If I was to have a decent nickname instead of the lumpen & idiotic Dangerous Brian, it would have to be Chubby Wolf. Alas I cannot adopt that moniker because it belongs to the late Danielle Baquet-Long of Celer. This is the first time i’ve actually heard her solo work. This sure is one scintillating dreamscape is this 7″. I was unsure how her solo stuff would pan out within the medium of a 7″ but oh, it totally does the job. There’s a gentle industrial undercurrent to side A of this captivating record. It flows in & out of focus with fluctuating waves of sound that sound like echoes of ghostly machines quietly drawing to a close. But there’s so, so much more happening! It sounds great on 33 but even better on 45 where it starts to emit crystalline shoegaze style elements. The way she layers her ideas into these zen-like evocative gliding tapestries is quite mesmerising. The flip-side (titled ‘If You Love Me….) recalls the caress-like guitar kiss of Slowdive, but even more tactile & richly detailed. The range of instruments Dani stockpiles to blend & manipulate at her whim proves that she was a true visionary musician rather than some cheeky laptop brandishing chancer (you all know who you are!) You can strongly sense that in the tranquil depth & spectral beauty of her sounds. Also for fans of Grouper I reckon!!

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This is the first release of Danielle’s Chubby Wolf project on vinyl, and the first release since ‘Ornitheology‘ last year. It will be released in early April from Low Point.. both tracks can currently be previewed here: Low Point

Press release:

“Time moves differently with Chubby Wolf’s latest work of fluid sound art….more than a single, you’re embraced and carried, pulled gently in one direction, urgently in another. You feel Dani had woven a tapestry of emotional choreography just for you. As with all her work, there is a sense of a personal touch…a slight weight of a hand on the shoulder, your skin gone electric where her sound has lifted you.

We sadly do not know what Dani’s exact intentions were with this music. Our only direct hint the title, ‘The Darker Sex‘. Even that, like a game of playfulness or frustration with a lover…which is the darker sex? But don’t you know? All of her work was a labor of love and gift to the world, and I believe we were meant to feel more then define. For here purgatory is not flat, it is pregnant and undulating with expectation and anticipation…and above all else, an effervescent timeless beauty. We will want to stay a while.” – Maile Colbert, March 2011

Danielle Baquet-Long: Voice, electric guitar, synthesizer, surpeti, drum machine, violin, bells, tambourine, piccolo, ghunghara.

Cover artwork by Jennifer Chen. Mastered by Corey Fuller.

Wake Up. What we have here is an experiment by odds. What should we call this? What should we call what’s come together with one mind?

Out of one came many. Generic man wandering through Generic City. Yui Onodera and Celer are creating a dreamlike state of mind, where when we fall asleep, drones handcuff us in our dream. It’s impossible to wake up now. We’re too young for our hearts to stop. Traveling in different areas of the city, we’re following the maze leading us to the grave, trying to make sense of the confusion and loss. We need to continue the work that the footsteps started. Those who disobeyed now obey.

Only the Old-Timers know what kind of time is passing through us. When we close our eyes, millions of civilians arrive by car loads. You can hear their voices in a distance, but when you actually hear what they speak, they confuse you with wordplay. Reciting mantras, as if they were to build a new family tree upon the smoking ruins of their own cities. Our children looking out of the windows, the sky filled with total darkness, the world in total stillness. Until a plane passes by, ripping the seams of the sky in a blur. Electric light, light up the neon skies, electric soul, generic soul…

(Review loosely adapted from the lyrics of Killah Priest “Temple of the Mental”)

9/10

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The opportunity to collaborate with the globetrotting duo of Celer was taken by Yui Onodera as a chance to explore his Tokyo close up and with fresh ears. He compiled a wide array of field recordings ranging from migratory geese who only make one, short pitstop in town a year, to chanting worshippers, kids playing in the school yard and rainwater flowing from an eavestrough.

Onodera is keenly aware that the key to creating something authentically, universally appealing is to keep it local. Celer, Will Long and the late Danielle Baquet-Long, whose prodigious discography features sounds recorded as far afield as the Mediterranean Sea and the wheat fields of Texas, collected their own impressions of Los Angeles.

