation from that and also uh you know it sounds like it may be difficult for you to work on something then get distracted from it and then kind of come back to it later with like the same kind of excitement this is like less is no less internet mediated than any other like digital aesthetic music I would say I mean I have like sure you know the reality is there's like IM message popping up constantly and like it's like fully it's like I'm not unplugged at all you know it's like even though I don't like maybe use social media very aggressively and like I you know I'm very much still like digital native in terms of like my music production it like kind of came up with the internet in terms of the earliest forms of like crack software and I've been using it throughout and feel that like I definitely do um try to like Smooth over the digital edges of my music like to confuse those like glossy spaces and make them a bit more scuffed sometimes but they do come from a very like computer driven medium 100% drug you know yeah I I suppose that's kind of the double-edged sort of making you know music that is sort of so synthetic in tone you know you're you have to depend on the devices that could simultaneously be a distraction away from your creative process I suppose totally to so I don't like wish for any like pre- interet time or detached time there on even though I do like to turn off airplane mode for like six hours at a time and just like totally go invisible I you know I don't wish that it was the 70s or something they like I'm I'm not nostalgic at all for what was lost really I mean you know when you're album leaks or whatever that's not fun and it does like make you think I wish I didn't happen but that doesn't mean that um you know you want to throw back to some golden age that we don't have anymore you know what I mean I'm like still fully against that kind of mindset uh so artistically do you do you feel like it's at least important to your philosophy to continually be looking forward to the next uh Frontier of where music is going uh in order to kind of I don't know get inspiration for what you want to do next then that's a tough one I don't really know you know it's kind of like whether the art form is really predicated by like it's absolute technological like avanguard right like you you know just go back into visual culture yeah there's like definitely like 3D type of artists who like really Thrive off like the newest like textural spaces in which they model their like you know objects in thre dimensional space or whatever but like um is it really that I don't know I like I question that kind of full mindset like like do I need to follow some theep technological space the answer is I do personally you know like I'm always like interested in like new tools but I'm also really skeptical when I found those tools or like ask like is that something better than the reactor plugin I had like seven years ago or whatever um does it make my music better does it make work was streamlined less cumbersome and Bloated and like the answer is not always clear you know um so doesn't work best when I used my old tools and I pushed them in different ways versus like trying to find a new interface or um you know I don't know it's a tough one I mean the answer is basically like I'm steep in the world you know um 100% And like Taste of like 2016 pop music basically and um yeah it's a tough one I don't know because I'm like a two mon where I feel like yes like very much like interested in like onvelope pushing in terms of tools on the computer art artist first and foremost um but I also don't drink the covid you know that um some of these tools are always un necessarily better you know that's a tug of what I have in my own brain I mean it's uh you know I've spoken with artists who see a great deal of potential in terms of their own creative processes uh in stuff like I don't know virtual reality glasses or something and sort of thinking of ways where uh they can sort of get people to appreciate or even experiment or experience rather their music in a way that they wouldn't have otherwise uh by sort of feeding it to them through this other kind of platform I guess yeah I mean the question of like you know disseminating through multiple new emerging platforms is interesting um but you know in the same way I'm a two minds again where I'm like you know I express myself primarily through Sonic medium like through stereo or binaural ways like entering music into your brain um that resists generally audiovisual like PN you know like I do it but I feel that it's also always um arbitrary like you know forms of visual interesing with music like this could be of like a million things and they would all work and some of them wouldn't and it's like I like I struggle with it I don't have the answer know I'm like I open but I don't really I don't really dream along like platform lines like I don't I don't get excited about composing for virtual reality like um you know some type of like VR goggle or something I'm more about like the audio content of what would be made versus the apparatus is deployed in um yeah I mean it makes me sound that makes me sound traditionalist which maybe is partly true but also not I would say no I mean I it's it's it's it's a point of view that I agree with you know I mean personally uh music is my primary focus and and I hate to see a project where it seems like all the effort was put into I don't know kind of the video game that was paired with the music and the music is just absolutely terrible um you know I I would I would much rather just have a good album you know as opposed to like I don't know you put your album on an app or something and then you ask people another way to put is is like how would the music stand on its own without the technological audiovisual crutch that you're left with right like it's almost the sometimes a crutch that if you close your eyes and you just listen to the music and it sucks that um you know what I mean it's it's not then that Audio Visual in or that like platform is it could be seen as a gimmick to um facilitate underwhelming Sonic art forms you know what I mean I'm just thinking off the top of my head here so it's like I don't know I probably disagree with myself toor but that's what I feel right now okay um let's move on and talk conceptually a little bit here about um about ambient music um which is a term that is is very often used to describe what you do however I personally uh you know at least if we go by the definition that someone like Brian Eno lends to ambient music um it's very much background music it's very much Furniture music but I I feel like your music does have commonalities with what we know as ambient music but I feel it personally to be engaging I feel it personally be very much uh foreground music You Know music that you're concentrating on music that you know you wouldn't necessarily stuffff in the background while you're exploring some kind of app or you have some kind of VR helmet on your head kind of playing you uh all sorts of psychedelic colors to go