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 HeckerVinyl's just a fun endgame step. I work with analogue signal chains too, but the mp3 is the way I listen to music.
Tim HeckerYou 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 HeckerI'm not a nostalgic person for the glory days of 8-track sales at the local K-Mart. But there's a little bit of flattery and a little bit of horror. It's a mixture. It's like sublime shock and awe, but also terror. That's always the way I feel about how music flows through those types of networks. I'm mostly cool with it, but I definitely appreciate when people support the work.
Tim HeckerI download music just like anybody else, but it's a weird relationship when you're a musician.
Tim HeckerI'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 HeckerPeople 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