Maximilian Hecker - Rose mp3 download

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This morning I was listening to the whacked out bleeps and bloops of Florian Hecker and now suddenly I find this other Hecker I'd never heard of before on my playlist. It turns out that Maximillian Hecker is a German easy-listening pop artist, and the music is actually very good. What's more, I noticed that I had Tim Hecker looming ahead on my playlist. What the heck?This album is surprisingly enjoyable considering the music is straightforward radio-friendly ballad-esque soft rock in the same ballpark as Coldplay. The vocals (male) are high, airy, tender, romantic, etc. The music has a stripped-down, clean sound with electric guitar, drumkit and not much else. At least that describes the first five songs, which were similar enough that I wasn't actually planning to listen to the whole album, but I was still quite engaged by this refined, elegant pop music when the sixth track rolled in and turned out to be a punchy synth pop number. Then the next track had an upbeat Drum and Bass groove underneath the same slow, tender singing as the rest of the album. These aberrations were well-executed. Then the next two tracks were really stripped-down with just voice and piano. So there is a bit of variety here, but the real surprise came in track 9, "My Friends". It's pretty much the same basic slow, tender formula as the other songs, but all the sudden in the middle some crazy distorted noise and godzilla-like crunchy beats come fading in, while the piano keeps tinkling along, as if he'd basically just dropped a 20 second Merzbow sample in the middle of his piano ballad. What the heck? Maybe it was part of some narrative arc in the song, but I wasn't really paying attention to any lyrics on this album. The last track, "Rose", has some kind of epic climax section near the end too.Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the heckest of them all? I must admit the matter occupied my thoughts long enough to do some button-pressing and arrive at the answer, which is "all of the above". While thinking about the very lively and irregular abstract sounds of the Florian Hecker album I'd been savoring, Acid in the Style of David Tudor, I realized that the two Heckers might complement each other well. It wasn't long before I added Tim Hecker's An Imaginary Country into the mix for a triple Hecker delight. It was a grand success, the ordinary static droney ambient sounds of Tim Hecker bringing great textural depth to Maximillian Hecker's spare tender musing, while Florian Hecker added modernistic rhythmic excitement. Sometimes Florian and Maximillian conspired to deliver an Autechre-like crunchy backbeat, while Tim threw the song over the top into the epic realms of Sigur Ros.Some highlights included: "I Am Falling Now" (Max) + "Acid in the Style of David Tudor (track 2)" (Florian) + "Sea of Pulses" (Tim) "Never-Ending Days" (Max) + "Acid in the Style of David Tudor (track 7)" (Florian) + "A Stop at the Chord Cascades" (Tim)From herkyjerky athttp://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/maximilian_hecker/rose/