Album Review: Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker – Fantasma Parastasie (4/5)
F10 Rating: 
Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker
Fantasma Parastasie on f10
Release Date: 10/14/08
Label: Alien8 Recordings
The combination of two innovative musicians like Baker and Hecker is potentially a devastating aural experience. Deluges of distortion and powerful electronics washes saturate this EP, the two artists first venture together and Hecker’s first collaborative album. For two artists who have become quite prolific in their own rights, this is something of a milestone recording for both artists..
The opening track “Phantom on a Pedestal” is rife with distorted ambience and grinding organs that create a warm, prickly, cocoon of sound that lives up to the Halloween-ish title of the album Fantasma Parastasie. Baker and Hecker make the sort of noise laden ambient flows that are more like a dark forest of sound to get lost in than the blanket ambience that is more typical of their contemporaries. It is not a trance inducing sound; it takes on a more ferociously dark timbre that is dissonant and abrasive, yet beautiful and encapsulating. Their sound will make listeners lose themselves in the dynamic interplay of hushed melodies, wax static, and abrasive effects that come together in a beautifully dissonant orchestra of noise.
When their sound isn’t evoking the type of dark melodrama depicted on the cover, there is a sense that the sound might bury you in sand and lull you to sleep. Tracks like “Hymn to the Idea of Night” fail to engage the otherworldliness of the title track and “Skeleton Dance,” they begin to meld into the sonic landscape of the plethora of ambient artists that sound as though the artist is just getting high in their bedroom making atmospheric washes. While it would be off base to say that “Hymn to the Idea of Night” is not a dark composition, it, and a couple of other tracks, lack the same juxtaposition of abrasiveness and beauty that makes this duo an engaging spectacle.
Nonetheless, Fantasma Parastasie is a beautiful album. One can only hope that this is not the grand finale for the duo. Baker’s pension for distortion and noise combined with Hecker’s adept eclecticism within the ambient world creates a sound that is altogether unique and fascinating. Whether or not you are a fan of one or both of the artists this is an album that is a singular work, like taking a bite of PB&J with pinecones in it. Is it good? Most of the time. But it is at once familiar and like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.
