Blog Archives

Track list:

1 Akagi

 

Release description:
In the fall of 2012, I was asked to create music for a live yoga event at Yougenji temple in Northern Tokyo. The performance was centered on the yoga instructor with the musician playing to the back of the audience, so that music served more as a live soundtrack for the event. For this I created a new piece of music using two reel-to-reel tape machines, and two tape loops of keyboards with similar time structures, but each with different, overlapping chords. They played simultaneously, crossing in different combinations, and with manual alterations of the volume and high/low settings on the machines. While changing, it maintained the same sound and makeup throughout.

During the performance many people fell asleep, and seemed to drift off to another place. Sometimes it seemed like they were waking up, but it was only the evolution of the yoga exercise matching the music. Surprisingly, throughout the entire performance, and ever since, whenever hearing the piece of music, I am immediately reminded of my grandmother. When I was 6 years old I moved with my parents to the house of my great grandfather, next door to where my father grew up, and where my grandmother still lived. She had been bed-ridden for several years by that time, and would remain so until her death when I was 11.

Somehow this music continued to fill my mind with those memories of sitting in her room, watching tv late at night with her when my parents were out to dinner, or the hazy lace curtains on the windows, moving in the afternoon breeze. I remembered that stillness, the warmth of her voice without any complaints, despite the restricted isolation, and the ever-present surroundings never changing. Seeing the audience in these motionless-to-waking states brought this memory back to me, though exactly why I can’t be sure. However, because of this, the music was given a background, and a dedication.

– Will Long, 2015

２０１２年の秋、私は北東京にある養源寺という寺院で行われたヨガ・イベントのための音楽制作を依頼された。そのパフォーマンスは、ヨガ・インストラクターを囲みながらミュージシャンがオーディエンスの背後で演奏するというもので、音楽がイベントのための生のサウンドトラックのような形になっていた。このイベントのために私は、二台のオープンリール・マシンを使って新しい作品を作った。キーボードで作られたコードの異なる二つのテープ・ループは、似たような時間構造で重り合っていた。それらのループは同時に再生しながら様々な組み合わせで交差し、機械上での手動の音量と高域・低域のセッティングによって変化していった。変化しながら、全体を通して一つのサウンドとなっていた。

パフォーマンスの最中、多くの人々が眠りに落ち、別の場所に行ってしまったかのように見えた。時々、彼らが目を覚ましていくかのように見えたが、それは単にヨガのエクササイズの展開だった。それは音楽にマッチしていた。驚くべきことだが、パフォーマンスの間中、またそれ以来ずっと、その音楽の断片を耳にするたびに、私には祖母のことがすぐに思い起こされる。６歳のとき私は、曾祖父が建てた家に両親とともに移り住んだ。その家の隣には私の父が育った家があり、そこに祖母はまだ住んでいた。祖母はそれまで何年ものあいだ、そして私が１１歳のときに彼女が亡くなるまでずっと寝たきりだった。

どういうわけかこの音楽が私の心に満たし続ける記憶は、祖母の部屋で座っていたときの思い出だ。
両親が外食に出かけ不在の夜、遅くまで彼女と一緒にテレビを見たこと。窓際で午後のそよ風に揺らされて霞むレースのカーテン。あの静けさ、祖母の暖かい声。制限された孤独と、変化の起きることのない環境のなか、彼女は決して不平をもらさなかった。どうしてかは私にも分からないのだが、静止と覚醒の状態にある観客を見ながら、これらの記憶が私の中によみがえった。しかし、この記憶のおかげで音楽は背景を持ち、祖母に捧げるものとなることができたのだ。

２０１５年、ウィル・ロング

All music by Will Long
Recorded and mixed 2011 – 2015 in Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan
Special thanks to Rie Mitsutake
For M.L.L.

 

Track list:
1 Maastunnel
2 Mt. Mitake
3 Numa
4 Penarie
5 Hei
6 Sou
7 In/Out
8 Sou (Remix by Sylvain Chauveau)
9 Mt. Mitake (Remix by Nicolas Bernier)
10 Deux Filles (Numa) (Remix by Stephan Mathieu)

Release description:
This album collects the material from three previously released 7-inches, with an additional new track and three remixes.
Tracks 1-7 are constructed by Will Long and Rutger Zuydervelt in Tokyo and Rotterdam. 1-6 are previously released on three 7-inch singles. 7-10 are exclusive to this release.