along with uh the audio that you've created yeah I I mean I always like was kind of drawed by that description and it took great exception to it you know I was like um I like the idea of like you know background objects that sit there and don't that act like Italian postmodern furniture or something and um that's cool but what about like intens of when those objects are examined like focused you know like closeup like full field Vision um how do you how does how does the work you know kind of hold up and you know what's the musical equivalent about and I just felt like um I was interested in like jacking up the intensity of like ambient music or something that and accelerating it and making long form mimetic pieces into increasingly short ADHD like kind of um edits and things like that that um segrate into each other in like smooth and UNS smooth form um like partly collage partly like you know like almost like what if an insane CL poy jug person started you know playing with some ambient PS I don't know like all these ideas you know like why not you know and what would that be and those things were more interesting to me and at some point I kind of became reactionary against ambient like I'm not interested even though like I I make music that I I listen to that's like anything from I don't know what do you call know work through to like I'm a lot of early German synth artist to like uh different forms of deep space you know um that I enjoy myself but I felt like I needed to do something slightly different or it's just like it wasn't enough to just like play a pad with a counter point that of a base pulse or something it needed some kind of compositional or something that just like would chop it in a different way or amplify it or magnetize it into its like microscopic detail I don't know it's like something I struggled with and I haven't felt fully comfortable with that like classification or like that or interested in defending that as you know as my form of expression like I've always felt out of that inner circle um another thing that I kind of want to ask you about this this album and just kind of your compositional process in in relation to um experimental music and in relation to ambient music um what you're composing here just seems so abstract a lot of the time you know you're obviously not following your traditional Verse Chorus Verse kind of structure you're you're actively working to kind of break away from that sort of thing a lot of the time um yeah or or even the idea that the composer sits there with you know paper and uh you know she music and and has an idea writes it and then it's performed or whatever know it's like that is a go on with your question I kind of jump in yeah okay well with that in mind uh H how do you sort of over the course of the compositional process um sort of decide exactly when you are done with a piece per se you know especially considering how vast and how formless not completely formless but you know uh with your songs with your compositions being abstract as they are you know there certainly is the potential to just kind of of go on and on and on for however long as you like really um and and what I've always kind of appreciated about your music is that uh for as abstract and you know again for lack of a better term uh I guess as ambient as it is um it always seems very direct uh in terms of uh what it's trying to do compositionally and and as far as runtime as well um it seems like you know you really kind of have a focus as to what you want to get across sonically in your music and it doesn't necessarily come off as uh overly indulgent um especially in terms of just like the the time at at at and length uh that you put into your songs yeah I mean it's a tough question because basically like I'm interested in like uh things that confuse me things that make me need to listen to it four or five times to understand it those are the things that excite me and I have been you know trying to do music that like adheres to that in some way that's like maybe from a deep distance looks really simple and then under closer and closer examination it kind of implodes or or like kind of like flanks sideways so it's not clear um you know how that was made or you know just valuing things like Distortion and overload or intensity or like physicality or you know confusing interior and exterior spaces or like digital reverbs in real spaces um instrumental confusion uh a bunch of different things like that um would be you know things I've been interested in throughout and have kind of constantly pursued um I don't know it's a tough one um does that get close to answering your question because I don't really know no it's it's it's it's just kind of interesting to hear yeah yeah well it's it's just interesting to hear you bounce off of some of these ideas here I mean not that I expect you know completely just you know decided answer uh uh to that you know but just kind of uh to get you to react to some of those ideas because it sort of brings me back to the painting idea that I was going to bring up earlier you know you're talking about you enjoying music and enjoying the creation of music that uh sort of has that disorienting property to it and has that kind of confusing property to it which kind of makes you go back and listen to it and and and look at it once again um which reminds me of uh uh just kind of the act of looking at or enjoying a painting you know when exactly are you done looking at a painting per se you know uh I guess when you talk about most modern popular music when you ask a question when something's done and that's like a like a question you can't really teach or like pinned down you know it's just like that's like Personal Taste and it's like something that I've always valued oh yeah it's absolutely Personal Taste endlessly not tinkering for you know endless because there's a point where like you can modify and perfect things and you suck the life out of them and I'm like you know I kind of come out of like a you know noise Rock world and things like that are like you distorted overloaded four tract Taps like as a teenager I was always into this rough kind of noisy things and um I think I still kind of keep some semblance of in my work uh where you can make everything like perfect and like add 400 layers of chamber strings or whatever um there's a point where like the 300th like becomes the death now of that piece you know um but 299 is the perfect amount I don't know it's like it's something you can't really pin down and put your finger on you know it's like just got basically in the end I think oh I mean again absolutely it it totally comes down to personal taste you know just kind of the weird thing in the case of music is that uh it's almost as if the runtime of whatever you're listening to is implying to you when you're going to be done listening to it you know uh you could always start it over again but you know you can't sort of sit there at one single point in the song and just kind of enjoy that one moment forever I mean it's going to pass you by at the pace that