Although not as indiscriminate as is denoted by the term, I am often a completist when it comes to collecting the works of selected authors and musicians.  Yet, I would be hard-pressed, given his massive output of creative work, to even begin to collect all the music of Will Long in the guise of Celer.  By now, I probably have a dozen or so of Celer’s recordings, but if I had to recommend one and only one recent work, it might just be this almost mystical and entrancing album.   I’m also drawn to this release since it fulfills one of the most significant inspirations for why I listen to music—it takes me somewhere, and the images and sensations are vivid.

This is the third work in a trilogy based on water (to some, water symbolizes comfort and freedom).  The two previous albums are Cursory Asperses (2008) and Escaping Lakes (2009)—the former alluding to the slow movements of small streams and the latter to the calmer depths.  The music on this album being inspired in part by Will’s trip to southern Alberta in 2009 (documenting the wilderness in photographs for a local Park Service).

Without Retrospect, the Morning is different from the first two in the series in that it has distinct tracks (versus a continuous thread of sound) and it captures water (or the sense of it) in a different state—a chilled desolation, at times at the edge of an existence where the potential energy is stored and released ever so sparingly in a landscape yearning for Sun and warmth.  It’s therefore appropriate that this album landed at the Glacial Movements record label, a self-proclaimed “glacial and isolationist ambient” label.  I also appreciate that the recording has been mastered with a softness that retains the intricate clarity of the many layers of sound buried in the crystalline strata (to heck with the loudness wars!).  There are also hidden sonic depths, and some passages might be felt before they are heard (as in Dry and Disconsolate).

A lateral effect of this CD is that it triggers (for me) some pleasant, albeit quirky, sonic memories from long ago.  I’m a fan of the original 1960s Star Trek.  There was some great incidental music and ambient sounds used in that series that, to my ears, are recalled in a track like Distance and Mortality (see if you hear the resonance of the wind from the pilot episode, The Menagerie or the sound of the transporter beam).

So find a quiet room, bundle-up, get comfortable, and explore stunning breadth of this vast hyperborean landscape.  Just remember to turn the volume back down on your amplifier before you change the sources on your preamp or pop-in another CD.

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If names were reflective of personality traits, would the world be a better place? Shakespeare argued the idea, but it’d be nice to have some advanced warning system when dealing with a person or institution. It’s the beauty of Lightness and Irresponsibility, another posthumous beauty from Celer. It dares not tread in any territory not in line with the album’s on-point focus, two long-form meditations rarely raising their voice. There is no discipline or consequence to these compositions, just a life at its most carefree. As douchebag CEOs rig the stock market and two-faced politicians further divide America for ill-gotten gains, it’s comforting to forget the sadness surrounding Celer and focus on those lighthearted moments of youth. It’s not nostalgia but a moment in time frozen, forever providing the calm center we need in a world of mislabeled sycophants.

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Celer has always been an artist who can effortlessly dream up evocative drones and a deep-thought style of ambient introspection. Always refreshing, always vividly alive and constantly absorbing into the very atmosphere, Will Long’s music touches upon phantom shades and faint degrees, almost to the point of aural invisibility. Without Retrospect, the Morning, is no different than that of Long’s multiple releases, in that it is ambient music of the highest caliber, and yet it is a departure, for it contains his coldest music to date.

Created in 2009 while Long was working as a photographer in South Alberta, Canada, Without Retrospect, the Morning is cold to the touch, and just slightly under a sub zero temperature, but the diluted light saves it from becoming an icy tundra of drone. The early morning – late sunset sound was primarily recorded using two Sony Tapecorder open reels, an endless delay system and contact microphones, resulting in an unrivaled organic purity and depth. The weak light, and the quiet still of Winter, can be seen reflecting off sharp, crystal drones, as light as a white-whispered cloud sent up into the cold air, and Long’s stark crystals of ice are lightly glazed with a smooth flowing current of ambient air. “A Small Rush Into Exile” glows an almost eerie colour against the rising sun, silently transforming as strands of notes slowly rise up and over the crystal.

These drones are like shards of ice that have broken off and become displaced, removed from an original, wider structure. Will Long has been active enough for long enough to have perfected his source and his sound, and the inner musical momentum within the seven tracks is just right. The music almost seems to pour from concealed cracks in the ice, creeping out of the recording process in thin, cool channels that are able to warm their cold blood in the sun. Sub bass frequencies deepen the tone, as if pulled under a flurry of powdered, soft snow; this is the beautiful contrast, the deeper shell of clinking ice and the ethereal air above it. For the most part, the arrival of the bass is non-intrusive, instead of influencing the warmer air and dragging it downwards. The pure transparency of the drones offer plenty of temperate warmth and help to subdue any rough daggers of ice that may remain, glowing defiantly in dynamic swells in beautiful contours. Raise the atmosphere, if not the temperature, and this is due to the dimmed volume throughout the record, which only rises an inch above the white.

