The first thing that comes to mind when considering Tim Hecker's work is his sense of scale. The Montreal-based drone composer has, over the course of the decade, built oceans of ambient noise capable of submerging his listener. His last album, 2006's Harmony in Ultraviolet, took this large-canvas technique to its logical end, so for his latest project, Hecker focuses instead on shorter individual pieces-- albeit with the same deliberateness and meticulous detail we've come to expect from him.

An Imaginary Country is, as its title suggests, an otherworldly landscape. Serving as our tour guide, Hecker uses each track to dream up one of its distinct regions, necessitating his more tightly focused approach...

Hecker is able to achieve this transportive quality because he paints these portraits in painstaking three-dimensional detail; the music is strikingly colorful. That said, An Imaginary Country isn't purely concept-driven or a kind of ambient-techno pop-up book. Like all worthwhile atmospheric music, there's a sense of choose-your-own-adventure here that allows the listener to build his own interpretations.

Read the full review [7.7].

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