Tim Hecker – St Giles Church, London
The beards may be more ATP than C of E, but the man upstairs still plays a blinder
Words Tim Burrows
Tonight, Tim Hecker is bringing his astonishing ambient album Ravedeath 1972 to St-Giles-in-the-Fields, which has been a site of prayer for nearly 900 years. It isn’t necessary to go from pew to pew and ask the congregation waiting for the Canadian musician to start this mother of all organ recitals to realise that they are not regular churchgoers. This is a secular intrusion into His property, by and large — I file the abundant beards under ATP, not C of E — but at times it feels like a kind of religious experience.
The only way we know Hecker is up there at all is by noticing the thick wire that runs from the sound desk to the organ upstairs at the back of the church, where he is sitting. That’s still more visual evidence than the other man upstairs cares to leave his loyal subjects, but the point here is not to see, but to hear.
And to feel, presumably. After the church lights are promptly switched off, we’re left to sit in the dark contemplating an enormous stained glass depiction of Jesus Christ, arms aloft among his disciples.
In front of JC are two towers of speakers flanking the pulpit, which bellow out Hecker’s careful corruption of the St Giles organ. Sounds rush out like subdued echoes of MBV’s notorious ‘holocaust’ recitals; if such a word may be used in our exalted surrounds.
Coagulated white noise, throbbing, bubbling and humming to its heart’s content. Ravedeath 1972 has an elegiac, mournful quality, counterbalanced by surges of foggy intensity. Fractured truths enveloped in cotton wool memory. Here in its live incarnation, however, it’s arguably more intense, without sacrificing too much of the LP’s iridescence.
When the lights are flicked on and Tim Hecker yelps a quick ‘thank you’ 50 minutes later, it feels like it’s over almost as soon as it begins — another indicator, perhaps, of the music’s quasi-religious overtones.
