I listened to this album while painting a rather weathered brick wall white; as I worked I became fascinated with the way obscuring the surface of the wall with paint allowed me to study details of texture and pattern in the old brick. In the same way, the music on this Hakobune release also seems to be about texture and the revealing and obscuring of detail. Behind Hakobune is a man named Takahiro Yorifuji, who lives in Kyoto, and the music was generated by processed guitar improvisations – the result is very guitar-y music, full of swelling reverb and delay, delicate motifs and figures; it’s unashamedly lovely. As I painted my wall, I was struck by how many of the tracks on Away from the Lunar Waters end up being partially or completely obscured by a rising tide of drone and reverb, just as I was obscuring details on the wall with my paint. I was also reminded of Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting In A Room”, where the process of natural reverberation gradually turns speech into music – in places, the guitars cease to sound like guitars and drown in a radiant shimmer. I was also reminded, insistently and unavoidably, of the Cocteau Twins and since the Cocteau Twins aren’t around any more, that will do nicely – it’s more to do with timbre and guitar effects than any specifically melodic or harmonic references. The final track, “Cascading Resonance”, was the standout for me, because there’s a refreshing grittiness and twang to the guitars, but the whole album is an absorbing and worthwhile listen.
This will be released in February by the consistently excellent and intriguing Hibernate label, which you can find at http://www.hibernate-recs.co.uk
infolding 