Instead of the typical pseudo-definitive ranking of the “Best Albums of 2016,” this December we’re trying something different. The Rutgers Review is bringing you 31 days of our writers’ favorite albums this year, from internationally anticipated releases to local debuts to a few guilty pleasures, without caring what critics have had to say.
Ambient Noise as the Music of Dreams, Hope, Madness, or All of the Above
Genre: Ambient/Electronic/Drone/Experimental
Released: April 8th, 2016
There are voices to be heard inside Tim Hecker’s album “Love Streams”. There are stories, fragmented and sometimes evading capture. There are labyrinths contained inside worlds, revealing further labyrinths, a larger cosmos, an endless sound tuned in collective resonance with the humming of a dreaming mind. These are grand statements, perhaps, for a work of sonic experimentalism whose compositional thrust resides in ambient textures, seemingly disjointed phrases, and moments of calm and rapture alike that lull the listener into a trance that does not function within a traditional musical narrative.
There are voices to be heard inside the many worlds of “Love Streams” though there are no words to be found. Those voices speak through both static-ridden and multi-layered angelic filters on tracks such as “Music of the Air”. The far-away voices return on the two-track composition of “Violent Monumental I” and “Violent Monumental II”: the first part’s layered vocal music ebbs and flows into a near-fever pitch of sound while “Violet Monumental II” utilizes the repetition of a rhythmic sequence to carefully build texture and structure, adding noises in the background to flesh out the total listening experience. At under three minutes, “Up Red Bull Creek” is a pause for breath, with calm layers of sound only giving way to sharp notes when the moment allows. The angelic vocal tones rise and wash through the listener again on “Castrati Stack” but only after the barrier of harsh static noise at the composition’s beginning is allowed it’s due.
“Love Streams” is an album that understands the different levels of pacing needed to take the listener on a journey through a dream. Where the album’s opener, “Obsidian Counterpoint”, introduced a collection of different sounds to invite the listener into this world so the album’s closing track, “Black Phase”, concludes that journey with every manner of musical nuance and compositional element examined by the listener throughout their experience with the album.
Over my time with Tim Hecker’s “Love Streams”, since its release in April, I have returned to its sonic textures to find beauty, exhilaration, serenity, and joy within the madness and chaos equally contained in its fragmented cosmos. There are so many voices to be heard contained within “Love Streams” and I invite any willing listener to experience this album’s fearless magic for themselves.
by: Aniket Sanyal