Blog Archives

Track list:
1 (06.23.17) From the doorway of the beef noodle shop, shoes on the street in the rain, outside the karate school
2 Rains lit by neon
3 In the middle of the moving field
4 (06.26.17) Maglev at 303 km/h
5 Text me when you wake up
6 For the entirety
7 (06.24.17) Birds inside the high halls of Hangzhou, (06.23.17) Shanghai red line, metro karaoke
8-9 Prelude to obsession I & II
10 (06.26.17) Waiting in Hangzhou
11 Our dream to be strangers

Release description:
Phonetic script: Xièxie
Chinese characters: 谢谢
谢谢 ( xiexie / xièxie ) is composed of these characters: 谢 (xie) , 谢 (xie)
English translation: thank you, thanks
to say  |  to thank  |  literally means ‘thanks’. ‘Thank you’ in Chinese would be xièxie nĭ (if you thank an individual), or xièxie nĭmen (to say thank you to a group of people).

– Chinese -> English Dictionary

A week before leaving, I bought a dictionary and phrasebook.

Covered in rain, during the days and even the nights, Shanghai was lit in a glow, a mist turning to a constant grey fog. Buildings lined with neon and lcd screens flashed, and from around corners and behind buildings, the night was illuminated much the same as the day. Cars separated the classes, their horns voices punctuating the streets, as pedestrians in groups loosely scattered the streets, talking and walking on speakerphone.

Standing by the metro escalators, there in the square with the overhanging trees of a park, there is construction all around. The buildings seem to be climbing into the darkness at this very moment. Leaving behind and moving forward. We seem to know everything already, our illusion of experience. I imagine taking your hand, I imagined taking your hand, and the lights in the subway flicker as we go deeper. Transit bookmarks each experience, every daydream, and in the end they’re interchangeable and indistinguishable between reality and imagination. Try to remember which is real.

To Hangzhou the maglev reached 303 km/h, the towering apartment buildings hunch under construction, passing by in blurs on the flat farmland landscape. I fell asleep, as you were dancing but to no music. The lilies on the lake nodded in the rain, dipping into the water. There was a Wal-Mart near the hotel where I won a pink bunny from a claw machine. I remember the beauty of the architecture of Hangzhou station, birds swirling around the pillars near the top, the echoes of the deep station interior, and the laughing at being lost. There at least we have each other, that memory, or that daydream.

Everything moves faster than we can control. Days are just flashes, moments are mixed up but burned on film, and all of the places and times are out of order. If it could only be us, only ours. If it was ours, if it was us. Sometimes everything goes faster than you can control and you can’t stop, much less understand where you are. I bought a dictionary and phrasebook, but “xièxie” was the only word I ever got to use. 

– Will Long, January 2019

在出行前一個星期, 我買了中文字典和中文片語集。

上海到處都是下雨，不論白天還至是夜晚，雨在持續不斷的灰霧之下閃閃發光。我們參觀了外灘，關於未來的一切就像這種灰霧一樣渾濁。「現在抱緊我。」她說。抑或, 是我說過的話嗎？ 汽車的喇叭聲是刺穿街道的聲音；而每當我們經過茶飲店時，我們停下來。

站在這裡的地鐵自動扶梯，或站在被公園包圍的廣場，現在它們看起來歷久常新。 我喜歡那些古舊，但我亦對嶄新的抱感興趣。 像我這樣的人都認為自己已經知道那些虛幻的經驗。 我無法理解，我無法理解自己。 我們看似不同，但我們將始終如一。 我現在想像牽著你的手，也曾想像過我牽著你的手。隨著我們走得越來越深入, 地鐵裡的燈光就閃爍不斷 。如果這些景象只能跟內裡的洞穴感配搭起來，那我就知道它不能持久，它是不能持久，是不能持久…

抽煙的男人們在街上跟我們擦身而過，而我拍了幾張一包包香煙散留於地上的照片。 這就好像我們到處尋找一家沒有服務員將頭倒在桌面上睡覺的餐廳。 我們只是在下雨的城市漫步迷失，還是只是在性愛當中感到茫然？ 樹木低垂在湖面上，它們在雨中哭泣。 但是我仍然可以在臉上感覺到雨中的薄霧，感覺到我們在雨傘外面手牽手，雙手依然保持濕潤。 所有這些瞬間中，即使你不在我身邊，但你常在我的腦海之中。 究竟, 幻像與現實之間的區別在哪裡？

杭州的磁懸浮列車的時速達到每小時303公里，它經過閃亮潮濕的跨省公路和高樓，在平坦的農田景觀中迷糊的流淌著。 你身在遙遠之地，但你如就在我身旁。 一切都比我們所能控制的走得更快。 那些日子就像是閃爍的光，那些不同的時刻混雜在一起, 但它們最終卻烙印在菲林之上; 而我們曾經擁用的地方和時間都已經失序, 已不合時宜。 如果這些只屬於我們，那就只屬於我們。 假設它曾經是屬於我們，假設它曾經是我們。 有時候一切都比你能控制的要快，你不能停下來，更不用說你能否了解你所在之處。

– translation by Edwin Lo

 

Package description:
Xièxie is available as a 2LP edition of 300 copies, 150 silver and 150 black, a 2CD, 6 panel package edition of 500 copies, and a 2CS oversized slipcase edition of 150 copies. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu. 

