Review: Pleq + Marihiko Hara - The Dawn Came Behind The Fog

Branching off from father-son venture Somehow Recordings, micro-label Twisted Tree Line dedicates itself to limited-run “postcard releases” on 3” CDR. Just as this format might suggest, these are fleeting insights into various elsewheres – captured points of time and place, channelled back in a deliberately limiting format (in terms of duration restraints) that bring a certain enigma and unsaid along with them; tiny tokens of atmospheric essence and emotional implication.

This 20-minute EP between fervent collaborators Pleq and Marihiko Hara is a solid contribution to the series. Meandering stretches of piano, thin sheets of vinyl crackle and static, muffled field recordings of winter breeze and weathered ambient tones…each of these elements are sparingly used and reluctant to step into the foreground. The atmosphere here is thick with an awkward poise, as though suppressing gallons of emotions for every droplet permitted through. The buzz of interference is a constant presence, as though The Dawn Came Behind The Fog is on the frequency brink of a beautiful radio broadcast but prefers to shy away, half-masked by the static haze; peering through at the dawn from within the fog.