Pleq & Hakobune - Adrift

This CD sees prolific lonely dronester Hakobune team up with serial collaborator Pleq for six tracks of detailed, melodic ambient drift. To be honest the two of them have both brought out so much other material in recent years that you probably have a good idea what this’ll sound like, since both these prominent texturesmiths have a reasonably defined aesthetic, with Takahiro ‘Hakobune’ Yorifuji doling out layers of blurry guitar drone while Bartosz ‘Pleq’ Dziadosz (I can see why they adopted pseudonyms, those names are a mouthful!) adds detail by way of field recordings and glitchy weirdness. Kind of a similar peace-drone/art-glitch trade off to the excellent Celer/Machinefabriek pieces.

What results is a calming, warm drift’n’drone which throbs and swells gently with weird ethereal rumbles, hidden melodies and celestial shimmers aplenty and an understated emotional undertow akin to the likes of Celer or maybe even Deathprod. There are a flat, higher pitched tone which come in on ‘The Horizon Line’ and seems a little disorientating, cutting through the soft, grainy layers of ambience like a laser pistol shooting a clean round hole in a delicious roll of wholemeal bread.

There’s a sinister feel to the decaying drones in places, but it’s tempered by a radiance; a shimmering, glowing hopefulness that permeates even the darker moments. It’s a delight to hear these two masters converse in their common language of drone, and I recommend you set yourself adrift alongside them.