When I first read that Tim Hecker made the source material for Ravedeath, 1972, his masterful album from earlier this year, on a pipe organ in an church in Iceland, I figured the album might sound dark and eerie. I pictured Hecker using the setting's natural reverb to reflect what I imagined to be the space's chilly mysteries. I wasn't wrong-- some of that mood is there-- but Ravedeath, 1972 is wider and deeper than that, encompassing a multitude of tones. It's also a big, enveloping work, more interested in quickly surrounding you than in creating dark spaces for you to enter as you choose.
It turns out Hecker actually did create some dark spaces for Ravedeath, 1972, but he did so before entering that church. The nine early sketches collected on Dropped Pianos are starker and colder than what ended up on the final album. Heavy reverb and minor-key tones produce lots of negative space-- shadows in which the spirit of the music hides a bit, poking its head around corners rather than looking straight into the camera. The source of these sounds is clear-- a piano on which Hecker is unafraid to bang out bold, dramatic notes. But most of those notes decay into echo right after they are struck.
That effect makes the album name apt-- Hecker's piano seems to always be falling from view. Such quick absence is an inversion of the more-present Ravedeath, 1972. In fact, inversion is the prominent theme here: the album's title flips the name of Ravedeath, 1972's opener "The Piano Drop", while its cover image is the exact negative of its predecessor's. Of course, the album name also indicates how piano was literally dropped from Hecker's creative process, replaced by the church organ. But what's most interesting about these pieces is their musical inversion, the way they can be as compelling as what they eventually became despite being tonally opposite.
They're compelling mostly because they sound intimate. Where Ravedeath, 1972 had a widescreen flavor, these sketches feel personal and individual. You can imagine Hecker sitting alone at a piano spinning simple yarns, rather than at a huge organ generating worlds of sound. Granted, there is a cinematic quality here that can be as moving as anything on Ravedeath, 1972. But where that album is grand enough to soundtrack the space scenes in 2001, this one would better fit the lonely, haunted journeys of Eyes Wide Shut. That analogy might imply that Ravedeath, 1972 is the bigger, better work, and it is. But the value of Dropped Pianos is not just in showing how small ideas can lead to greater ones. It's a strong record on its own, and solid evidence that Tim Hecker's range continues to expand-- even in reverse.
