Tim Hecker
EES
Wastelands
This new piece by Tim Hecker, commissioned by MUAC, represents the natural continuation of over 25 years of work and, at the same time, an interesting stylistic turn in his career. Here, field recordings from desolate and abandoned ecosystems from across the United States are added to his acclaimed mixture of experimental ambient, noise, microsound, glitch and postminimalist rhythmic patterns.
From deserts to Everglades, ecologies that have been deeply affected by human activity inform and modify the sounds of Wastelands, producing results that are simultaneously melancholy and sinister.
To better understand this piece, it’s worth going back to the beginning of Hecker’s career, not just his classic 2001 album Haunt Me, but even further back, to the two LPs released under his Jetone alias: Autumnmonia (2000) and Ultramarin (2001). There is a clear aesthetic break between the work done under this alias and the work released under his own name, principally in terms of rhythmic complexity and the use of beats: the rhythms of his early career are both harder and more intricate, closer to techno and IDM. This rhythmic spiderweb creates a feeling of speed and fragmentation rather than harmonic progression, in a clear echo of turn-of-the-millennium electronic acts such as Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Autechre or Fizzarum.
In the series of acclaimed albums that he released under his own name during the first two decades of the century—Haunt Me (2001), Radio Amor (2003) and Harmony in Ultraviolet (2006), all the way to Ravedeath, 1972 (2011), Konoyo (2018) and, most recently, Shards (2025)—it’s clear that something has changed. Hecker has abandoned the safety net of the rhythmic grid and gazes into the abyss of textures, timbres and harmonies, and the chromatic palettes of ambient and noise.
An entire field of experimentation opens up and, with it, an imaginary running through a dozen albums and culminating in Wastelands. During this time, we could say that Hecker’s imaginary oscillated between the natural (fire, ice, tundra, aurora borealis) and the spectral (ghosts, the empty spaces of modernity, suspended time).
This new composition is situated at the very juncture where the destruction of the landscape gives rise to a profoundly melancholic beauty, accentuating its most postapocalyptic elements: the almost desperate songs of the animals, furious vibrations that suddenly drop out and moments of electronic tension. By capturing these environments, Hecker abandons the chromatic palettes that once completely filled the space of his music and seems to confront a particular moment of planetary desolation, not just environmentally, but also socially, politically and perhaps even aurally. In this context, what are our capacities for decryption and action through listening? How do the ears involve themselves in such radical existential shifts? Wastelands chooses to leave these questions open, instead sustaining a barren soundscape—at least for a few minutes.
Tim Hecker (Vancouver, 1974)
Wastelands, 2026
Multichannel sound installation in a loop
30:00
Field recording and electronics: Tim Hecker
Curation: Guillermo García Pérez
Spatialization and technical assistance: Tobías Álvarez
