''No Highs'' is the eleventh studio album by Canadian
ambient
Ambient or Ambiance or Ambience may refer to:
Music and sound
* Ambience (sound recording), also known as atmospheres or backgrounds
* Ambient music, a genre of music that puts an emphasis on tone and atmosphere
* ''Ambient'' (album), by Moby
* ...
musician
Tim Hecker
Tim Hecker is a Canadian electronic musician, producer, composer, and sound artist. His work, spanning atmospheric ambient albums such as ''Harmony in Ultraviolet'' (2006), ''Ravedeath, 1972'' (2011) and ''Virgins'' (2013), has been widely cr ...
, released on April 7, 2023, via
Kranky.
Background
The album's
liner notes discussed
ambient music
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes tone and atmosphere over traditional musical structure or rhythm. It may lack net composition, beat, or structured melody.The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. It u ...
's place in the modern era. The notes read "
he album
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
serves as a beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue".
The album is Hecker's reaction to this "soothing", corporate ambient,
as shown in the album's anxious and fretful sound.
The album was also seen as a response to the rise of ambient music on
streaming services
An over-the-top media service is a streaming media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms, the companies that traditionally act as a controller or distributors of s ...
, which, according to ''
The Guardian'', "
hreatens toreduce ambient to a genre of convenience".
wrote that "ambient music is in crisis" due to the abundance of channels on streaming services which "guarantee hours of chilled-out, challenge-free audio".
Music
''No Highs'' is an ambient album.
The album is departure of the sound of Hecker's last two albums, and was described by ''Pitchfork'' as "less confrontational".
According to
AllMusic, ''No Highs'' is about "dealing with depression, anxiety, and isolation" which reflects in the nervous tone of the music.
wrote that the album attempts to portray the contemporaneous era, and its sounds evoke "dead horizons and husk cityscapes".
According to Sputnikmusic, the album is "profoundly lonely-feeling".
The eight-minute opener "Monotony" begins with a
Morse
Morse may refer to:
People
* Morse (surname)
* Morse Goodman (1917-1993), Anglican Bishop of Calgary, Canada
* Morse Robb (1902–1992), Canadian inventor and entrepreneur
Geography Antarctica
* Cape Morse, Wilkes Land
* Mount Morse, Churchi ...
-like
post-minimalist
Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ...
pulse, before "sweeping" synths and a
church organ are added.
According to ''Pitchfork'', this organ is a signature sound of Hecker.
"Total Garbage" includes playing by saxophonist
Colin Stetson.
"Lotus Light" helps portray the album's anxious mood through "a loud, high-pitched beeping noise".
"In Your Mind" uses a sequencer pattern which has a fluctuating tempo.
Stetson also plays on "Monotony II".
Pitchfork compared the final two tracks, "Sense Suppression" and "Living Spa Water", to early ambient music.
The satirically titled "Living Spa Water" was described by AllMusic as conveying "somewhere between a replenishing bath and an out-of-body experience".
Critical reception
No Highs received positive reviews from critics.
Paul Attard of ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
'' praised the album's atmosphere and dynamic sounds, but found some tracks like "Winter Cop" and "Sense Suppression" underwhelming in comparison to the rest of the album.
Kompys2000 of Sputnikmusic described the album's sounds as "frequently gorgeous and sometimes even transcendent", but the album can seem standoffish in comparison to Hecker's other works.
Joe Creely of
''The Skinny'' criticized the album's lack of focus and said it didn't stand out compared to previous work. Creely praised some "moments of tremendous beauty", including parts of the tracks "Monotony II" and "Total Garbage".
Daniel Bromfield of
''Pitchfork'' found the album "muted" and unwilling to take risks in comparison to his earlier albums, such as ''
Harmony in Ultraviolet
''Harmony in Ultraviolet'' is the fourth studio album by Canadian electronic music musician Tim Hecker, released on October 16, 2006, on Kranky.
Critical reaction
The album was generally praised by critics, with ''Pitchfork Media'' writer Mar ...
'' or ''
Ravedeath, 1972
''Ravedeath, 1972'' is the sixth studio album by Canadian electronic music musician Tim Hecker, released on February 14, 2011, by Kranky (record label), Kranky. The album was recorded primarily in Fríkirkjan í Reykjavík, Frikirkjan Church, Reyk ...
''.
Track listing
# "Monotony" – 8:22
# "Glissalia" – 2:58
# "Total Garbage" – 2:40
# "Lotus Light" – 8:31
# "Winter Cop" – 2:35
# "In Your Mind" – 3:35
# "Monotony II" (feat.
Colin Stetson) – 2:57
# "Pulse Depression" – 2:27
# "Anxiety" – 8:16
# "Sense Suppression" – 2:04
# "Living Spa Water" – 6:46
References
External links
''No Highs''on
Bandcamp
{{Tim Hecker
2023 albums
Kranky (record label) albums
Ambient albums by Canadian artists
Tim Hecker albums