“A night so quiet that all you can hear is your heartbeat”
Celer has always been the most impressive mastermind of drone music around, consistently unveiling new forms of intimacy that are impossible for any other artist in the niche community to capture. And while he humbly boasts a back catalog of hundreds of projects, everything seems to trace back to Xièxie. This 2019 record falls under the category of the musician’s series of abstract love stories, and its soundscape-style anecdotes are prone to progressively shifting into many different emotions, all of them stronger than any conventional song structure or lyric could communicate. Whether they take the form of nervous wavering field recordings or streamlined drone plateaus, the seven ambient compositions and their four journalistic postcards of wanderlust outline the quiet solitude of city life as well as subsequently filling in the passing thoughts that are experienced in the midst of public transportation to and from this torn existence.
It feels as though Celer is harnessing some invisible energy that is with every human being throughout every second of our lives, with Xièxie playing the part of a monumental conduit that weaves this emotion into sound. Once you have heard these impeccably soft yet incredibly profound pieces, they will be a part of you forever whether you’re aware of it or not, swimming gracefully within your soul like koi fish in a crystal clear pond. In addition, the seamless fades and repetitions of these spellbinding tape loops reward the patience of their listeners with the painstakingly gradual additions of new elements of lunar minutiae along their extended lengths. Most of all, they embody an aspect of travel, as many of Celer’s best works do. The track titles and imageries of Xièxie’s smaller parts come together to tell a story of desynchronization in the heart and in the mind, capturing contemplations of wistful homesickness and daydreams about the unfair distance between two pillars of true love. It explores the feeling of stepping aboard into a place that’s not quite aligned with the world as you previously knew it, and the symbolism of coming to an emotional standstill whilst soaring across the sky or land on one form of vehicle or another.
Xièxie exists in a vacuum, a shapeless void in which the concepts of time and space has dissolved. It fills in the blanks during the all-too-long metallic trappings of a journey by plane or train, replacing white noise and silence with something immeasurably more engaging. The darker tints of this album’s introspective delve into the theoretical yet relatable sadness of falling asleep during a long international flight, awakening in a grey manmade contraption hurtling through the night sky with nothing but physics and trust to keep you going. Remembrances of love and its multifaceted forms of expression have fallen into dead air and radio silence, the once-infinite potentials of technology whisked away in the stratosphere to be wrecked by jet lag and the mourning of two hearts now lost in uncertain airspace.
Due in part to the vastly interpretive nature of its spacey instrumentals but also to the central displays of slow enthralling beauty, Xièxie can be listened to for hours, days, and weeks on end throughout countless countries, countless airports, and countless relationships. It will resonate with them all, forming new connections with every person and place and feeling and welcoming these essences into a photographic memory relayed through music. It’s well worth spending this much time on Xièxie, letting it bond with you, letting it repeat its tales of separation and heartbreak over and over until every bond has been made and the album becomes a caring shoulder to cry on, a comfortable pillow to sleep on, and an everlasting presence of comfort that will stand by you no matter what happens. Xièxie remains in its state of immortal calm through it all, perpetually thanking its guests for the journey that they have taken with the album whether it is their first or their hundredth.
It may last over an hour and a half, but this double LP will always sound fresh in the memory and its analysis between the ideas of physical and emotional distance will always provoke deep exercises of thought. Aligned with the rotating hum of airplane engines and the rhythmic rumble of train tracks, gentle snapshots of Celer’s own travels intersperse the smooth ambient segments, rustling through railways and temples and crowds to imbue the album with yet more genuine feeling. Even in a position of total immobility such as sleep, be it in the transient sanctuary of a hotel or a permanent bed situated in what you know as home, the spirituality and romanticism of these interludes will forever be felt.
This is the best-case-scenario musical realization of every memorable moment when your heart skips a beat in worry or when you feel so overwhelmingly starstruck by love or devastated by its absence that you forget to take a breath. Whether deep in sleep, wide awake, or a meditative halfway point, Xièxie will bolster the soul and cleanse the brain of insomnia and anxiety. By incorporating wisdom from romances new and old in accordance with the eternal wish to be a part of something on a spiritual and universal level, Celer has molded the very clay of reality into ninety-five minutes of perfection.