first off: for the raffle
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congrats
@BjorgenFjorgen .. you have won a free copy of the album (the hard part though is that bandcamp shipping to canada seems like it will be difficult and i might just have to send it some other way, if you know how i could do that or even just a way to make it up to you for the win, let me know in DMs)..
now onto the liner notes
When I was trying to pick my record for Needles and Grooves, as anyone could have expected, I fidgeted. Radio Amor was actually one of the first choices I came up with when I was planning months ago, but I often put it to the backside, wondering if it really represented me, if I was doing my best to show you something truly perfect or unique or surprising. I wondered about many punk albums or hip hop albums or emo albums that I felt would have fit what kind of specific idea people thought of when they thought of me. But by the end of the day Tim Hecker just felt like the perfect choice, I listened again, and I fell in love again.
Tim Hecker wasn’t completely new to music, he had one pretty alright album in
Haunt Me and some semi notable techno work under Jetone, but something about that work felt off, it felt like it meandered a bit too much, that it didn’t have the emotional power I loved in him that made me fall in love with this specific blend of ambient music. Radio Amor was only one year later, and the leap between them is humongous
As I relistened to Radio Amor to discuss why I love it… I was going on a tangent on Wikipedia about Ambient Music codifier Brian Eno. Researching his ambient series and later ending up looking up a lot of details about the album “Apollo”, an album explicitly meant to be put next to images of the moon landing and the vastness of space. Radio Amor that amplified that fascination of knowing the beautiful things we have done in the world, the fact that we landed on the moon, the fact that we created so much important media, in a way it almost represents the earth as a whole more than the ocean many associate with. Beautiful textures hit you in almost the perfect pace, almost like a lucid dream. Even the stuff that would usually seem eerie to me feel almost normal and more like personal background dressing. Specifically, the main feature of the album, the vocal samples from what are presumed to be radio transmissions. There is intensity but it doesn’t feel intimidating. The music floats by wonderfully. Touching emotional chords and eerie ambient samples feel like you are just wandering along this weird world, inviting you to enjoy every little sound you hear. Its an album that invites you in on a journey, and boy is it a wonderful one.
