팀 헤커

Born in the suburbs of Vancouver, Hecker was the son of two high school art teachers who spent his formative years developing an interest in music. His began his early music career playing in rock bands with friends and experimenting with instruments before stumbling upon New Age records and electronic muses like Aphex Twin in his late teens. With his band jam sessions going nowhere, Hecker started experimenting with a Casio MIDI sampler when his drummer started skipping out on practice. This solo trial and error eventually led to his first electronic-music project, Jetone. After finishing his undergraduate work at University of British Columbia, Hecker flocked to the glitch-techno-laden dance floors of Montreal in 1998 and pursued his Masters degree in Political Theory from Concordia University. During this time, he attracted initial attention with his Jetone releases Autumnmonia (2000) and Ultramarin (2001) and became a key figure within the burgeoning Montreal music community that included MUTEK, Constellation, and Alien8 (an experimental music label). After becoming disenchanted with a limited musical direction, Hecker stripped himself of the Jetnone label and began exploring more abstract notions of sound. After aligning himself with the Alien8 label, Hecker released the album Haunt Me Haunt Me, Do It Again (2001), which proved so successful he immediately released the follow-up EP, My Love Is Rotten to the Core. A little less than a year later, building upon the buzz, he recorded Radio Amor for Mille Plateaux. In the midst of recording and performing, Hecker also completed his university studies and found himself of need of a job. While in his late 20s, he ended up working as a political analyst for the Canadian Government, working with the Prime Minister in a kind of stopgap from music. After leaving his employment in 2006, he went back to school to obtain yet another graduate degree, this time to pursue a Ph.D at McGill University to study the history of urban noise. Hecker's perfectionism worked to his advantage, allowing him to work on his thesis while recording new music after signing to the Kranky record label in that same year. Perhaps his most fruitful time, it was during this period he released Harmony in Ultraviolet (considered his seminal work and recognized by Pitchfork as a top recording of 2006), An Imaginary Country (2009), and Ravedeath, 1972 (2011), which was recorded in a church in Iceland. In between touring and recording, Hecker also worked as a lecturer in sound culture in the Art History and Communications department at McGill and submitted his thesis at the end of 2013, right around the time of release of his seventh full-length studio album, Virgins. A musician's musician, Hecker worked with artists like Destroyer, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Rós.