it's going to pass you by and the only way that you can kind of relive it is to sort of put the whole song on again that would be an interesting form of listening where people could just Loop some 20 second thing and extend that into Infinity you know or a bit more of an engage form of playback um which would be really great actually so if they feel like there's some zon but I often like have like a chord movement that some artist makes and like Jesus that's amazing like they should have done like 15 phrases of that and yet it disappeared the second it arrived H and it's like an interesting question of like ways of listening and Playback and just appreciating music and it goes back to like as early like Glen G in the 60s imagine this form of uh home listening where the listener would sit and splice tape on his own and create like new fragments out of you know classical music pieces that were being performed or whatever I mean it's kind of like a similar thing I guess it's kind of a a a problem that something like minimalism kind finds the solution too you know if you like this one particular sound if you like this one particular idea uh here it is in this musical piece that kind of you know repeats an idea to Infinity with very minimal progressions from the beginning to the end um trying to I guess explore this one single sort of concept and and that's something that definitely you know influences what you do correct I mean you know uh I'm sure they are minimalist composers and producers who who you find a lot of uh uh I guess uh uh who you get a lot from you know in terms of inspiration or just enjoyment yeah like I'm really into certain forms of repetition that like sound like incantations that seem like shamanistic TRS that seem like um forms of like psychelic dissolution of the South you know versus obvious forms of repetition that seem like a four bar like computer software just repeating something ban now and it's like hard to like you know um it's hard to put your finger on what those forms of repetition are like transcendental and what are like merely like the machine just repeating in this like lifeless way and it's it's a tough one but yeah I'm like definitely I come out of like minimalism in some ways like part of one of the streams of things that I'm interested in is like early forms of deep like hypnotic overloaded repetition that was almost religious before it became like kind of like almost the veneer of capitalism or something that it did in the 80s or 90s um yeah and for you personally I I guess you know I sort of uh H it's it's an interesting point you just made there because you know you're talking about making synthetic music making electronic music where you could just easily have the machine repeat sort of whatever you punch into it very easily uh but you're trying to create I guess more of an organic experience with these machines essentially is sort of uh what you're talking about you know how do you kind of make sure that that uh human touch comes through in what you're doing even though you're using sort of uh uh Sy sound I'm not really interested in I'm not really interested in defending like human touch so there's a overhead um I'm not really interested in like defending like humanity and Notions like that like um I don't really care so much like using tools or like coldness or like inhumanness like I I use machines I repeat things using like tools and I do like use a bunch of different approaches and like I would say sometimes like I do like to confuse that like whatever you want to call human touch versus inhuman and I like to you know like one of the things like I asked to singers in this album feel like pretend you're like dead or pretend you're a robot you know and just like what would that be like you know um I don't know how human like whatever you want to call the human is constituted in that but it's like hopefully um hopefully an interesting take on it I don't know because for me whenever someone says like Humanity I just think of like some rational Geographic like or some you know guia type of We Are the World I don't know well okay it seems like the way that you're explaining it you know you don't want to pin your art down to something as kind of defined as Humanity or something with as much baggage as Humanity you would much rather be kind of more abstract than that yeah just playful you know a play a zone of play that um opens up a third space third SE whatever um a de gendered space a you know a whole bunch of things that I want to get out of that I find non Zone I used capitalism a while but like just spaces that are are free and liberated and playful um to me are important I don't know if I succeed in making my music like that but that's what I aspire to all right I want to thank my guest Tim Hecker for coming on and talking about uh not only his creative process experimental and ambient music and his latest record love streams which we will link you to down there in the description Box Tim I appreciate you taking the time to uh come on and just be really open about uh about all of this and just talking about your music can I call you Tony you could call me an an okay really nice to meet you pleas for sure nice C all right have a good one man d great have a good [Music] day

hey everyone Anthony fantano here internet&#39;s busiest music nerd and it&#39;s time for another episode of the needle drop podcast and uh if you want to support this podcast there are a couple ways you can do so you can do what you&#39;re doing now watching it on YouTube subscribing liking sharing commenting all that stuff and you can also hit up our Amazon Associates link linked down there in the description anything you buy off Amazon if you live in the US we get kicked back from it does not add to your overall price you can also subscribe to upto-date episodes of this podcast on our support page for a small monthly fee those episodes sent straight to your email inbox and you can subscribe to backlogged episodes of this podcast on iTunes in this brand new episode we are talking with experimental music artist electronic music artist Mr Tim Hecker now a couple disclaimers here some of you are thinking Anthony you didn&#39;t really like his new album why are you interviewing I still have great respect for Tim as an artist my enjoyment of his music doesn&#39;t boil down to what I think of his new record and also I had recorded this interview before I released that review and one more disclaimer is that we did this conversation over the phone the audio quality isn&#39;t the best it&#39;s a little choppy sometimes but a great deal of what Tim is saying pors through so we&#39;re going to leave it at that so listen to this new episode hope you enjoy it hope you get something out of it and uh have a nice day to the [Music] episode hi everyone Anthony fantano here internet&#39;s busiest music nerd you know who it is and it is another episode here of the needle drop podcast where we interview content creators and artists from across the globe and the internet and in this episode our very special guest is ambient