The short story? Kingdom Hall by Pleq is four slices of dense, epic and cinematic post-classical heaven and you should buy it now.
The longer story? Pleq is the work of Polish experimental musician, Bartosz Dziadosz. He has been a prolific composer, releasing a slew of solo and collaborative albums over the last eight or so years. Dziadosz describes his work as ‘glitch + melancholy’, in more recent projects this has been realised by adding orchestral voices – usually strings – to his electronic soundscapes.
The title track is equal parts earthy drones and glitched out detritus. It’s like an ominous string orchestra tuning up amid the Y2K bug corrupting your pentium III. “Hermitage”, a remix of the Marcus Fjellström track, delivers a kaleidoscope of string timbres. A welcome surprise was finding Cyclic Defrost’s own Peter Hollo crafting pastoral layers of cello to “Only in the Dark”. The EP closes with a reprise of “Kingdom Hall”, remixed by recent Pleq collaborator offthesky (aka Jason Corder).
Whilst terms like post-classical and ambient-classical are sometimes used to over inflate muzak-esque releases, Kingdom Hall is anything but. This is thick and engaging music that demands close listening.
Moderna Records is a great fit for Pleq. The Quebec based label have released excellent albums by Jacob David and Tambour, amongst others, in recent times. Moderna might just be my favorite label right now.
Dziadosz has claimed Kingdom Hall marks an important turn in his work. One hopes a subsequent long player in this vein is on its way. Given Pleq’s prodigious output, I’d hazard a guess that this is nigh.
Matt Wakeling
