Hecq – Night Falls

A snooze. Vapid dark ambient that just won't stop reminding you of better music. At one point a chopped-and-screwed extended sample of Delerue's music for CONTEMPT was overtaken by saccharine synth strings like you'd find in a Hollywood disaster-movie trailer----it just made me throw up my hands and my lunch. Nauseating, tasteless melodrama. Waste of an hour.

I found a striking resemblance between Aback and Arvo Pärt's "Sarah Was Nineteen Years Old". Maybe an uncredited sample of a drum part, anyway, beautiful interpretation/remix/inspiration/tribute/whatever... the whole album actually sounds amazing with some Pärt played before/after...respect !!!

Repress repress repress repress repress for goodness sake, don't they want to sell cds?

Entranced by purple sunsets, giant waterfalls glimmer inside the dreams of tired migratory birds. That is what I yearn to see when I experience Hecq’s, Night Falls. As this album blooms under the needle, it submerges me. Words seem cumbersome, inexpressive, or even redundant. I start to think about the limitation of words and how often they evade more than they express.

This work will show you how to defy language through music, while at the same time constructing a language of visceral ephemerality (I know its contradictory). That, to me, is the strongest element of Hecq’s magnum opus, the thesis statement if you will. Given worthy subwoofers, this album hums through your bones and you feel it as much as you listen to it. You feel plummeting into the deep eyes of a nebula or traversing the oceanic expanses of a flower.

Sometimes I feel I have become the song, or “i am you,” as the 12th track puts it. From a floor of unsure and timid gentle lows, watery in nature, there is a slow rise that morphs into a resolute mountain of layered underwater drones that are symphonic, large-scale, widescreen, and cinematic. It can definitely be a starting track in a mIx that sets the mood through the gradual bulge of spectacular sounds, never abandoning a high pitch chattering of beats that hold the track. In a mix, I can see it also plateauing out into a calm Richter piece like tracks from Dreams or Infra.

In “bending time,” a shrill, and almost still shriek of imperceptible high pitched strings develop into blissful melodic formations as if expanding their wings. The somber progression of synthesized organs records their flight. There is a sense of dispersal, as the lows hug the floor. The organs and strings take time to melt away, reverberating into the cusp of silence and sound. They surge back, like a tide, with the gentle deliberation of grasslands swaying underneath oceans.

I am convinced, whatever I say here must be inadequate, this is a review for an album that defies words, or at least seriously challenges the possibility of linguistic expressions. Hence every review will be a negation of itself. This is memorable, and with multiple listens, a vast archive of sounds. It showcases the essence of immaculate sound design, where we celebrate the artist’s and the machine’s ability to carve extraordinary sculptures - from the minute pollens on the beak of a hummingbird to the rugged shoreline washed away by the last great flood. This LP version I am listening to does proper justice to that wide range of soundscaping. A resounding thanks to Quiet Calm Records for this gem. It is a perfect cut. When you have it, “do not go gentle into that good night.”

One of the greatest records of all time finally gets the treatment it deserves

Great pressing of a great album on a great label.

on beatport, yeah ive got never leave night falls aback, its just a re-release. put it on vinyl! check juno. nothing. check discogs vinyl finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hecq's penetrating timbral sensibilities lull the unwary listener into a state of meditation-observation, as if hovering on the uneasy event horizon of some unfathomably vast abyss.

His touch is expert; no waveforms go unchecked. There is great skill here.

Massive in its expression, it's effect is powerful. Hecq achieves a level of intensity that is maintained through his beautiful sonic transformations and his careful unpredictability. It would keep excellent company with Marsen Jules' "Lazy Sunday Funerals", Tim Hecker's "Imaginary Country", and Yagya's "Will I Dream During The Process".

Released in mid-2008 on Hymen Records (sublabel of Ant Zen), Night Falls is a brilliantly composed piece of work that has no boundaries.

People like to talk about how to think out the box and how this concept relates to music (et al) and specifically albums that have stood the test of time, who have a place in the coveted musical hall of fame. With Night Falls, there is no box to think out of. It is a roving, boundless, and deserted landscape painted with hues of dark blues and grays further characterized by an aurally nomadic experience: going from one place to another, the destination unknown.

There is a huge, huge sense of isolationism that I’ve really grown to appreciate pretty highly. It is precisely this multi-dimensional sense of isolationism that few albums in the genre have attained to a degree that you can’t help but notice. This is a phenomenally monumental work that asks that you simply exhale and consume the cinematic elements that are so concentrated within – chock full of bitter cold ripples of musical elements (specifically, orchestral) signal a retreat to a safe place that only has one inhabitant: you.

The album art hints at this a bit, and obviously, the record’s title as well; the former of which is deceptively simple: the record’s artwork is just a black cover with informational text. But inside is a journey from the hyperactive, schizophrenic world to one that sinks to low levels of escapism in comfortable resignation. Almost like falling backwards into your sofa couch after a particularly long day.

This is why I feel that Night Falls is one of the best albums ever written. Sit back, put on some good headphones, and listen to this all the way through.

As I turn my attention from ethereal to dark ambient, it is only appropriate that I cover the latest album from one of my all time favorite artists, Hecq. Last year, I already hailed Ben Lukas Boysen's double disk release, titled 0000, as one of the Best of 2007 albums. It perfectly aligned along my favorite elements of grandiose orchestral sound and punctuated IDM beats. Upon my first listen of Hecq's fifth album, I anxiously await the glitchy breaks that are so prominent in Hecq's previous albums. Alas they never come. And with this proclamation, Boysen creates a new sound in which he instantly excels. Appropriately titled, Night Falls, Boysen drops the rhythmic structure altogether, and produces one of the most inspiring, lush, atmospheric and hauntingly dark pieces I have heard to date. There is a continuous cinematic tension of something hiding right beneath the shadow of a thinly layered sonic veil. Night Falls is an album that stops you dead in your tracks to really listen. What is that brooding sound, and does it have a name? I will not hide the fact, that with each swell of dynamic wave, the emotion within me rises as well, and I fight back the tears at the tip of each crescendo. With outstanding production and masterful control of individual frequencies, Hecq propels his sound techniques from a mere post-industrial IDM producer to a contemporary neo-classical composer. Hymen should be proud. Reminiscent of Murcof, Lusine Icl, Kattoo, Nebulo and Subheim.