and experimental music producer Mr Tim Hecker he produced my favorite album of 2013 vir as you may already know and he has a new album out now titled love streams so I&#39;m very excited to talk to him about this latest record and uh anything else that kind of comes up in the midst of this conversation Tim thanks for uh thanks for coming on thanks for caring Anthony thanks for taking time on your day to talk to me no problem and uh and likewise um all right let&#39;s let&#39;s dive into the new record which is out everybody can hear it everybody can listen to it it&#39;s out on major streaming platforms and people can purchase it in their local record stores and whatnot um on on first impression uh this latest record seems to have I don&#39;t know a real strong note of warmth to it that I think your last two albums uh didn&#39;t have which were a little despondent I think a little apocalyptic in a way um you know was it a conscious decision to make an album that seemed a little bit uh I guess Less forboding in a way yeah I would say there&#39;s like an intention to like use a paintbrush to like paint a bit of like a a rainbow or some kind of like Horizon with unicorns versus you know some kind of nctr type of setting what I&#39;ve maybe been more used to in the past and I would say it was semiconscious but it was also unconscious like it was just at this point where I didn&#39;t I wanted to avoid like overly you know making overly plotting music and so this is kind of like a frame or a pullback or something and also like fragmentation I was really into like trying to make works that were like you know had some interconnectedness but also seemed really disperate and disjointed and didn&#39;t make sense um so like trying to wrestle with a bunch of things that were um you know floating around my head at that point uh is is disjointedness a word that you would use to describe some of your previous material because at least in my personal opinion you know virgins and and Rave death you know your two most recents um they seem like pretty cohesive pieces with me for me I&#39;m focused on trying to make cohesive like albums that work as a Unity or whatever at this point I was actually like well like how do you how do you make something that&#39;s a bit more fragmented how do you make something that&#39;s a bit more jarring or like has a bit more of a Prestige aspect to it um you know just collage of like black and white Xerox Xerox kind of photoc copies with like bright highdef overlays or just ways of thinking about things differently than integrity and unity and completed and you know trying to make them a bit more disfigured a little bit um yeah when you&#39;re talking about your own art which I mean obviously is is auditory uh you throw in a lot of language that to me sounds almost visual or almost like uh you&#39;re making references to uh to Artistic studies like painting um you know is is is painting and and color and uh sort of uh I don&#39;t know visual representations of the sounds that you&#39;re producing something that&#39;s in your mind as you&#39;re creating your music I mean it&#39;s something I really struggle with because on the surface it comes off as like super pretentious Like Music Makers above the music industry relies on visual metaphors to create his thing and that&#39;s partly true but it&#39;s also partly not you know I&#39;m like it&#39;s honestly like I really do come at it with these kinds of visual overlays and like I think about like you know what does white neon look like sonifi or what does like a RoR squeegee painting look like as a musical composition and those are things that given me as much uh inspiration as my colleagues and friends and people working in music or whatever you want to call the Sonic art stepping back I do honestly still feel myself as part of a like um a contemporary art milu as much as I do music industry like I&#39;m really not into defending any notion of how the music apparatus should work like I really dream of another state which is not like words like merch like I used earlier on an interview did not exist like I dream I dream of the obliteration of the word merch and I don&#39;t know and also like a lot of my friends would just like visualized as much as I&#39;m friends with musicians you know like I&#39;m I&#39;m speaked in those discourses like um I studied art history like those are just things that have always interested me and I hopefully that comes off in an Earnest way and it&#39;s not pretentious you know um because that&#39;s the truth of it really when you get down to it well the I mean the the musical arts have just always had a very close history with especially the visual arts I mean especially in uh the the modern music industry I mean just the album cover itself just kind of seems like something that is inseparable from the current Day music world you know if you don&#39;t have an album cover slapped onto this uh group of songs that you&#39;ve put together it&#39;s almost as if you didn&#39;t try hard enough or something yeah just like you know like like you looked back the early Philip Glass albums like music for 12 uh music in 12 Parts I can&#39;t remember exactly how the cover was done by solo wit you know there&#39;s like a very much like a kind of downtown man p like community that was like not segregated into these discreet industries that for me is like really tedious like um I like that kind of weird inter relationships with people that do other things you know and getting inspiration from it so um yeah it&#39;s just like it it could be a deeper relationship in some ways then it is it feels really superficial sometimes um yeah all right um moving further into the instrumentation on this new record uh kind of one of the big to-dos about what you&#39;re doing on this record instrumentally is that you have worked sort of a coral group into your pieces on this album and they and they come up again and again throughout the piece throughout the entire record um you know tell me a little bit about the incorporation of these vocals into your work and sort of you know where where they were kind of driving the creative process um they kind of came in as like an early idea um that came up just like thinking about like what you know how to like what&#39;s like the next like problem to solve or like what&#39;s the next object to create and it was like it came up through talking with my friend Ben who I work with on a lot of my records just to like approach vocals and so I kind of started just by like working through choir pieces and writing um a really bright digital spin versions of these medieval CWS and I am at some point I brought in uh Johan Johansson who did some vocal Arrangements off those early like pieces and studio recorded everything together and you know took that back to my studio and worked on it for a while like almost like Ping you know paint from a cave I described earlier like it&#39;s you know went back to these beautiful blues and Brilliant titanium whites or whatever and then just started you know working on these pieces and