Tim Hecker / KONOYO

Tim Hecker is one of the greatest living composers and is back with Konoyo, as always on Kranky, two years after Love Streams. Written and composed during some trips to Japan, Konoyo (こ の 世 in Japanese means “this life”) is perhaps one of his less immediate albums, yet of a monstrous power: existential and dystpic sci-fi of the third millennium, with synthesizers that mix with the completely reworked instrumental contributions of the Tokyo Gakuso ensemble, based on harmonies of strings and winds deriving from the ancient gagaku tradition. Nostalgia for a future that has failed to be realized and another, undesirable, which seems to have already taken the upper hand.