Mmmm, warm drone. Warm warm floating drone. Spaceless, empty and all-encompassing through the ears to my open room. No, I’m not talking about your newly dusted off and tasty Fripp’n’Eno collab-o. This drone comes direct from the Asian land of extremes.
Japan’ Hakobune utilises apparently only an effected guitar and the occasional field recording to make the pieces that make up the majority of We Have Left The Window Open Sometimes. With a title like that you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a Mum release and this music runs a similar line: that of open soundscapes, long sweet tones and that feeling of purest release. Swathes of this wonderful floating drone hover and hum behind sparkling notes like so many shifts of sinking light. What seems to be the beginnings of a phrase or melody shifts slowly, languorously taking its time in reaching for some distant unattainable chord before it starts to swim smoothly back into itself. Its music of pure elements; the meditative powers of pure air or pure water played out for aural inception.
Remixes of the disc’ first three tracks appear, too, to give the original pieces an even greater depth. They seem to add more to the disc’ already massive atmosphere. David Tagg’ remix of “The Way Inâ€, for instance, adds a mid-range echo (sample of a Mongolian throat-singer? has to be . . .) that runs like a soft spine though the wavering higher registers and what is either the affected ring of the original guitar line or children laughing and singing to each other in slow motion.
It seems a shame that the apparent field recordings weren’ put to more noticeable use, but the deep, overflowing, ever-reaching atmosphere that holds these pieces together is enough to tone down any agro “roid freak on his explodo adventures through the real world. Put simply, this is pretty much bliss on a disc.
Joel Hedrick
