Latest Tim Hecker Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I did dance music for a short period of time but I felt like the fruit for me was in the outer dance world so I stopped doing overt techno and I think, in terms of rhythm, I enjoy things that feel like they're falling off, like they're just barely holding on.

  Tim Hecker

  Fall, Thinking, World

  Source: therumpus.net

• Offness yields a hypnotic effect. The brain can see simplistic patterns that lock and it's boring after a while. I don't cater to that.

  Tim Hecker

  Brain, Boring

  Source: therumpus.net

• You start to think, when you're finishing a record, in twelve- to fourteen-minute chunks. At a certain point, you do write to the format. It's not a coincidence that most albums are between thirty-five and fifty minutes. It's kind of like the 98-minute film. It becomes some paradigm for human attention in the media.

  Tim Hecker

  Writing, Thinking, Attention

  Source: therumpus.net

• For me it's the hypnotic simplistic reduction of hooks into some form of prayer wheel or something. I really appreciate people who can work in those quiet environments making really precious latticework like lace in a weaving but, for me, I like it a bit more hairy and like psychedelic Peruvian knits or something! You know what I mean? I go into fabric analogies, you know.

  Tim Hecker

  Prayer, Mean, Appreciate

  Source: therumpus.net

• We should do an Adorno reading on Skrillex and vodka sales in Vegas. It's definitely interesting. What's interesting in that music for me is the harmonic density in some crazy melodic line that sounds like some Michael Bay film eating itself. Which I enjoy in the same way I'll watch a cracked up Hollywood movie. Yet rhythmically, I guess that music just funnels more into predictable cash outcomes.

  Tim Hecker

  Crazy, Reading, Interesting

  Source: therumpus.net

• It depends on what kind of minimalism you're talking about, of course. I love both those artists - Brian Eno and William Basinski. I would say my minimalism references are early American minimalists from the 70s.

  Tim Hecker

  Artist, Kind, Minimalism

  Source: therumpus.net

• I found all my reading and writing informed my music in subtle ways. Ravedeath came out of studying the pipe organ, going to New Jersey - the world's loudest and biggest pipe organ.

  Tim Hecker

  Reading, Writing, Study

  Source: therumpus.net

• Once you have MIDI information - I mean, it's a bit technical - that's your paint. You can slow down, pitch up, change notes within a different key. That's the foundation in which you can write things.

  Tim Hecker

  Writing, Mean, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

• I take the literary or textual aspect really seriously and I really enjoy writing weird album titles. I did a PhD; I enjoy writing.

  Tim Hecker

  Writing, Enjoy

  Source: therumpus.net

• People still talk about sampling as this new, progressive problem in music. There are technologies now where you can glean the polyphonic information out of a sample and then put that back in and then score it for five instruments. You don't need digital audio to sample; you can rewrite things.

  Tim Hecker

  Technology, People, Problem

  Source: therumpus.net

• I don't feel like music is getting more intense; I think generally the channel for deeper harmonic saturation is not just a sine wave - but a really crunched sine wave. The trend in music is towards a harmonic saturation. I wouldn't say I'm reacting against that. It's just a personal choice to move into some weird space. This also allows me breathing room in the future. It just felt like the right thing to step back on.

  Tim Hecker

  Moving, Thinking, Choices

  Source: therumpus.net

• I'm trying to find a way to make music work as a living. People used to make their living selling albums. Those days are over! It's kind of an odd time. I guess it's kind of like writing.

  Tim Hecker

  Writing, People, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

• If I was completely satisfied with an album, I'd probably give it up, because that'd mean I had attained some kind of state that was greater than I'd ever hope, so I think I'd just give it up. But I don't think that's going to happen.

  Tim Hecker

  Mean, Thinking, Giving

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've always said my records are these failures of not getting where I want them to go, they end up detouring somewhere else, so on one level it's partly a disappointment, and on another level it's being comfortable with surrendering to that kind of state of becoming or whatever.

