Tim Hecker - Radio Spiricom
I’ve been listening to Tim Hecker’s Harmony in Ultraviolet.
It’s ambient enough that I can listen to it quietly when I’m winding down, and engaging enough that I can listen and be awake at the same time.
I feel like saying it’s impossible for me to listen to it and feel stressed, but that’s probably because if I do feel stressed I can’t stand to listen to anything this chilled out. Still — it’s relaxing. It makes me think of oceans.
On a recent workday morning I listened to it while I waited for a train at Box Hill. I somehow couldn’t shake the feeling that the music was echoing quietly through the entire station. I had to pause the music and take off my headphones to make sure it wasn’t. I felt like I was in a huge, underwater cavern1, and the echoes of some larger music were filtering down to me and becoming something entirely different.
After I got off the train I walked along the path that takes me to work (and eventually past this incredible sign, incidentally). Sunlight filtered through the trees and glinted off the railway tracks. I breathed deeply. It still felt like the music was coming from everywhere around me, only now that meant it was everywhere, maybe covering the entire world.
I walked past some houses and magpie song mingled with the sounds in my headphones. Something, maybe my subconscious, filtered out everything else. I felt like I was remembering my childhood in suburbia2 in a strange, indistinct way that didn’t have anything to do with any actual memories.
Filters and echoes and and oceans.