Track list:
1 Everywhere I Go, You’re All That I See
2 Wishes Would Be Grand If Only They Came True

Release description:
Side A
Sit down, put your arms out, and lean your head back. Your neck rests on the black leather of the couch, and warm sunlight only comes in if you open the windows. Marble angels watch over you, and the lights can stay low. While you’re sleeping, I can’t imagine that you’re dreaming at all. I took photos of the curtains, and waited for what seemed like hours for you to wake up. I couldn’t sleep at all, just sitting under the lights. I’ve dreamed of this moments we’ve had. Every interpretation is simplistic, an expectation that you can find some whole in something so thin. Even the thinnest knives can cut deeply. Dreams that love can be the solution, that I’ll find everything here, no, everything there. Maybe next time everything will be perfect. I’ll stop burning inside, I’ll stop wanting everything to change. I’ll be happy, I won’t need anything. But I keep wavering, esurient and waiting. You search for love, all you need is love, and all you have are memories.

Side B
Suddenly looking out over the cliffs of a coast, sunglasses and a car by the side of the road, the ocean doesn’t end. The sun burns my face, dust on the gravel road seems to move in the breeze, and the face of the ocean seems as a blue plate. I swam above the hairpin bends, and waited on the floating platform. I knew you’d show up. You were even early. My hair was more grey, and your college days made you look happy. I smiled hearing all about your days with friends, reading these books you passed me over the cafe table, remembering the smell of the pages from our home library. You mentioned it too. I know you’ve grown up to be the same as me, and we only smile, and see it in our eyes. Outside, the shuffling plates and silverware are only background noise. Birds are nearby, staying shaded in the trees. They’re always singing the same song.

Two stories by Will Long, October 2018

Track list:
CD1 Tetra
CD2 Simultaneity
CD3 Weak Ends
CD4 Nichibotsu
CD5 Caprice

Release description:
Operating outside the limelight in the underground, Will Long has produced prolifically across genres, monikers, and countries since 2006. Predating his minimal house contributions under his given name to DJ Sprinkles’ Comatonse label and Smalltown Supersound, Long has put forth over a hundred collections of ambient compositions in stream of consciousness fashion under the name Celer. A native to America, Long has been based in Tokyo since 2011, where he has continued to expand upon his vault of celestial arrangements, amassing a cult following over the years by releasing them on under-the-radar labels, his own Two Acorns label, and on his Bandcamp.

Memory Repetitions serves to reflect on the labyrinthine body of work that comprises Celer. Spanning five pieces, each roughly thirty minutes in length, the compilation is being released as a 5-CD box set alongside its digital format via Smalltown Supersound on November 9th.

Tracklist:

1 The Burden Of Bliss
2 Without a Beginning Or End

Release description:
You were in another city, somewhere in the rain, the coastal structures black and windowless, but with slowly pulsing white lights; black lighthouses in the city stream drifting up and over our view. The apartments and offices spread out behind, and all the transparent shades of umbrellas walked across the streets, strewn around like a beach after a storm. I drove over the bridge, there were few railings and from over the hills you could take in every aspect of the city wall, and the bridges beyond. Passing the grey mists and through the giant vents to clean the view, the freeway winded into tunnels, lit in soft yellow and gold, the pipes shining bronze and the lights of other cars passing tracers of red. We had walked together from the center of the city through that maze of umbrellas, the faces of others obscured underneath, seeming asleep through the dewy plastic, walking on and on. We walked for what seemed like 20 minutes to where we always went, as if we didn’t need an umbrella. We didn’t talk, or didn’t need to. When I arrived at your building, it was warm inside like a library. There were lamps along the wall, and all the colors of the furniture seemed dark and in the shadows. When we met it was with smiling and some kind of surprise, as if we hadn’t just met hours before, but instead it was what may have been years. I just need to choose which it is.