 

Track list:
1 Soryu

Release description:
Ambient music is a difficult thing to categorize – especially your own music. It’s easy to just name several easy genres, and that’s it. Sometimes it’s enough, but not always. If we go back to the origins according to Brian Eno, he says “You could pay attention or you could choose not to be distracted by it if you wanted to do something while it was on” and that ambient music is “creating an ambience, a sense of place that complements and alters your environment.” For myself, I always understood where Eno was coming from, and how it applies to his music, and ambient music in general. But even though this music has been an influence for me (particularly Brian Eno’s Discreet Music), it wasn’t always what I set out to do from the beginning. With the tools I had, it’s just what my music ended up sounding like – or to say it another way, it was what I wanted to listen to myself.

For a long time I rejected Eno’s idea about making my own music, because I wasn’t interested in making background music. People can perceive your music any way they want it, applying it to the way they hear it and how it applies to their life and surroundings, but that doesn’t always match your reasons for making it. There was always something much more interactive to me – and those memories are completely vivid to me – if they’re quiet, it’s because that’s how they really were – but it doesn’t mean they were less-strong, or shouldn’t be paid attention to. Other music (more loop oriented, and direct) is all about repeating a memory, a feeling, or something else – this may not be exactly how it happened, but this is how I remember it, and by making it this way it sets it in stone. For me, at least.

Soryu may be something different entirely the same. There are all these things present still – but for some reason, to me, it feels like possibly the only purely ambient music that I’ve ever made. I don’t mean this to be background music, but by saying ‘purely ambient’, to me it is as close to Eno’s definition as is possible (up to now). It isn’t meant to be ignored, but instead it’s something to be lost in – a maze where everything looks the same – there are familiar places and sounds, different colors and different sized objects, but you’re lost in this place, and these things repeat, not always in the same order. It’s a zone, somewhere where everything can become familiar, but it doesn’t always seem to be ordered the same way. For example, in Alain Resnais’ 1968 film Je t’aime, je t’aime everything is the same, but the way you memorize it feels different – what you thought was familiar is not really that at all, and after repeating it over and over, you see it or yourself differently. At least, you can.

Soryu is the first in a series of long-form pieces made with this idea. The story and background for each varies, but the direction remains the same. That is, having no direction.

 

Track list:
1 Lights Inside and Ahead
2 3.14 Transfer To Frankfurt
3 Deck Allusion
4 3.31 Night Train To Berlin
5 A Single Quantum Event
6 3.13 Beijing Layover
7 Associations With the Same Intention
8 3.21 Basel After A Rain
9 Ends That Come As Quickly As Beginnings

Release description:
Touring is a strange experience. There are disappointments and surprises. The audience you expected wasn’t there, but those shows usually end up being the best. I didn’t expect I’d see these cities. Frankfurt in the rain, or falling asleep in the back of a car in Basel, waiting for a show to start. You wake up and you’re in a different place, or already moving on to the next before you can experience the place.

All the tapes I dubbed for the tour I left in the first hotel, and did the rest on the trains en route. When we walked to the field at Tempelhof, it was totally covered with snow, and it was so cold my camera lens froze. Your hair whipped in the wind like a mustang.

I remember the taxi interiors in Poland, and how many women wore leather in Russia. I couldn’t find bookstores, but it didn’t matter. Meeting everyone was the best part of it, you experience these small events during the days or at night, and you think how we’ll remember this forever. Then you return home, and never speak with them again.

Tempelhof was recorded on tour in 2013 in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Russia. It was mixed in Japan between 2013 and 2015.

 

Track list:

1 Bleeds and swell blends
2 These dreams, how portentously gloomy
3 Natural deflections
4 Acrimonious, like fiddles

Release description:

Artist statement

A few years ago I took a road trip with my 80-year old uncle through parts of the American southwest. We drove to Moab, where the sunset turned the canyon walls orange in the early evening, and after midnight, passing puffy clouds still showed through the the navy blue sky. In the morning, the buttes seemed brilliant bleached in sunlight, and the view from above the canyon was completely silent save for the wind, and birds occasionally flying past. In the Needles district, the centuries-old petroglyphs were mixed with graffiti; spraypaint cans lying half-submerged rusted in the sand below. We drove through the back roads of the La Sal Mountains, and down across the windswept grey Colorado plateau.