finishing them um yeah and uh uh you you you&#39;re talking about sort of bringing them in as like oh it&#39;s sort of a a problem to solve or something to sort of you know figure out was was there a problem there that the vocals were kind of a solution to uh with the music that you had been working on problem I mean problematic like in like a Phil off sense like just an object of interest and concern you know like how the would you deal with vocals like I&#39;ve avoided the voice because the voice is loaded with meaning and text and and like Focus things that I wanted all my work but cried to break free from and so you know the earliest idea was like let&#39;s try to reverse L him let&#39;s try like B sound let&#39;s try to be Iceland Icelandic choir you know like how do you how would you do that and then the whole like question of like vocal treatments like how would you deal with the voice would you leave it there would you um obus skate it do you it doesn&#39;t even you know sound like it&#39;s a human at all um you know these are all the kind of questions that were swimming to their head and you know in the end it kind of settled on some kind of path through that dance along these kind of rdge lines between like semblance and blurriness or whatever and meaning and not meaning you know just just ways of found pie of like problems whatever you want to call it yeah it&#39;s it&#39;s uh it&#39;s rare that these days you sort of hear the voice used as like an abstract sound or piece of instrumentation as you would with um you know like like a violin or just any other uh piece of instrumentation I guess um the the point I&#39;m trying to make um is that usually with western music in in terms of vocals the voice is the carrier of uh the the Persona the personality the message and now in your music that you&#39;re producing over here the vocals are just kind of uh no more than just another piece of sound in the mix they&#39;re not necessarily trying to give you a uh direct linguistic message or anything like that not to say that you know that&#39;s disrespectful of them in any kind of way but it&#39;s just kind of refreshing to hear vocals in that way when they&#39;re just usually not treated that way in the Modern Age yeah no for sure and I mean I&#39;m not the first person to treat the voice in in a way that like makes meaning unclear I mean there&#39;s been junkies muttering in like you know rock music for you know decades you know there&#39;s been like deep forms of like himnos that you know muttering or kind of murmuring or Whispering was also the way so it&#39;s not like there&#39;s any new ground broken here you know what I mean I&#39;m just that was just something I was really interested in in pursuing well the way the way that you had framed it earlier uh yeah sure I mean you know no new ground broken uh okay I agree with that but it seemed almost as if the way you were kind of framing the introduction of these vocals it was almost as like uh it was a personal artistic challenge to yourself yes but in the end that&#39;s all it is in the end like that the pink and blue like CD or vinyl or MP3 is just you know just a document of you know a few months of my life and so a work that I made to like make peace with myself and like just try to make something that you know is an offering to the world and I felt was like something uh you know that just made me contend maybe not exhilarated but I feel like it was good enough that it wasn&#39;t a total failure you know it&#39;s like it&#39;s good enough to go out into the world and that&#39;s all that&#39;s all these documents that&#39;s all these albums are you know it&#39;s just like a little piece of work um I I want to kind of get back to the the the idea of music and and painting later because I think there are some interesting sort of comparisons that you can make between the two but when you tour behind this material live do you foresee uh yourself incorporating live vocals into the set when you&#39;re playing this material hly uh I I did a concert I tried uh I like workshops for vocalists and um had them walking around wireless headsets in the fog and it was like quite amazing thing it was like they were singing through like you know treatment change that I had made and they were like walking amongst people in the audience and it was it was really fantastic but the logistics of like doing that like touring with five musicians is just not tenable like like literally it undermines one of the reasons you go out on the road which is to make a living like partly I mean obviously do it to like perform and enjoy and meet people and things like that but it&#39;s fin it&#39;s not viable to like travel with that many people for me um and meeting four singers in each town like the kind of D Suzuki live Jam kind of way um purely improvisational is just too much work I would say so for the time being I&#39;m deing with just power instrumental versions of some of this music um I use some vocal treatments but it&#39;s going to be um more of a sedgehammer approach I would say for the most part uh all right my my next question is uh uh you know you&#39;re talking about this music kind of being a documentation of a few months out of your life sort of creating something and uh you know you&#39;re also creating this music within a certain space too uh this is the third album I believe that you have recorded in Iceland is that correct or have you done more yeah uh I&#39;ve done I think three I mean you should say there been like three that I&#39;ve like recorded por I like a lot of the time like I mean this is like you&#39;re talking about a couple days out of the month or something that occurred there with he you know Studio sessions were done for the most part the direct have been done in Montreal and this one was finished in LA but a lot of you know the early sessions where I go to kind of break away like I I go probably once or twice of a record and it&#39;s&#39; taken from a St for sure well I I guess my question is you know what what kind of continues to make Iceland such a prime uh location for you in terms of sort of recording at least your recent records you know I mean is it a uh certain collaborators or resources over there or is just kind of the area over there like it&#39;s the above it&#39;s all the above it&#39;s like first and for friends it&#39;s like people I work with and trust and enjoy and fight with and love and and have Vision with that that makes um something interesting L of um also it&#39;s like one of the you know great they have a really worldclass Studio that I use and just everything is like is very able and in quality and see it&#39;s like a place to get away where you remember what you&#39;re there for you know you you&#39;re less prone to be on the internet half the day answering email and some you know kind of you know like just distraction it&#39;s like it&#39;s all melted away you&#39;re like you remember after you go swimming in the pool or the hot spring you&#39;re like I&#39;m there for music you know and and kind of forces you into writing and commit