– Will Long, 2018 

Track list:
1 80,000 Feet
2 Taking Measures Toward Morning
3 Cherry Souls Awakening
4 Scarfs, Blisters And Night Lights
5 Artificial Colours
6 Swift And Ersatz Cough To Morning
7 Fathom This Young Life
8 Metal Master
9 Diphenhydramine
10 Sluggish In The Morning
11 Seeing; That Side Of Teaching
12 Mi
13 Peak Pressure
14 Rain Machines
15 Voiceless Devilfish
16 Swarms Of Orange
17 The Divine Is Not Invisible
18 Passing Hills And Still Windmills
19 Petrified Forest
20 Ice Deserts Over Ross Island
21 Scratch The Chest Of Your Voices
22 Blind Darsan
23 Missed Language
24 Late Calms
25 “To Be Holy, Be Wholly Your Own”
26 Hyperopia
27 Right To Left
28 A Minor Echolocation
29 We Were Blond First
30 The Stars Are Only Smears
31 Orionne
32 5:59 AM
33 Ends Meet
34 Mass Clouds
35 Till The Clouds Roll By
36 Apricot Sunrise
37 Echelons

Release description:
Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), also known as “nacreous clouds”, are found in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 metres (50,000–80,000 ft). Due to their high altitude and the curvature of the surface of the Earth, these clouds will receive sunlight from below the horizon and reflect it to the ground, shining brightly well before dawn or after dusk. PSCs form at very low temperatures, below −78 °C. These temperatures can occur in the lower stratosphere in polar winter. In the Antarctic, temperatures below −88 °C frequently cause type II PSCs. Such low temperatures are rarer in the Arctic. Apart from arctic regions, PSCs have also been known to be seen in Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and Northern Canada. Sometimes, however, they occur as far south as England.

“Nacreous Clouds”, created using tape loops and digital processing, is Celer’s third album to be released on a label, and was originally issued in 2008 on and/OAR in a CD edition of 300 copies. To coincide with the 10-year release anniversary, it has been remastered by Stephan Mathieu, and is presented with new artwork and packaging, reissued on Two Acorns.

Playback using the random shuffle mode, repeat, or sequential play of your CD player is highly recommended.

Track list:

1 James A McDermid – Sere
2 Benoit Pioulard – As voice are static take
3 Celer – Of a Celestial Body
4 anthene – whatever fire is burning
5 Clara Engel – A Starfish Walking
6 Rhucle – Mass
7 Endurance – Plongeur
8 Hotel Neon – Steady State
9 M. Mucci – Fermi, non dite plu niente
10 poemme – will o’ the wisp
11 Secret Pyramid – IV
12 Channeling – Last Saturday
13 Ian Hawgood – Hushed Edges In The City
14 April Larson – The Stars My Destination 2047
15 Northumbria – Prelude for a Siren
16 Valiska – Catnap
17 Forest Management – Winthrop Avenue
18 Maiya Hershey – Washed Away
19 North Atlantic Drift – Auras
20 David Newlyn – Beyond the Lights
21 (ph)authers – Ambergris
22 Michael Gordon – Painkiller

Release description:
All digital sales and all proceeds from physical sales going to Wishing Well Sanctuary. Wishing Well provides sanctuary for animals in need and education for children and adults promoting compassion for our fellow species. As an animal lover and vegan I am really happy to be able to support animal welfare through Polar Seas.

Track list:

1 O. Vaupel – At Se I Morke
2 Anthene – Best Intentions
3 Anasisana – Maubeuge
4 Forest Management – Tangle
5 V. Sinclair – A Saint in the Garden of Our Time
6 Celer – Four Circles Around a Empty Place
7 Amethyst – Blossom Palace

Release description:
Stages of Grief Vol 1. ‘Convalescence’ chronicles the hardships of time via 7 arresting compositions, each one acting as a personal response to the compilations thematic while creating a aural story arch, enfolding throughout the course of the release.

Dedicated to Konrad, Shaleen, Kimberly, Jon, Pizarnik, Sally & Jasmin

Track list:

1 There’s No Time To Process
2 Or Me Or You
3 Was It Okay For Myself?
4 All Rejection Of Reality
5 Dancing and Not Around

Release description:
All music and photography by Will Long. Sourced from a record of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring played at 15 rpm and replayed and reprocessed on tape.

Track list:
1 7° 10° 77° 83°
2 The First Steps Onto Their Soil
3 Hotel Mona Lisa
4 Indistinguishable From Magic
5 A Big And Strange Place
6 Volcanic Institutions
7 From Fire, Ice
8 Embera
9 5,000 Feet Under The Surface
10 Blending All Of The Above
11 S-shaped Isthmus
12 Magnified Pieces Of Thermodynamics
13 The Signs Are Everywhere
14 Rights Of The Idea Or A Machine

Release description:
“Collaborating for the first time, Will Long and John Daniel combine their methods using tape machines, loops, and computers to score a reimagining of Peter Weir’s film and Paul Theroux’s novel “The Mosquito Coast”. Sourcing inspiration from a view of the film and book as a historical pendulum, the musicians found that these reinterpretations left them nostalgic for a different time, something that’s only partly imagined, and without the defined predictions about the life cycles of mass culture based on our limited understanding of current events.”