Hermione Hoby 

Tim Hecker and Daniel Lopatin: Instrumental Tourist – review

Tim Hecker's collaboration with Daniel Lopatin succeeds because of their refusal to find common ground, writes Hermione Hoby
  
  


Hecker and Lopatin are perhaps the most preeminent figures currently making ambient music but the strength of this record comes from their disregard for coherence and disinterest in finding common ground. Their warring improvisations are intriguing, unsettling and often exquisite. The record is built from swatches of sound, ripped, stitched and ruptured into radiophonic disharmony. On GRM Blue II the dial-up tones of an old modem fight faint, lingering piano notes, while the stuttering Whole Earth Tascam has a sacred quality: like haunted and half-broken computers trying to replicate Gregorian chant.

 

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