Past the expanses of Monument Valley, on the outskirts of Kayenta, rainstorms loomed in the distance as teenage hitchhikers dotted the roadsides, along which were makeshift souvenir shops, alone like fireworks stands after a passed holiday. Climbing out of the desert, we passed through Aspen, through the ski resorts and celebrity mansions, where the average annual household income is $69,000, compared to $21,000 in Kayenta. The next day, our drive ended near Ouray, the fog rolling over the evergreen-lined roads.

Several years later, after leaving California, I put together a collection of tracks made with an electric piano and a wooden flute. Two tracks were copied onto two sun-baked cassette tapes I had found on the dashboard of a car, and the other two from a warped 12″ test pressing. Revisiting these pieces after living in Japan for several years, they instantly reminded me of the trip, and what I left behind in the United States. The tapes fluttered and stuck, drenched in hiss and grime. The record skipped, wavered, and dropped in and out. Yet with these imperfections, it completely reflected my memory of the places, and what they represented. There are sides to everything, whether it causes you to change or not.

– Will Long, 2015

アーティスト・ステートメント

数年前、８０歳になる叔父とアメリカ南西部を車で旅したことがあった。我々がドライブをしたモアブという場所では、夕方になると夕日が渓谷の壁をオレンジ色に染め、夜中を過ぎると、濃紺の夜空にふわふわの雲が現われては通り過ぎていった。朝になると、太陽にさらされたビュート（孤立丘）が輝いて見え、渓谷の上からの景色は、風と、時折飛んで行く鳥の音をのぞいては完全な静寂に包まれていた。ニードルズ地区にある、何世紀も前の岩面彫刻には落書きが入り混じっていて、錆びたスプレーペイントの缶が砂地に半分埋もれて残されていた。我々はラ・サル山脈の裏道をドライブして、吹きさらしの灰色のコロラド高原を超えて行った。

カエンタ郊外の広々としたモニュメントバレーを過ぎると、遠くのほうにぼんやりと暴風雨が見えた。沿道にはティーンエイジャーのヒッチハイカー達が点在し、簡易な作りの土産店が休日明けの花火の屋台のように寂しそうに並んでいた。砂漠を抜けると、我々はアスペンというスキーリゾートを通り過ぎた。セレブなマンションが立ち並ぶその辺りの一世帯の年収は69,000ドル、一方カエンタでは21,000ドルだ。

何年か後になってカリフォルニアを去ったあと、私は電子ピアノと木笛を使って一連の曲を制作した。その中の２曲が、車のダッシュボードの上で陽にあたって劣化したカセットテープの中にコピーされているのを私は発見した。そして残りの２曲は、歪んでしまったテストプレス用のレコードの中にあった。日本に何年か住んだ後でこれらの作品を再検討してみると、あの旅のこと、そして私がアメリカに置いてきたもののことがすぐさま思い起こされた。テープには歪みやひっかかりがあり、ノイズとホコリまみれだった。レコードには音飛びや音揺れがあり、音が大きくなったり小さくなったりした。けれどもこれらの不完全さは、それぞれの場所の私の思い出、そしてそれらが意味するものを見事に象徴していた。すべてのものには、両端がある。それが我々に変化を起こさせるものかどうかにかかわらず。

– Will Long, 2015

Press statement

Inspired by the American Southwest, “How could you believe me when I told you that I loved you when you know I’ve been a liar all my life” is the new album by American musician Celer, aka Will Long, now living in Japan. Sourced from an electric piano and wooden flute, tape loops were copied to sun-baked cassette tapes, and a warped vinyl tester, using the most basic format-inherent effects. Based on an idea of primitive Americana, it can be seen as a mediation on the different sides of music and cultural perception, or a reflection of inherent imperfections.

