Tim Hecker’s Dropped Pianos is quite the curiosity in terms of official releases. Often when you see demo collections – though Hecker termed this release a group of “sketches” – they are unsightly insights into a writing process. And while these collections are often interesting, they’re not the sort of thing you return to in the same manner you would the actual release. Dropped Pianos isn’t that sort of demo collection in the slightest. It exists somehow as a coherent work entirely its own and with its own set of merits entirely distinct from Ravedeath, 1972.
While Ravedeath, 1972, as an ambient work, exhibits an openness despite the waves of buzz, Dropped Pianos does something entirely different. Because of its composition, using just a piano and a delay pedal, it becomes a work much more alienating than previous efforts. The sketches found here are filled with a melancholy that, though present on Ravedeath, becomes much more apparent with this sparer arrangement. Stripped of a haze of reverb and distortion, this source material takes on a tone entirely different. It swells in ways less like Hecker’s previous ambient work and more in line with post-rock conventions.
Though it is a work of merit on its own accord, there is something to be said about its gaze into Hecker’s writing process. It makes moments like the three part composition of “In The Fog” make more sense. At the heart of those works are the piano and delay experimentation of the sketches present on Dropped Pianos.
Though we’re given that glance it doesn’t diminish either work. When you see demo collections you’re often given a glance at the progression of a song from idea to fully formed song. The difference here is that even Hecker’s sketches came out fully formed and ready to be consumed on their own merit. It might be easy to view such a release as an attempted cash-in on the success of his most acclaimed album, but the journey that Dropped Pianos offers is an entirely valid experience on its own, taken out of the context of Hecker’s work even. While one might view this simply as a stripped-down Hecker album, it would be compelling in any manner. The spaces that it creates are entirely distinct from the majority of Hecker’s work, creating emotions that can’t be conceived elsewhere in his catalog. It’s a singular achievement despite the fact that it could have easily been interpreted as a collection of throwaway tracks subservient to the more realized work that came with Ravedeath.
