Said Tim Hecker, quoted in "Tim Hecker Helped Popularize Ambient Music. He’s (Sort of) Sorry. The artist’s phosphorescent electronic albums helped make way for the recent bloom of lifestyle playlists and background music. He’s turned on that trend to take on real life" (NYT).
April 30, 2023
"Ambient music is the great wellspring — but also the bane of my existence. It’s this superficial form of panacea weaponized by digital platforms..."
"... shortcuts for the stress of our world. They serve a simple function: to 'chill out.' How does it differ from Muzak 2.0, from elevator music?... What is the function of music? Is it to serve as a background for a WeWork, efficiency world, for someone who just wants to code? Or is it for driving down a foggy road at night, wanting that experience amplified?”
Said Tim Hecker, quoted in "Tim Hecker Helped Popularize Ambient Music. He’s (Sort of) Sorry. The artist’s phosphorescent electronic albums helped make way for the recent bloom of lifestyle playlists and background music. He’s turned on that trend to take on real life" (NYT).
Here's the new album:
Said Tim Hecker, quoted in "Tim Hecker Helped Popularize Ambient Music. He’s (Sort of) Sorry. The artist’s phosphorescent electronic albums helped make way for the recent bloom of lifestyle playlists and background music. He’s turned on that trend to take on real life" (NYT).
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24 comments:
UMMMM Steven Halpern, please pick up the Courtesy Pnone.
I fee like ambient music became so prevalent because it helped cover up the ugliness of modern living, working, and shopping spaces that are so far removed from nature.
I thought Erik Satie invented ambient music.
Muzak- another gem from that David Foster Wallace? college commencement speech.
Ambient music is fine, but I understand if he has to denigrate it. After all the all-powerful art snob crowd would attack him because it is popular.
Popular being to the art snob crowd what garlic and a cross is to a vampire.
Geez that crap is freakin' awful. A symphony of traffic noise, in a factory.
The 3rd track is well-named. His music is probably popular for suicide attempts.
I prefer music that makes me fall in love. Nadine Sierra:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7M4_xZyZH8
The electronic sounds of urbane life, or the rustling leaves, babbling brook, birds chirping, and etherial background noise of suburban and rural life.
Has anybody come across this genre known as Lofi? It's music that seems only useful for studying or reading with.
https://www.youtube.com/live/jfKfPfyJRdk?feature=share
Sounds New Age, rhymes with sewage.
Muzak for Hell's Waiting Room.
In high school I did homework to Monteverdi's L'Orfeo every night because of some extremely nice sinfonia sections that turned up regularly
act 3
act 2
act 4
act 5
The latter particularly illustrative because it's the exact version (Krebs) I listened to in the 50s. Archiv LPs.
Anyway there's lots of unremarkable recitatives that I listened through, and nevertheless I learned every note and detail. When I hear somebody else's version, I'm startled all the time over this or that little change. None improve over Krebs.
Sounds like a bad orchestra tuning up.
Wow, that is really awful. I never knew what ambient music was before now. I sort of imagined it was the same as trance. Not even similar.
Hard to beat Brian Eno's Music for Airports. I play stuff like this at a barely-audible volume, and am asleep in minutes. Very relaxing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNwYtllyt3Q&t=7s&ab_channel=MethadoneMethadone
"... shortcuts for the stress of our world. They serve a simple function: to 'chill out."
Sirius Channel 76 (classical) as I type this is filling the room with Verdi's Requiem: IV. Sanctus ... which is quite nice but not exactly "chill."
Oops ... just advanced to Requiem: VI. Lux aeterna.
Wikipedia says of this work, "Throughout the work, Verdi uses vigorous rhythms, sublime melodies and dramatic contrasts ... to express the powerful emotions engendered by the text."
And now VII. Libera me. The antithesis of "chill."
Brian Eno's Music For Airports Rocks!
Well, it Doesn't Actually Rock.. It's really kinda dull, which makes it great
oh, ps;
Brian Eno created Music for Airports, in the late 1970's (78, i think)
When did this Heckler guy (whom i've NEVER heard of) make his music?
Lofi chill hop on youtube works for me.
Tacking on to gilbar -- Brian Eno has explained, carefully and at length, the difference between Ambient music and Muzak. They didn't have "Muzak 2.0" back then, but as far as I can hear, the distinction still holds. I suspect this Hecker fellow knows all about that and is just posing, but if not . . .
Glad to see a couple of people have jumped in to mention the great Brian Eno who, as far as I'm concerned, invented Ambient Music and showed his musical chops by enhancing the music of others like Bowie, U2 and Peter Gabriel among others.
Music For Airports was my first Eno album in 1981 as a teenager and I loved it so much I bought the rest of the set as they came out, The Plateaux of Mirror, Day of Radiance, and On Land
But I loved him all the more when, in 1983, he did the soundtrack to the documentary, Apollo (the movie only came out in 1989) and produced this haunting piece, Ascent
Okay, sampled a couple of tracks and ... "ick".
I don't know whether the following is Ambient or not but I do know that, linked with the activities in a little Japanese train station, it's an extraordinarily beautiful three and half minutes.
miyako
Jah Wobble makes splendid, hypnotic ambient music suitable for a 10:30-per-minute running pace.
Brian Eno... MORE than just a common crossword answer!!
Seriously, If you have never listened to Music for Airports.. I pity you
Forty-five years ago I was a struggling musician working days in a factory that played Muzak over a sound system. All. Day. Long.
On the one hand, it kind of drove me nuts. But on the other, eight hours a day of looking at incredibly basic chord progressions was actually a good thing in the long-run.
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