  Tim Hecker

  Disappointment, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's a limit of any form of representation; it's the same about writing about visual art. I still think it's useful for people to think through things in a deeper way, and use adjectives even if they're not sufficient, you know? I always find it interesting what terms they use to refer to the work. It's always different, and that's kind of intriguing. Sometimes it's clichés, but often it's really creative ways of paraphrasing or reformatting what to mean seems something else. I like that, personally.

  Tim Hecker

  Art, Writing, Mean

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• You can't be sure there's not a God, so why live your life in hatred or the denial of that. It's better to be open to the possibility of it. Just because the whole conceit of scientism... is that our world is explained by two atoms smashing, right? Our green planet came out of that. But I just don't buy where the original line comes back to, those two atoms. The explanations aren't fully in yet.

  Tim Hecker

  Hatred, Live Your Life, Denial

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I wouldn't say I'm ego-less, but I'd say there's something uncomfortable about the presentation of one's self in the media. Any image sent out is permanently in the spin cycle. And there's a paralysis of that, the way your image is presented. I've always been hesitant, but I'm definitely not shy or anything.

  Tim Hecker

  Shy, Uncomfortable

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I really support criticism as a craft and as a vocation. People who devote as much time to thinking about sound through writing as I do practicing and forming it, the whole system of journalism seems to not yield rewards sustainable as a craft. So few can spend enough time to be serious about it and approach it with confidence and a kind of depth. And that's good on one level, because you have some leveling, that's kind of maybe leveled the petty fiefdoms of undeserving people but it's also made it hard to make a living as a writer.

  Tim Hecker

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I wouldn't say that I'm a consummate live artist. Album work is kind of just like quilt weaving or something. But live music is just like a method of emptying out the mind through volume. Volume as a form that allows you to do different things. And that doesn't really translate to recorded music, like how do you listen to that, on Spotify or in your car? It's not the same kind of effect. I would say that the loudness is a huge part of what I do live.

  Tim Hecker

  Artist, Car, Mind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I definitely enjoy liturgical work and choral work from the 15th century and 16th century, but I play in churches with a bit of trepidation, and it's not something I enjoy because there are all these problems. It's an implication that you're part of the theological apparatus, like for atheists or something, and I don't like that. I like playing with the form, inhabiting the tropes of religious music without that promise of angels at the end. It can be awkward, you know?

  Tim Hecker

  Religious, Atheist, Angel

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've always thought that each album would be my last one, and then I would be out of ideas and I would move to photography or something. I thought it was transient and it's not because of this entrenched career stubbornness that I've done it for so long, it's just something I enjoy doing, and it's the most direct way I can express something.

  Tim Hecker

  Photography, Moving, Long

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I try to structure albums in a pattern, like in a way where there's a motif that runs throughout or some kind of conceit that informs it in a general way. Maybe it's in a harmonic key. I like to go metastructural sometimes, like look at more than the three-minute passage and how that interacts with other pieces. And I've been increasingly interested in false starts and fraudulent beginnings, and things that don't reach their implied conclusions. I take an album and I kind of start moving things around like Jenga.

  Tim Hecker

  Running, Moving, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I definitely road test music. I'll drive in the car and look up at the sky and that often makes it more clear, like what's good and what's not. Driving in darkness is amazing, because you really feel the energy and what has presence, spirit to it, and what doesn't.

  Tim Hecker

  Car, Darkness, Energy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I work with digital audio, which is like sculpting, a form of chiseling down metal or wood. And I take audio and move it back and forth between the analog and digital realms and work with it almost like a plastic art until it takes forms in different shapes. And I use those figurines that come out of that type of work.

  Tim Hecker

  Art, Moving, Different

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'm really sensitive to the beginning of a motif or a phrase or something that's kind of the backbone or becomes kind of the spine that you grow muscle tissue onto. You know from that, if you have that good beginning, it's like everything that grows off it often has potential. Maybe I'm good at that early bit of recognition of pieces of potential. I'm not sure.

  Tim Hecker

  Recognition, Kind, Sensitive

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com