anoyo is japanese for the next world, if i'm not mistaken. this is the second of two albums tim hecker made with a gagaku ensemble. i will never forget when i first discovered gagaku. i was on a huge global traditional music kick right out of college. Tibetan Buddhist chant, Estonian Choral, Indian Hindustani vocal music, gamelan and gagaku... i went gaga for all that stuff. so once upon a time i found myself in a sweaty tour van with my metal band and our japanese vocalist and i threw on some gagaku one dark night and she just started cracking up. 'what the f%$# are we listening to this music for?!?' she demanded. i said, 'oh! yea! you know gagaku of course. isn't this the darkest most humongous heavy far out music ever?' i asked her with the full-on absurdly ridiculous naiveté that only a privileged audacious young white american man can muster. she looked at me incredulous and laughed in my face, saying, 'to me this sounds like, "here comes the bride / all dressed in white..."' needless to say we had to agree to disagree. :) i have to think that mister tim hecker hears this ancient japanese traditionalist music with the ears of a modern day westerner, not like my friend yoshiko hears it, that is to say. if i was as famous as tim hecker and could make a living making electronic music, i would certainly want to try to make an album with a gagaku ensemble, fusion gag reflex or no. listening to it, i must say he controls the sounds he wields with aplomb. i also must say that, for my personal taste, there aren't a whole lot of ambient electronic records that i like enough to want to listen to, say a dozen or more times. that is to say, i can see this collecting virtual dust in the bowels of my itunes library and seldom getting played, like so many classical or jazz records i have sitting in there. still, it's pleasant background music. i don't think it sounds as profound as the song titles might suggest. regardless of whether i buy into the thematics, this would be a fun record to put on as background music when someone comes by for a glass of wine. 

_DJ World Without End Amen