This release has been out for a few months digitally already, but has a physical release date of June 7th, giving a good opportunity to look at it again.
When it comes to truly ambient works that relax and comfort, Celer- for a decade now the solo project of Will Long- has been on top of the game for a long time. We’re big fans of his work in our household- though we would probably have to promptly admit to being familiar only with the first half of works like “M1” and “Here, for now” as we use them as night-time relaxation music so consistently that we have probably now programmed ourselves in a Pavlovian fashion to fall asleep when we hear them. They are warm, lush drones that are well suited to the purpose, and while the sparseness of some of them also suggests more thoughtful, broad or lonely moods, there’s always a thread of positivity in there that can be hung on to.
And so it is with “Xièxie”. The introduction of some found sound elements, recorded around Shanghai in 2017, leads to titles which might suggest busy chaotic atmospheres- “Maglev at 303 km/h”, “Shanghai red line, metro karaoke” or the rather ambitiously monickered “From the doorway of the beef noodle shop, shoes on the street in the rain, outside the karate school”- but there is no chaos here. These elements are blended gently- and very, very lightly- into familiar long drone tones. It generally is not long before the real-world atmospherics fade away and you are drawn into long, purely synthetic drone worlds that you can lose yourself in entirely.
The twenty-one minute piece “For the entirety” is an example of Celer at his most symphonic, which is an almost absurd overstatement given how understated it is musically- but with three notes in a slow repeating cycle that changes gradually in tone and pace (without ever approaching standard musical speeds), this feels like what modern classical music has rightly and naturally evolved into. Similarly there’s a sombre and peaceful beauty to final track “Our dream to be strangers”, though I suspect I’ll try to listen to that again in the future and be asleep well before I reach that point.
Besides the 90-minute work, as a digital bonus you get two “Uncut” tracks in which the tracks are segued together without track breaks; however I may be missing something here as the transitions are mild at best, often still drops to silence, so I’m not entirely sure what this adds. Also if it’s ‘uncut’, why is it two tracks instead of one?… It’s a mystery to me and I’d welcome some clarification. But as an excuse for listening to the whole work twice in a row, it’s a bonus (albeit a confusing bonus) rather than a problem.
It’s by no means groundbreaking when compared to Celer’s previous work, but for its purpose- insofar as I see it- that is *precisely* what we want.