to something you know if you you don&#39;t have infinite time you can&#39;t did there for five years Sho I mean some people do but for me like I just wanna I want to work for a while and then move on you know I don&#39;t want this some huge burden of like some unfinished Mega projects lasting 10 years Peter Gabriel kind away or something um you know I like I like to get clean and cut my losses and move on and and stay lean and not you know have like intellectual or like work below you know where things are just kind of like pain there so I like to go and just burn it hard and then like move on like it&#39;s um been effective and that kind of setting really Fosters that well that that&#39;s kind of an interesting look at your I I guess your creative mindset and your creative process I mean uh some some people do kind of thrive in the hustle and bustle of the the internet age and the information age uh but it sounds like you know you personally need some uh separation from that and also uh you know it sounds like it may be difficult for you to work on something then get distracted from it and then kind of come back to it later with like the same kind of excitement this is like less is no less internet mediated than any other like digital aesthetic music I would say I mean I have like sure you know the reality is there&#39;s like IM message popping up constantly and like it&#39;s like fully it&#39;s like I&#39;m not unplugged at all you know it&#39;s like even though I don&#39;t like maybe use social media very aggressively and like I you know I&#39;m very much still like digital native in terms of like my music production it like kind of came up with the internet in terms of the earliest forms of like crack software and I&#39;ve been using it throughout and feel that like I definitely do um try to like Smooth over the digital edges of my music like to confuse those like glossy spaces and make them a bit more scuffed sometimes but they do come from a very like computer driven medium 100% drug you know yeah I I suppose that&#39;s kind of the double-edged sort of making you know music that is sort of so synthetic in tone you know you&#39;re you have to depend on the devices that could simultaneously be a distraction away from your creative process I suppose totally to so I don&#39;t like wish for any like pre- interet time or detached time there on even though I do like to turn off airplane mode for like six hours at a time and just like totally go invisible I you know I don&#39;t wish that it was the 70s or something they like I&#39;m I&#39;m not nostalgic at all for what was lost really I mean you know when you&#39;re album leaks or whatever that&#39;s not fun and it does like make you think I wish I didn&#39;t happen but that doesn&#39;t mean that um you know you want to throw back to some golden age that we don&#39;t have anymore you know what I mean I&#39;m like still fully against that kind of mindset uh so artistically do you do you feel like it&#39;s at least important to your philosophy to continually be looking forward to the next uh Frontier of where music is going uh in order to kind of I don&#39;t know get inspiration for what you want to do next then that&#39;s a tough one I don&#39;t really know you know it&#39;s kind of like whether the art form is really predicated by like it&#39;s absolute technological like avanguard right like you you know just go back into visual culture yeah there&#39;s like definitely like 3D type of artists who like really Thrive off like the newest like textural spaces in which they model their like you know objects in thre dimensional space or whatever but like um is it really that I don&#39;t know I like I question that kind of full mindset like like do I need to follow some theep technological space the answer is I do personally you know like I&#39;m always like interested in like new tools but I&#39;m also really skeptical when I found those tools or like ask like is that something better than the reactor plugin I had like seven years ago or whatever um does it make my music better does it make work was streamlined less cumbersome and Bloated and like the answer is not always clear you know um so doesn&#39;t work best when I used my old tools and I pushed them in different ways versus like trying to find a new interface or um you know I don&#39;t know it&#39;s a tough one I mean the answer is basically like I&#39;m steep in the world you know um 100% And like Taste of like 2016 pop music basically and um yeah it&#39;s a tough one I don&#39;t know because I&#39;m like a two mon where I feel like yes like very much like interested in like onvelope pushing in terms of tools on the computer art artist first and foremost um but I also don&#39;t drink the covid you know that um some of these tools are always un necessarily better you know that&#39;s a tug of what I have in my own brain I mean it&#39;s uh you know I&#39;ve spoken with artists who see a great deal of potential in terms of their own creative processes uh in stuff like I don&#39;t know virtual reality glasses or something and sort of thinking of ways where uh they can sort of get people to appreciate or even experiment or experience rather their music in a way that they wouldn&#39;t have otherwise uh by sort of feeding it to them through this other kind of platform I guess yeah I mean the question of like you know disseminating through multiple new emerging platforms is interesting um but you know in the same way I&#39;m a two minds again where I&#39;m like you know I express myself primarily through Sonic medium like through stereo or binaural ways like entering music into your brain um that resists generally audiovisual like PN you know like I do it but I feel that it&#39;s also always um arbitrary like you know forms of visual interesing with music like this could be of like a million things and they would all work and some of them wouldn&#39;t and it&#39;s like I like I struggle with it I don&#39;t have the answer know I&#39;m like I open but I don&#39;t really I don&#39;t really dream along like platform lines like I don&#39;t I don&#39;t get excited about composing for virtual reality like um you know some type of like VR goggle or something I&#39;m more about like the audio content of what would be made versus the apparatus is deployed in um yeah I mean it makes me sound that makes me sound traditionalist which maybe is partly true but also not I would say no I mean I it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s a point of view that I agree with you know I mean personally uh music is my primary focus and and I hate to see a project where it seems like all the effort was put into I don&#39;t know kind of the video game that was paired with the music and the music is just absolutely terrible um you know I I would I would much rather just have a good album you know as opposed to like I don&#39;t know you put your album on an app or something and then you ask people another way to put is is like how would the music stand on its own without the technological audiovisual crutch that you&#39;re left with right