A gorgeous cover complements the clarity of the music – seeing the cover art is enough to produce shivers down the spine. Long’s restrained technique helps to focus in on the miniscule, where the true alterations occur; it is inside the tone, and its constant change, that really separates ambient musicians, and turns the music into a true art-form. These seven pieces don’t stray far from their source – there isn’t enough energy inside – yet they are always allowed the capacity to evolve at their own pace if they should wish to do so. The music is without a companion; the only survivor amid a solitary stretch of snow and ice, awakening to the fragile light of dawn.

Finally, “With Some Effort, the Sunset” emerges, shining above all of the previous six tracks, as vapour rises and the light descends. A lower frequency is more prominent, perhaps as the force of the sunset, quietly cooling and returning to what has been, fading for another day.

Celer’s music is in plentiful suppy, but ambience as smooth and as thoughtful as this is very difficult to find. One it is found, it’s a sound we should treasure, and it ensures that Without Retrospect, the Morning is a stand-out release in an amazing discography. A shushed drift, the drone is only a thin slice of ice, lit by the morning, cool in her departure and born again on her rising.

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Though Celer’s material is typically retiring in character, Without Retrospect, the Morning inhabits an even quieter space than usual. The volume level on one’s stereo setup must be turned up for the music to be clearly heard (unless, that is, one prefers having the material fill the room as subliminal sonic tinting), or perhaps one is best to treat the recording as a true headphones listen where all of its nuances can be appreciated and absorbed.

Celer is, of course, now a solo Will Long project, with his wife Danielle Baquet-Long (aka Chubby Wolf) having passed away from heart failure in 2009; her presence is felt, however, in the new release in the album’s title, which is credited to her. The recording actually dates back to 2009 when Will, toiling in a short-term capacity as a photographer and surveyor in Alberta, Canada, generated the base material using two Sony Tapecorders and recordings made with synthesizer and piano (the album, incidentally, was conceived of as the final part of a water-themed trilogy, the others being the already issued Cursory Asperses and In Escaping Lakes). Applying an endless delay system to the recorders, he assembled the album’s resultant pieces using cut-and-paste methods, and to complete the process subtly integrated field recordings gathered from the wintry setting; it’s this latter detail, of course, that makes Without Retrospect, the Morning a natural fit for the Italy-based Glacial Movements Records. Post-production eventually occurred when Long revisited the tapes two years later at his Tokyo home base and prepared the album for release.

The seven pieces are anything but violent, despite the fact that Will could hear the wind whipping against the snow-covered buildings during his Alberta stay. Instead, it’s as if the frozen land is sleeping and everything has assumed an unearthly stillness. Long might have drawn upon contact microphone recordings of ice, snow, and wind and cracking and crunching sounds during the production process, but the end result is as pure and fragile as could be imagined when crystalline tones waver softly in the air, their organ-like glisten reduced to an ethereal essence. Most of the settings hum at a low and peaceful ebb, the exception being the penultimate piece, “The Tears of Tategami Iwa,” whose whistling tones, rumblings, and grainy atmospheres assert themselves with a great deal more urgency than the other pieces. But to a large degree, the recording is quintessential Celer, a soothing, fifty-two-minute collection tailor-made to induce a state of restful calm in the receptive listener.

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Dove la morte apre ferite profonde la musica lenisce ed aiuta ad andare avanti. Quello che un tempo era un duo formato da due ragazzi giovanissimi come Will Long e Danielle Baquet-Long, marito e moglie, una passione smodata per la musica d’ambiente, la loro vita in fondo. Poi la tragedia, Danielle colta da insufficienza cardiaca, nel 2009.

Il lavoro di Will è andato avanti, perso tra flussi sonori calmi e descrittivi che ormai delineano con dovizia un profilo musicale adulto, una visione tanto rassegnata quanto rasserenata.

Questa volta è la Glacial Movements ad ospitare un suo lavoro, “Without Retrospect, The Morning”, un titolo che le note assegnano proprio a Danielle, forse un suo pensiero, o chissà…

Una musica specchio di un’anima chiusa, che lascia poche possibilità ad influenze esterne, una questione intima, personale, solitaria, come solo la solitudine può tirarti fuori certe vibrazioni.
Un album diviso in sette segmenti, ma in sostanza un unico flusso fatto di sentori flebili, variazioni tonali, umori che mai si lasciano andare a manovre eclatanti, ma che bensì tendono a preservare un’integrità progettuale e caratteriale che si ricollega poi agli esordi dei Celer. Perchè forse è bene continuare a considerarli come un duo. Come una musica che parla attraverso due diverse voci con una sola anima.

