What is it that makes ambient music good? It’s a genre somewhat counterintuitively designed not to be noticed, most often associated with kitschy yoga settings or sci-fi soundtracks. Ambient is one of the more abstract and hard-to-judge genres, with some works consisting of unchanging drones for the entirety of their runtime. Some of these albums, with patience, reveal themselves to be filled with subtle details and transcendent bliss, evidenced by the now-defunct duo Stars of the Lid and their work’s subtle dreamscapes conjured with nigh-static compositions. Other artists that come to mind for similar accomplishments include Yellow Swans and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. However, some of the most interesting records in the genre are intricately layered, finely detailed patchworks of overlapping sounds that make you question if what you’re listening to can still be called background noise. Enter “Harmony in Ultraviolet,” the 2006 masterwork by producer Tim Hecker.
Where much of ambient music often serves as a tonic to the high-tempo and hook-filled music we hear throughout most of our daily lives, Hecker’s works, although ready and able to fulfill this purpose, simultaneously offer a challenging soundscape for the listener to immerse themselves in. “Harmony in Ultraviolet” is, perhaps, my most streamed album of all time, and I’ve continued to find new details beneath each shimmering texture and reverbed guitar note.
From the first wavering cascades of airy synths on the opener “Blood Rainbow,” Hecker pulls you into the strange world of his creation. It’s a place where texture and consistency blend and reform, abstract shapes combine and melt down into bleak drones, embellished by spiraling synth layers and tentatively plucked guitar and drenched in cavernous reverb. The mood of the record feels tailored to what the listener wants from it; the mechanical and often noisy sections can feel cold and desolate while the high peaks of glowing key lines evoke cinematic beauty. I find myself returning to it a lot when I’m stressed or tired; there’s something effortlessly easy about this album as a listening experience, even though it offers so much more when being given a focused listen.
The dizzying lead melody of “Chimeras” is one of the more discernible moments in the bleary-eyed haze and the closest thing to a motif the album has. For a brief period, the album stops its shape-shifting in front of you to coalesce, a glimpse of something familiar in the swirling storm. Then it dissolves, leaving you back in the fascinating darkness. It’s hard to pick highlights on a record such as this, where the whole tracklist is a contribution to the soundscape and structure is altogether not a rule anymore, but it is one of the most memorable moments after countless relistens.
The album is at once harmonious and discordant, with searing walls of noise rushing past soft, gloomy drones on tracks such as “Spring Heeled Jack Flies Tonight.” This dichotomy is yet another reason I appreciate this album. It shouldn’t work as well as it does as all of its elements collide, yet it not only works but excels. The versatility at play here is perhaps the overall best part of the album. It is frigid and confrontational, welcoming and enticing, haunting and healing. It is an album that feels like a reflection of the many quiet emotions of life. Perhaps the only spirits lacking here are a fun party high or a snarling rage, but either of those would take away from the murky pristine of the album.
Fascinatingly, there is a ghostly sort of feeling this record evokes, one of spirits calling out into some burbling ether. On one track to another, a lonely synth or sharp tone will bark into the void, echoing out and vanishing forever yet never replicated or reprised. It shows the attention-to-detail Hecker applies to his work, not content with simply making a meditative loop that allows for relaxation or even melancholy reflection. Rather he pushes himself to create this web of sound, an undulating sea of mechanical and organic fusions, as much TV static as it is a glorious, futuristic soundtrack to some sort of society fraying at the seams. “Harmony in Ultraviolet” feels like it’s located on another planet, in an ocean trench where luminous echoes pierce through the murk. It’s a wondrous twilight zone of strange fish eyeing you curiously as you descend closer to something that might be heaven.
