Florian Hecker delves into perhaps the weirdest aspects of music. I call it ‘music’ because his work tends to elicit some extreme emotional reaction. Generally speaking that emotion is disgust accompanied by slight nausea. Roughly 0.0000000000001% of the world cares about what he does, with an even smaller percentage enjoying it. Even users of the infinitely nerdy music forum “WATMM (We are the Music Makers) find Hecker atrocious, and consider his release on Rephlex akin to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus.
Anything this polarizing attracts me. Long ago, when I first began exploring the noisier aspects of sound, I remembered his epic release “Sun Pandemonium” on what then Mego. During that time, a lot of other noisy music caught my ear. Most of those groups I’ve since forgotten, but something stuck with me about Hecker’s work. It had to do with the sheer amount of detail. How does someone pack so much into a single song? When is there a determination of when the song should end? None of his compositions had any set limit, development, or even coherent structure. The clincher for me was the amount of humor, and a constant nagging feeling that I never really heard the whole thing. Whenever his songs ended, I’d go back to them, trying to decipher exactly what it was that interested me.
Lately he’s been prolific. Hecker has been traveling around the world playing his obtuse music in rooms filled with people conditioned to tolerate great deals of visual and acoustic pain in the name of art. The releases have been pretty consistent in their flow and quality. Besides the usual art gallery he has been getting into the fashion world, with a sweet three tracker. Though it didn’t have much in the way of linear notes explaining the humor it was still funny. It was funny how people modeled to barely-comprehensible grooves.
Now we’re given a full-feature length of weird. Hecker’s been working with a Continental philosopher named Quentin Meillassoux. The album “Speculative Solution” is based around Quentin’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’. Sometime long ago I dreamed of an album this potentially weird. Like his previous album, this one is recommended without headphones as the music works better in a large (speaker) environment. For those who feel it isn’t strange enough, how about a 160 page booklet accompanying the release in difficult Continental philosophical language. Oh, and five metal balls are included. Perhaps the booklet explains their purpose.
I’m glad this kind of work exists. Every time someone tries to tell me how pointless such music is, I point to a specific instance where my life ended up being demonstrably better. Here is that story:
“After I had arrived on my multiple stopper plane from Denver to New York (I don’t have the money for direct flights) some children were making little children noise. You know the kind. Little pieces of singing in extremely off registers eventually filled up the toothpaste tube of a plane. Everyone on the plane grew angry at the lackluster parenting. I didn’t. Remembering Karlheinz Stockhausen’s song “Gesang Der Juenglinge” I thought ‘how cool’. The rest of my plane ride I thought about how great that piece was and how it allowed me to relax and embrace my environment.”
That’s what Hecker’s music is for. Too often people hide themselves in headphones without really interacting with everything around them. Retreating into your own sonic universe isn’t the way to go. You miss a lot by closing yourself off. Hecker reminds you of the expansiveness of music. Headphone use is not advised.
