Hecker: Recordings for Rephlex

Certainly not to be confused with Tim Hecker and the scratchy, overdriven beauty of Harmony in Ultraviolet, this is the new album from Vienna noise art veteran Florian Hecker. Unlike that other Hecker and various meticulous noise alums of 2006 (Lithops and Nick Forte spring to mind), Florian Hecker has no discernible interest in “music”, instead choosing to sculpt directly with raw noise generation. Though toned down from the assault of 2003’s Sun Pandamonium, Recordings remains far from descriptors like “textural” or “atmospheric”, and in fact consists of mostly unassailable material: shrieking digital feedback, endless phased snapping, disembodied squelches. There seem to be rigorous academic underpinnings to the lot of it, evidenced in the booklet’s referencing of “Gingerbreadman functions”, “spatiotemporal confusion”, and “pulsar synthesis”, apparently as an explanation, but such will certainly fly below the radar of most listeners. Only the manically varied abrasion of the twelve minute “In Actu” hints at deeper structure, complexity, and possibly, hints of narrative, but even that is mostly impermeable to analysis. Which, most likely, is just fine for Hecker. More artist than musician, his work challenges without offering any clues as to how to approach it.