“Apondalifa,” has more in common with Tim Hecker’s 2007 10-inch release Atlas or 2008’s Aidan Baker collaboration Fantasma Parastasie than it does last year’s underwhelming, plastic epic, Imaginary Country and that’s a good thing. See, the musical mindfuck of all the post-glitch, proto-hypnagogic noise that came about at the beginning of the ‘aughts is that it bypassed all the typical rewards of a music listening experience. There weren’t build-ups or breakdowns, it wasn’t catchy, and more often than not, rhythm of any kind was absent. The experience hearing this stuff was truly temporal: the music engulfed you and shot out a feeling for that moment and that moment only, and then it moved on. This new Hecker track is like that—rather than reach for “transcendently beautiful” histrionics like Imaginary Country, “Apondalifia” grinds and whirls and eventually gets beautiful, kind of.
Beginning at its breaking point, with an ugly, in-the-red mess of sounds, “Apondalifa” spends its eight minutes letting bursts of noise stick out and do a kind of “solo” before another damaged drone, flickers up and get to stands proud. The base of the song though, is disquieting, guitar. Shambling nylon-string squeaks appear early and ultimately conclude the song and in the very back corner of this soundscape is guitar shredding from what sounds like hundreds of feet away. Another bundle of drones does take over for a bit, but the last few moments—most of what the 7-inch will label “Apondalifa Part 2”–is kindly plucked guitar that loops and waddles until it’s no more. “Apondalifia” doesn’t build-up, it falls apart. Even by Hecker’s usually high standards, this is breaking-apart beauty on another level.
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