like it&#39;s almost the sometimes a crutch that if you close your eyes and you just listen to the music and it sucks that um you know what I mean it&#39;s it&#39;s not then that Audio Visual in or that like platform is it could be seen as a gimmick to um facilitate underwhelming Sonic art forms you know what I mean I&#39;m just thinking off the top of my head here so it&#39;s like I don&#39;t know I probably disagree with myself toor but that&#39;s what I feel right now okay um let&#39;s move on and talk conceptually a little bit here about um about ambient music um which is a term that is is very often used to describe what you do however I personally uh you know at least if we go by the definition that someone like Brian Eno lends to ambient music um it&#39;s very much background music it&#39;s very much Furniture music but I I feel like your music does have commonalities with what we know as ambient music but I feel it personally to be engaging I feel it personally be very much uh foreground music You Know music that you&#39;re concentrating on music that you know you wouldn&#39;t necessarily stuffff in the background while you&#39;re exploring some kind of app or you have some kind of VR helmet on your head kind of playing you uh all sorts of psychedelic colors to go along with uh the audio that you&#39;ve created yeah I I mean I always like was kind of drawed by that description and it took great exception to it you know I was like um I like the idea of like you know background objects that sit there and don&#39;t that act like Italian postmodern furniture or something and um that&#39;s cool but what about like intens of when those objects are examined like focused you know like closeup like full field Vision um how do you how does how does the work you know kind of hold up and you know what&#39;s the musical equivalent about and I just felt like um I was interested in like jacking up the intensity of like ambient music or something that and accelerating it and making long form mimetic pieces into increasingly short ADHD like kind of um edits and things like that that um segrate into each other in like smooth and UNS smooth form um like partly collage partly like you know like almost like what if an insane CL poy jug person started you know playing with some ambient PS I don&#39;t know like all these ideas you know like why not you know and what would that be and those things were more interesting to me and at some point I kind of became reactionary against ambient like I&#39;m not interested even though like I I make music that I I listen to that&#39;s like anything from I don&#39;t know what do you call know work through to like I&#39;m a lot of early German synth artist to like uh different forms of deep space you know um that I enjoy myself but I felt like I needed to do something slightly different or it&#39;s just like it wasn&#39;t enough to just like play a pad with a counter point that of a base pulse or something it needed some kind of compositional or something that just like would chop it in a different way or amplify it or magnetize it into its like microscopic detail I don&#39;t know it&#39;s like something I struggled with and I haven&#39;t felt fully comfortable with that like classification or like that or interested in defending that as you know as my form of expression like I&#39;ve always felt out of that inner circle um another thing that I kind of want to ask you about this this album and just kind of your compositional process in in relation to um experimental music and in relation to ambient music um what you&#39;re composing here just seems so abstract a lot of the time you know you&#39;re obviously not following your traditional Verse Chorus Verse kind of structure you&#39;re you&#39;re actively working to kind of break away from that sort of thing a lot of the time um yeah or or even the idea that the composer sits there with you know paper and uh you know she music and and has an idea writes it and then it&#39;s performed or whatever know it&#39;s like that is a go on with your question I kind of jump in yeah okay well with that in mind uh H how do you sort of over the course of the compositional process um sort of decide exactly when you are done with a piece per se you know especially considering how vast and how formless not completely formless but you know uh with your songs with your compositions being abstract as they are you know there certainly is the potential to just kind of of go on and on and on for however long as you like really um and and what I&#39;ve always kind of appreciated about your music is that uh for as abstract and you know again for lack of a better term uh I guess as ambient as it is um it always seems very direct uh in terms of uh what it&#39;s trying to do compositionally and and as far as runtime as well um it seems like you know you really kind of have a focus as to what you want to get across sonically in your music and it doesn&#39;t necessarily come off as uh overly indulgent um especially in terms of just like the the time at at at and length uh that you put into your songs yeah I mean it&#39;s a tough question because basically like I&#39;m interested in like uh things that confuse me things that make me need to listen to it four or five times to understand it those are the things that excite me and I have been you know trying to do music that like adheres to that in some way that&#39;s like maybe from a deep distance looks really simple and then under closer and closer examination it kind of implodes or or like kind of like flanks sideways so it&#39;s not clear um you know how that was made or you know just valuing things like Distortion and overload or intensity or like physicality or you know confusing interior and exterior spaces or like digital reverbs in real spaces um instrumental confusion uh a bunch of different things like that um would be you know things I&#39;ve been interested in throughout and have kind of constantly pursued um I don&#39;t know it&#39;s a tough one um does that get close to answering your question because I don&#39;t really know no it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s just kind of interesting to hear yeah yeah well it&#39;s it&#39;s just interesting to hear you bounce off of some of these ideas here I mean not that I expect you know completely just you know decided answer uh uh to that you know but just kind of uh to get you to react to some of those ideas because it sort of brings me back to the painting idea that I was going to bring up earlier you know you&#39;re talking about you enjoying music and enjoying the creation of music that uh sort of has that disorienting property to it and has that kind of confusing property to it which kind of makes you go back and listen to it and and and look at it once again um which reminds me of uh uh just kind of the act of looking at or enjoying a painting you know when exactly are you done looking at a painting per se you know uh I guess when you talk about most modern popular music when you ask a question when something&#39;s done and that&#39;s like a