 

Track list:

1 Bleeds and swell blends
2 These dreams, how portentously gloomy
3 Natural deflections
4 Acrimonious, like fiddles

Release description:

Artist statement

A few years ago I took a road trip with my 80-year old uncle through parts of the American southwest. We drove to Moab, where the sunset turned the canyon walls orange in the early evening, and after midnight, passing puffy clouds still showed through the the navy blue sky. In the morning, the buttes seemed brilliant bleached in sunlight, and the view from above the canyon was completely silent save for the wind, and birds occasionally flying past. In the Needles district, the centuries-old petroglyphs were mixed with graffiti; spraypaint cans lying half-submerged rusted in the sand below. We drove through the back roads of the La Sal Mountains, and down across the windswept grey Colorado plateau.

Past the expanses of Monument Valley, on the outskirts of Kayenta, rainstorms loomed in the distance as teenage hitchhikers dotted the roadsides, along which were makeshift souvenir shops, alone like fireworks stands after a passed holiday. Climbing out of the desert, we passed through Aspen, through the ski resorts and celebrity mansions, where the average annual household income is $69,000, compared to $21,000 in Kayenta. The next day, our drive ended near Ouray, the fog rolling over the evergreen-lined roads.

Several years later, after leaving California, I put together a collection of tracks made with an electric piano and a wooden flute. Two tracks were copied onto two sun-baked cassette tapes I had found on the dashboard of a car, and the other two from a warped 12″ test pressing. Revisiting these pieces after living in Japan for several years, they instantly reminded me of the trip, and what I left behind in the United States. The tapes fluttered and stuck, drenched in hiss and grime. The record skipped, wavered, and dropped in and out. Yet with these imperfections, it completely reflected my memory of the places, and what they represented. There are sides to everything, whether it causes you to change or not.

– Will Long, 2015

アーティスト・ステートメント

数年前、８０歳になる叔父とアメリカ南西部を車で旅したことがあった。我々がドライブをしたモアブという場所では、夕方になると夕日が渓谷の壁をオレンジ色に染め、夜中を過ぎると、濃紺の夜空にふわふわの雲が現われては通り過ぎていった。朝になると、太陽にさらされたビュート（孤立丘）が輝いて見え、渓谷の上からの景色は、風と、時折飛んで行く鳥の音をのぞいては完全な静寂に包まれていた。ニードルズ地区にある、何世紀も前の岩面彫刻には落書きが入り混じっていて、錆びたスプレーペイントの缶が砂地に半分埋もれて残されていた。我々はラ・サル山脈の裏道をドライブして、吹きさらしの灰色のコロラド高原を超えて行った。

カエンタ郊外の広々としたモニュメントバレーを過ぎると、遠くのほうにぼんやりと暴風雨が見えた。沿道にはティーンエイジャーのヒッチハイカー達が点在し、簡易な作りの土産店が休日明けの花火の屋台のように寂しそうに並んでいた。砂漠を抜けると、我々はアスペンというスキーリゾートを通り過ぎた。セレブなマンションが立ち並ぶその辺りの一世帯の年収は69,000ドル、一方カエンタでは21,000ドルだ。

何年か後になってカリフォルニアを去ったあと、私は電子ピアノと木笛を使って一連の曲を制作した。その中の２曲が、車のダッシュボードの上で陽にあたって劣化したカセットテープの中にコピーされているのを私は発見した。そして残りの２曲は、歪んでしまったテストプレス用のレコードの中にあった。日本に何年か住んだ後でこれらの作品を再検討してみると、あの旅のこと、そして私がアメリカに置いてきたもののことがすぐさま思い起こされた。テープには歪みやひっかかりがあり、ノイズとホコリまみれだった。レコードには音飛びや音揺れがあり、音が大きくなったり小さくなったりした。けれどもこれらの不完全さは、それぞれの場所の私の思い出、そしてそれらが意味するものを見事に象徴していた。すべてのものには、両端がある。それが我々に変化を起こさせるものかどうかにかかわらず。

– Will Long, 2015

Press statement

Inspired by the American Southwest, “How could you believe me when I told you that I loved you when you know I’ve been a liar all my life” is the new album by American musician Celer, aka Will Long, now living in Japan. Sourced from an electric piano and wooden flute, tape loops were copied to sun-baked cassette tapes, and a warped vinyl tester, using the most basic format-inherent effects. Based on an idea of primitive Americana, it can be seen as a mediation on the different sides of music and cultural perception, or a reflection of inherent imperfections.

