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Harmony in Ultraviolet
2006 studio album by Tim Hecker From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Harmony in Ultraviolet is the fourth studio album by Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker. It was recorded in two years, and released on October 16, 2006, via Kranky. Described as ambient and experimental, it uses instruments including electric guitars, pipe organs, and keyboards, along with distortion and samples. With fifteen tracks, they evolve, and some titles reference myths. The cover art depicts a memorial in Bologna about the Italian Resistance.
Harmony in Ultraviolet received positive reviews from magazines such as Pitchfork, PopMatters, and Tiny Mix Tapes. Critics focused on the structure of it, and comparisons were made to Hecker's earlier works and On Land by Brian Eno. The album would appear in several rankings, including one from Pitchfork as the ninth best ambient album of all time.
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Background
Tim Hecker is a Montreal-based musician known for his work in ambient music.[1][2] He debuted under the name Jetone in 1996,[3] and released techno.[2] Under his real name, Hecker released the albums Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again (2001), Radio Amor (2003), and Mirages (2004) before Harmony in Ultraviolet.[4] His works has been positively reacted to by critics.[2]
Release and artwork
Harmony in Ultraviolet was recorded from 2005 to 2006 in Montreal and Banff, Alberta.[5] The album was released on October 16, 2006 through Kranky,[6] and was the first album of his to be released on the label.[7] The album was distributed by CD and vinyl.[6] In an interview with Hecker, he said that "[it was] hard thinking about the right label – mostly because I'm not that well-versed in contemporary music, in the sense that I am aware of every label and what they are doing" and that he was interested in Kranky years before the release of the album.[8] The title of the album is a reference to Harmony in Red, a painting by Henri Matisse.[8][9]
The cover art is a photograph taken by Hecker of an anti-fascist memorial in Bologna.[10][11] The memorial is named Sacrario dei partigiani, located in Piazza Maggiore, and is about the Italian Resistance.[12] In an interview, he said that the memorial was chosen for "the basis of its visceral qualities, but also how it fits with the music on a bunch of levels".[10]
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Composition
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Perspective
Harmony in Ultraviolet has been described as experimental,[4] electronica,[13] ambient, and glitch.[14] The album is loud and dense.[4][15][16] The album has electric guitars, pipe organs, string instruments, and keyboards,[17][18] alongside distortion.[17] The album uses a variety of heavily edited samples from instruments and other releases.[8] According to Hecker, the album was a continuation of his older works.[10]
The album has fifteen tracks.[15] The opener "Rainbow Blood" contains a "screeching and trebly" drone and a processed guitar.[4][8] "Stags, Aircraft, Kings and Secretaries" also has a processed guitar, and the track transitions to "Palimpsest I", which has been described as a transition between the previous tracks and "Chimeras".[8] "Chimeras" has "lumbering, looping tones" and synths with arpeggio.[8][7] The title references the Chimera, a creature in Greek mythology.[19] "Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight" was described as "violent" and having a slow pacing by critics.[4][19] The title is a reference to the Spring-heeled Jack, a character in English folklore.[19] The track is followed by a four-track suite named "Harmony in Blue", which evolves from a "nice and warm" tone to "like a gradually descending slope into a coal black pit".[4] "Radio Spiricom" includes heavy use of keyboards and static, with synths near the end.[8][20] The title is named after the spiricom, a 1980s electronic audio device which was claimed to be able to talk to spirits.[19] A two-track suite named "Whitecaps of White Noise" follows.[15] The suite uses distortion and static throughout, and fades into a drone with degraded keyboards.[4][15] The first part of the suite uses a sample of an organ, arranged with staccato.[7] The album ends with "Blood Rainbow", a companion piece to "Rainbow Blood", which some critics said made the album a "loop".[8][21]
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Reception
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Perspective
The album was generally praised by critics. Some journalists regarded it as one of his best. Nate Dorr for PopMatters considered the album as Hecker's finest work, and that it "pulls unlikely beauty out of jarring noise".[15] A writer for Sputnikmusic gave it a perfect score out of five, and described it as a "bit of a drug trip reverie".[23]
Writers commented and praised on the structure and sound of the album. Pitchfork writer Mark Richardson said "Harmony in Ultraviolet is sensual body music of a very particular kind, and it's the sort of record that asks a lot. But if you trust it and go along, it knows exactly where to lay its hands."[4] Writer Marisa Brown for AllMusic described the album's tracks as "work[ing] together to form an idea that's greater than its individual elements: a sense of exploration and sadness and understanding of the infiniteness and uncertainty and expanse of the world".[17] Saul Austerlitz for The Boston Globe described the album as "more than the sum of its parts" and likened it to Canadian band Godspeed You! Black Emperor.[13] Remix writer Christine Hsieh said that the album was one of "those rare albums that creeps unnoticed into the listener's headspace".[22]
Critics also compared Harmony in Ultraviolet to other albums. Dusted's Emerson Dameron compared the album to Hecker's earlier works, to say that Harmony in Ultraviolet's artwork and structure "suggest a heavy, shenanigan-free affair", and that his older works "come out of the oven sad, lonesome and loud".[16] P. Funk writing for Tiny Mix Tapes noted that the album had similar tones to Hecker's Radio Amor, and that one of the strengths of the album was its structure, and further commented on the "strange logic to the way sounds mutate into one another".[14] Michael Henning for independent magazine Treblezine compared the album to Brian Eno's On Land, in which Harmony in Ultraviolet was equally "organic", although more "digital".[20]
The album was featured in multiple listicles. Pitchfork called Harmony in Ultraviolet the ninth best ambient album of all time[18] and the fourteenth best album of 2006.[24] Mark Richardson on the ambient list explained: "It makes you feel small, one speck on a pale blue dot. Harmony is the rare ambient album that begs to be played loud."[18] In another list from the publication, where each writer lists their favourite albums from 2006, the album would be listed ten times.[25] Writers for Treblezine put the album in its list of "10 Essential Ambient Albums"[26] and its list of the twenty best Kranky albums.[27] After the release of Love Streams (2016), Hecker's eighth album, Lindsey Rhoades from Stereogum ranked Harmony in Ultraviolet as the second best album in his discography.[19]
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Track listing
All tracks are written by Tim Hecker.
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Personnel
References
External links
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