Montréal based electronic musician Tim Hecker has expressed his admiration for groups like My Bloody Valentine and their interest in “overwhelming tones, tectonic tone plates of sound.” That’s a pretty good description of what to expect on Hecker’s latest release Mirages — a heavier, more explosively release than 2002’s gorgeously ambient Radio Amor. In fact, Mirages, a beatless fusion of drones and guitars, melody and dissonance, all put through a rhizomatic maze of digital and analog processing technologies, looks back to Hecker’s previous Alien8 recordings, Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again and his Van Halen “tribute” My Love is Rotten to the Core. What is notable about Hecker’s work is the sheer exuberant power that surges through each track — and a remarkable ability to reconcile opposites, sweetness and ferocity and so on, in the mix. Hecker is making an electronic, sample based music that sounds more alive, spontaneous than just about anybody today.