Hecker

It should be noted that this is not the new release from Montreal's Tim Hecker. Rather, it's the first LP since 2003 (not counting collections or art installation pieces) from Austrian experimentalist Florian Hecker, whose exceedingly challenging pieces make the former Hecker sound like the Shaggs. Combining sounds from a primitive Buchla modular synthesizer (utilized on Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon) and an analog computer, Hecker delivers a McLuhan-esque anti-landscape of sound influenced by '50s avant-garde composer, and colleague of Cage and Stockhausen, David Tudor. Paired with an extensive 12-page essay by philosophical researcher Robert Mackay, Hecker's Acid in the Style of David Tudor works as instalment, exhibition and dissertation in one package. This is a piece of art that is as interesting, fascinating and educational as it is unfamiliar, affecting and otherworldly.