 

Track list:

1 Simon Scott – Water Shadow
2 A Winged Victory For the Sullen – Ti Prego Memory Man
3 Celer – Nothing So Mystical
4 Black Swan – Passings, Heartbreak
5 Jim Haynes – This is Radio Sweden
6 EN – White
7 Pjusk – Dorsk
8 Fieldhead – 37th
9 Noveller – Bright Clouds Bloom

Release description:
SMM: Opiate is the second release in Ghostly’s SMM series, which is an ongoing exploration of the evocative possibilities of sound, with a focus on classical minimalism, electronic and drone composition, film soundtracks, and fragile imaginary landscapes. Opiate is the follow-up to 2011’s SMM: Context, and as with that record, it’s a carefully chosen selection of music, compiled over some two years from around the world.

The record opens with Simon Scott’s “Water Shadow,” a luxuriant piece of beatless ambience that’s like a wash of warm water or the first touch of the summer sun on your face after a long, cold winter. It’s a warmth that doesn’t last, though — “Ti Prego Memory Man,” by A Winged Victory for the Sullen, is no less beautiful. It’s a stately, alpine beauty, its chilly sounds a harbinger of things to come. Celer’s “Nothing So Mystical” is more minimal still, while Black Swan’s “Passing Heartbreak” brings whispers of humanity, its sound coalescing out of an atmospheric whirl of vocal textures.

The wryly titled “This Is Radio Sweden,” by Jim Haynes, is all brooding background noise that’s shot through with what sounds like an old-fashioned telephone engaged tone, a track that seems shot through with connotations of absence and loss. EN’s “White” is both somber and somehow transportive, setting plucked chords from what sounds like a banjo over a glistening synth figure, while Pjusk’s “Dorsk” slows to a sort of stasis, with only the faintest of basslines to indicate any sign of life. Fieldhead’s “37th” is like a slow, mindful from such a reverie, and Noveller’s “Bright Cloud Blooms” brings the cycle to a close with another brief flush of precious warmth.

As a whole, the compilation seems to follow a narrative arc, descending through a series of stages into near-complete stillness, and then slowly ascending back to where it began. As a whole, the experience is certainly evocative of the opiated sensation evoked by the record’s title — but really, it’s a compilation that invites you to find your own meaning in it, or simply to appreciate the beauty of its music and escape the world for a while.

Track list:

1 Maru Dai Dawn
2 Pandimension
3 Perta Ine
4 Ersatz Athene
5 Epitaph
6 4D Samba
7 Beyond AD
8 Naeba
9 Not Here
10 Maru Dai Dawn (Asdasfr Bawd Remix)
11 Not Here (Celer Remix)
12 Pandimension (Ghost Drops x Shisd Remix)
13 Maru Dai Dawn (Foodman Remix)

 

Release description:
CD issue of Nico Niquo’s EPITAPH. Featuring four exclusive remixes from Foodman, Celer, Ghost Drops x Shisd, and Asdasfr Bawd.

Track list:

Side A
1 Distant Misgivings

Side B
2 The Potential of the Unnecessary

Release description:
Launched in 2005, Celer is a project of Will Long, an American musician, educator, writer and photographer, living in Japan, who also curates the Two Acorns label. Initially a duo based in California with Danielle Baquet, Celer has continued as a solo project since 2009 and has released music on numerous esteemed labels such as Baskaru, Spekk, and/OAR, Infraction, Streamline and many more. In addition, Will has collaborated on projects with Miko, Hakobune, Machinefabriek, Jan and Romke Kleefstra, Matthieu Ruhlmann, Yui Onodera and Christoph Heemann.

A decade into his recording career, Celer arrives at the shores of the Los Angeles based label I, Absentee, for the remarkable new full-length, “Jima.” The album contains two pieces, each occupying an entire LP side, on one side plunging into the depths of the conscience, and the contrasting flip side a blissful crescendo. It stands as a jewel in the prolific career of Celer, showcasing an artist at the height of his craft. Meticulously assembled and packaged at the highest quality possible by both artist and label, it is presented as a meditation on existence and melancholy.

“Jima” arrives at I, Absentee as a limited edition LP, with the first 100 units on sea blue vinyl and the remaining 200 on milky clear vinyl. Limited edition of 300 copies worldwide.