The first release on the label recently launched by Celer’s Will Long couldn’t have been better, including the wonderful cover photos by his late wife Dani, who participated in the recordings and to whom the record is dedicated, just like everything else Will does. I won’t be tedious in listing the sources utilized in this magnificent piece of music, although they’re almost entirely indicated in the press blurb. Some are immediately comprehensible, others are revealed with the passage of time and come out little by little, either as mild surprises or more shocking appearances – but never, ever in less than touching fashion. The remaining colours mesh in heartrending blurs of drones and aural rainbows. I’ll say this: Generic City – rarely a title thus distant from truth is found – is a work from which the masses of imitators should learn; not by taking its ideas and concepts and reproducing them as third-hand copies, but deciding once and for all to give up presumptuous dilettantism, retreat in silence and let the masters of the game perform their job.
Stillness is where this luminescent album is coming from, in spite of the fact that not a single second of emptiness appears throughout. The motionlessness we’re referring to is related to the total awareness of something that can’t possibly put into writing, perhaps experienced while looking at a valley at sunset, or walking on a shore by yourself or with a loved one, surrounded only by the wind and the sea wash. Or maybe to the realization that a man is alone, but is not alone. You can pretend enlightenment and declare of being someone who’s following “paths”, to the point of choosing a person as a spiritual guide and believe you’re doing the right thing. However, a beautiful, indescribable sound appearing from nowhere is the lone moment in which that connection with the unknown really happens, and there’s no way to fake this sensation by masking it through futile words or dramatic acting: legitimately vibrating beings are going to expose your lie. If the instruments to decode that manifestation are not present from the beginning, then it’s a flat kind of existence that those individuals are facing.
These four tracks are intense, delicate and useful for self-collection, becoming a necessary company after mere moments. Onodera and Celer managed to engender a true masterpiece which needs no stupid classification. To quote Long, “there is no replacement for the smell of a book, the spin of a CD player starting, or the consistently changing nature of our memories”.