like a question you can&#39;t really teach or like pinned down you know it&#39;s just like that&#39;s like Personal Taste and it&#39;s like something that I&#39;ve always valued oh yeah it&#39;s absolutely Personal Taste endlessly not tinkering for you know endless because there&#39;s a point where like you can modify and perfect things and you suck the life out of them and I&#39;m like you know I kind of come out of like a you know noise Rock world and things like that are like you distorted overloaded four tract Taps like as a teenager I was always into this rough kind of noisy things and um I think I still kind of keep some semblance of in my work uh where you can make everything like perfect and like add 400 layers of chamber strings or whatever um there&#39;s a point where like the 300th like becomes the death now of that piece you know um but 299 is the perfect amount I don&#39;t know it&#39;s like it&#39;s something you can&#39;t really pin down and put your finger on you know it&#39;s like just got basically in the end I think oh I mean again absolutely it it totally comes down to personal taste you know just kind of the weird thing in the case of music is that uh it&#39;s almost as if the runtime of whatever you&#39;re listening to is implying to you when you&#39;re going to be done listening to it you know uh you could always start it over again but you know you can&#39;t sort of sit there at one single point in the song and just kind of enjoy that one moment forever I mean it&#39;s going to pass you by at the pace that it&#39;s going to pass you by and the only way that you can kind of relive it is to sort of put the whole song on again that would be an interesting form of listening where people could just Loop some 20 second thing and extend that into Infinity you know or a bit more of an engage form of playback um which would be really great actually so if they feel like there&#39;s some zon but I often like have like a chord movement that some artist makes and like Jesus that&#39;s amazing like they should have done like 15 phrases of that and yet it disappeared the second it arrived H and it&#39;s like an interesting question of like ways of listening and Playback and just appreciating music and it goes back to like as early like Glen G in the 60s imagine this form of uh home listening where the listener would sit and splice tape on his own and create like new fragments out of you know classical music pieces that were being performed or whatever I mean it&#39;s kind of like a similar thing I guess it&#39;s kind of a a a problem that something like minimalism kind finds the solution too you know if you like this one particular sound if you like this one particular idea uh here it is in this musical piece that kind of you know repeats an idea to Infinity with very minimal progressions from the beginning to the end um trying to I guess explore this one single sort of concept and and that&#39;s something that definitely you know influences what you do correct I mean you know uh I&#39;m sure they are minimalist composers and producers who who you find a lot of uh uh I guess uh uh who you get a lot from you know in terms of inspiration or just enjoyment yeah like I&#39;m really into certain forms of repetition that like sound like incantations that seem like shamanistic TRS that seem like um forms of like psychelic dissolution of the South you know versus obvious forms of repetition that seem like a four bar like computer software just repeating something ban now and it&#39;s like hard to like you know um it&#39;s hard to put your finger on what those forms of repetition are like transcendental and what are like merely like the machine just repeating in this like lifeless way and it&#39;s it&#39;s a tough one but yeah I&#39;m like definitely I come out of like minimalism in some ways like part of one of the streams of things that I&#39;m interested in is like early forms of deep like hypnotic overloaded repetition that was almost religious before it became like kind of like almost the veneer of capitalism or something that it did in the 80s or 90s um yeah and for you personally I I guess you know I sort of uh H it&#39;s it&#39;s an interesting point you just made there because you know you&#39;re talking about making synthetic music making electronic music where you could just easily have the machine repeat sort of whatever you punch into it very easily uh but you&#39;re trying to create I guess more of an organic experience with these machines essentially is sort of uh what you&#39;re talking about you know how do you kind of make sure that that uh human touch comes through in what you&#39;re doing even though you&#39;re using sort of uh uh Sy sound I&#39;m not really interested in I&#39;m not really interested in defending like human touch so there&#39;s a overhead um I&#39;m not really interested in like defending like humanity and Notions like that like um I don&#39;t really care so much like using tools or like coldness or like inhumanness like I I use machines I repeat things using like tools and I do like use a bunch of different approaches and like I would say sometimes like I do like to confuse that like whatever you want to call human touch versus inhuman and I like to you know like one of the things like I asked to singers in this album feel like pretend you&#39;re like dead or pretend you&#39;re a robot you know and just like what would that be like you know um I don&#39;t know how human like whatever you want to call the human is constituted in that but it&#39;s like hopefully um hopefully an interesting take on it I don&#39;t know because for me whenever someone says like Humanity I just think of like some rational Geographic like or some you know guia type of We Are the World I don&#39;t know well okay it seems like the way that you&#39;re explaining it you know you don&#39;t want to pin your art down to something as kind of defined as Humanity or something with as much baggage as Humanity you would much rather be kind of more abstract than that yeah just playful you know a play a zone of play that um opens up a third space third SE whatever um a de gendered space a you know a whole bunch of things that I want to get out of that I find non Zone I used capitalism a while but like just spaces that are are free and liberated and playful um to me are important I don&#39;t know if I succeed in making my music like that but that&#39;s what I aspire to all right I want to thank my guest Tim Hecker for coming on and talking about uh not only his creative process experimental and ambient music and his latest record love streams which we will link you to down there in the description Box Tim I appreciate you taking the time to uh come on and just be really open about uh about all of this and just talking about your music can I call you Tony you could call me an an okay really nice to meet you pleas for sure nice C all right have a good one man d great have a good [Music] day

Transcript for:The Needle Drop Podcast - Episode with Tim Hecker

Transcript for:
The Needle Drop Podcast - Episode with Tim Hecker