L’album è una sonorizzazione perfetta per lande sconfinate invase dalle nevi, per inverni lunghi nei quali riflettere, il suono è caratterizzato da sottili tappeti elettronici che fanno da base a field recordings notturni, onde e frequenze che si muovono con delicatezza, in un saliscendi mai soggetto a tensione ma anzi propedeutico al relax.

Se proprio possiamo notare un sussulto, questo avviene nel corso degli ultimi due brani in scaletta, dove i toni cambiano forma disegnando ancora paesaggi dai lunghi orizzonti ma questa volta fotografati alle prime luci in un’alba che regalerà una fredda mattina assolata. Non calore ma luce, una luce fredda che fa brillare i dettagli, riflettendosi sul ghiaccio e mostrando una nuova faccia che ha le sembianze della speranza.

La Glacial Movements continua ad essere in missione, seleziona e pubblica dei lavori che sposano alla perfezione un concept ormai rodato che si nutre della sua stessa materia, di un suono dal grande potere suggestivo, una musica che sa raccontare ciò che vede, non con gli occhi ma bensì con la mente e con il cuore. Una vera e propria lettura interiore tradotta in musica, ecco cosa rappresenta la Glacial Movements, ecco cosa Celer ha dato alle stampe, un disco di musica ambient personale, un ricordo, il suo ricordo.

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Take a look at Celer’s discography and you won’t see a single disruption in an ongoing flow of creative output. Never mind the unfortunate events of 2009, which till this day can’t escape my concealed lips. If anything, the frequency of releases only increased, peaking at ten albums in 2011, most of which were self-released by Will Thomas Long. In 2012, however, Long managed to transgress his ambiance across a variety of highly respected and independent labels, including Low Point,Futuresequence, Constellation Tatsu, Experimedia, and now Glacial Movements Records.

For the latter Italian label, run and operated by Alessandro Tedeschi, Celer creates a minimal soundscape, tranquil in volume and tamely sublime. The hour-long journey, titled Without Retrospect, the Morning, is incredibly fitting for the arctic aesthetic of a wintry space. The icy sculptures of moving frequencies slowly travel along frozen lands. This music is placid, muted and cold. Tones, as gentle as sine waves, flow down the elongated ice spikes and instantly freeze. Images of desolate places with resonating winds groaning through hollows cover my mind, and I reach for a hot cup of tea to inhale the warm vapor. The album is actually a third and final part of the water-themed trilogy that Celer began with Cursory Asperses (Slow Flow Rec, 2008) and Escaping Lakes(Slow Flow Rec, 2009).

Having spent a few months in South Alberta, Canada, during the winter of 2009, Long used an “endless delay system between the two open reels” to record and layer the textures. The dubbed sounds of piano and synthesizer, while fed through an old pair of speakers, slowly began to decay. This decomposition was in turn processed again, adding contact microphone field recordings of ice, snow and wind. The final output stayed dormant for two more years, until Long brought the recordings, and memories, back into life.

As I have already mentioned, Celer’s vast catalog spans months of continuous, uninterrupted listening. If you find yourself gravitating towards this type of glacial ambiance, I highly recommend you also pick up Engaged Touches (Home Normal, 2009), Capri (Humming Conch, 2009), Discourses Of The Withered (Infraction, 2008), Pockets of Wheat (Soundscaping, 2010), and Dying Star (Dragon’s Eye, 2010). And while exploring releases on Glacial Movements, I must suggest that you simply complete your collection of the entire catalog from this label – these are all truly wonderful gems!

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Quattro anni e svariate decine di album sono intercorsi tra l’originaria pubblicazione di “Discourses Of The Withered” e l’odierna riedizione, ampliata e rimasterizzata ad opera di Chihei Hatakeyama. Come ben sa chi segue Will Thomas Long, in questo periodo la sua vicenda umana e artistica è stata profondamente segnata dalla scomparsa della moglie Danielle Baquet, insieme a lui parte integrante del progetto Celer. Da allora il prolifico compositore ambient-drone americano, nel frattempo trasferitosi in Giappone, continua senza sosta a innalzare monumenti di rimpianto e melanconia, attraverso il recupero delle tante ore di musica elaborate insieme a Danielle.

La ristampa in appena cinquecento copie di “Discourses Of The Withered” riveste dunque un profondo significato simbolico, trattandosi del primo disco del duo pubblicato da un’etichetta, la stessa Infraction che oggi ne ripropone le toccanti e raffinatissime sinfonie ambientali, con l’aggiunta di una traccia tratta dalle session originali e ragguardevoli interventi su altri brani.

Il risultato è un’ora e venti di raffinatissimi soffi sintetici in fragile equilibrio, che riassume perfezione la fugacità della vita e la durevolezza del sentimento. Le abituali lunghe pièce avvincono come quelle di un’orchestra immaginaria che esegue elegie dense di commozione e d’amore, arricchendo di ulteriori significati una delle opere più emozionanti firmate Celer.

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