Tim Hecker at WWW X, October 2nd 2018

Starting a review with the word “mesmerizing” sounds cliched, contrived. But if one word is needed to summarize the experience of witnessing the world premiere of Hecker’s latest album performed live, “mesmerizing” wouldn’t be so far off the mark.

It made sense to have the first live performance of music from Konoyo in Japan. The album was partially recorded here with Japanese musicians and inspired by the sounds of Gagaku, an ancient Japanese Classical music style, performed almost exclusively to members of the Royal family. This set reproduced and reinterpreted that record with musicians from the original recording sessions. 

An hour and ten minutes after the doors opened, the lights faded out and stayed that way for the remainder of the show. Kara-Lis Coverdale walked in and performed a forty minutes set that slowly built up from a succession of long ascending chords with the occasional synth stabs and dissonance. It was a hypnotic minimalist set. 

In the last five minutes of Coverdale’s set, the musicians that took part in Hecker’s latest album recording, billed as The Konoyo Ensemble, joined her on stage. One of them played a long droning note with a shō, a vertical mouth organ. It served as a transition between her’s and the main set. Unbeknownst to some people in the audience, at least to me, as I was fixated by the sight of such a unique looking musical instrument, Tim Hecker was already at his spot on stage right prepping during that smooth and seamless passage.

I’ve only heard the two singles from the latest record and the show opened with the first one released: “This Life”. Unlike the recording, in which electronics and traditional instruments are blended into one, the live version allowed us to distinguish the sound’s sources. As a matter of fact the set started with the members of the Konoyo Ensemble unaccompanied, setting the mood with the reeds and sparse percussion usually associated with music from a Noh play. The human voice was clearly audible by the end of this enthralling and longer rendition of the tune, with members of the ensemble using their voices as instruments, in what was a culmination of a relentless build-up to a climax.

If Hecker is a minimalist I would say he is one in the vein of Arvo Pärt. His music feels like it’s reaching for a moment of transcendence. There were many of those striking moments in this performance, in which the audience witnessed the process of musical motives untangling, all framed in an atmosphere of pitch black darkness only interrupted by the backlights that turned the performers into shadowy figures on stage.

Forty minutes into the set Hacker was left alone for a very challenging closing 15 minutes. He mostly used the bass range of his palette, and what a bass it was. He pummeled the audience, performing at a frequency that caused some abdominal and chest vibrations. It was a non-auditory physical sensation that I don’t recall ever experiencing at a concert. It reminded me of the My Bloody Valentine’s “holocaust section” at their live renderings of “You Made Me Realize”. Testing the limits of tolerance, reaching for uncharted territories.

His backup musicians joined him once more for the final minutes of the set, it was a logical conclusion that related to the themes of Konoyo. The contrast between presence and absence, east and west, were depicted in the last few notes left hung in the air, emphasizing the gaps or negative spaces that are essential in Japanese culture. Striving for the sublime in a performance that touched in stillness, violence, light and darkness, silence was the ideal ending and, for the first time in the evening, a mesmerized audience broke into a warm applause.

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