Both recorded plenty of to-ing and fro-ing, the urban rhthym of movement on the street, mass transit and airport departure gates. The goal was to create a ”generic city”, and they have succeeded in fusing the two cities into a single, immediately recognizable one, not for its monumental parks and skyscrapers or unexplored backstreets, but for its interaction of people and architcture, architecture and the environment, the environment and the fast pace of change characterizing any major metropolis.

And yet they position the listener at a fixed point in the middle, most palpably on the beautifully drawn-out ”Waiting for Something Else to Happen”, watching the passing parade as if in colourful slow motion. Detail is rich and images are sharp. Onodera alludes to reminding the listener of the the commonalities lost our incessant global chatter. A gentle commonplace, perhaps, reflected by the short music-box trill inserted to conclude the radiant opening track, ”An Imaginary Tale of Lost Vernacular”.

Generic City is the first release on the Two Acorns label, founded by Long last year with the intention of keeping the physical object relevant in an age of invisible information storage. And as an object, this album, its music and its artwork will long enjoy pride of place on the shelf.

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"spartak_miko.jpg

On March 4, 2011, I will have a small guest performance with Miko. It will only be several songs, but it will be the debut

of a new musical collaboration. I encourage anyone in the Tokyo area to please come to Miko’s release party!

Spartak Japan Tour 2011 + Miko “Chandlelier” Release Party

2011/03/04 (fri)
@Soup
open/start 19:00/19:30
adv./door 2000yen / 2500yen

live:
Spartak (hellosquare/low point)
Miko (someone good/plop)
Cuushe (flau)
and more

■ Spartak
地元キャンベラでHellosquarteを主宰し、12KのSeaworthyやStrategy(kranky/audio dregs)などオーストラリアを代表する先鋭的なアーティストをリリース、
自身もAdrian Klimpse（aka Triosk）やLibrary Tapesとのスプリットなどで名を馳せるShoeb Ahmad（guitar,computer,voice,woodwinds）と、
即興ジャズ・グループPollen Trioでの活躍でキャンベラ随一と名高い若手ドラマーEvan Dorrianによるデュオ。
これまでにJoe Lally (Fugazi), Leafcutter John, Andrew Pekler, Lucky Dragonsらと共演。
EmeraldsやTim Heckerらにも通ずるShoebのエモーショナルなギターサウンドと、
Trioskを彷彿とさせるEvanのドラムとのスリリングなせめぎ合いから生み出されるライブ・パフォーマンスには定評がある。
John Chantler（Room40）とのスプリットを経て昨年イギリスの新興レーベルLow Pointより『Verona』を発表。
ライヴから得られた経験と、This Heatなどポスト・パンク・バンドの実験精神からの影響をもとに、
わずか２日間でインプロヴィゼーションで作られたというこの作品は、英WIRE誌で絶賛、12KのMatt Rösnerが今年のベストアルバムに選出するなど、
音響／ジャズ／ポストロックの枠を超えた二人の凄まじいポテンシャルの高さを証明するアルバムとなった。
今回の初来日は『Verona』そしてLawrence English, Jasper TX, Adrian Klumpes（ex-Triosk）
らが参加したリミックス集『Version Room』の発売を記念して開催される。
http://hellosquare.wordpress.com/
http://www.myspace.com/spartakmusic

■ Miko
女性音楽家、光武理絵によるソロユニット。幼いころよりピアノやギターに触れ、バンド活動を経て、2000年頃から宅録のようなものを始める。2008年 ６月に、国内のエレクトロニカレーベル、PLOPよりデビューアルバム「Parade」をリリース。2010年10月、オーストラリアRoom40傘下の アヴァンポップレーベルSomeone Goodより2ndアルバム「Chandelier」をリリース、米インディペンデント・ミュージックの有力メディアpitchforkで高い評価を得る など注目される。ソロ作の他にも、リミックスやヴォーカル参加、共作など海外アーティストとのコラボにも取り組んでいる。
http://mikohere.com/

http://www.myspace.com/mikohome
■ Cuushe
京都出身の女性アーティスト。関西でのバンド活動と並行し、2003年頃よりソロでの音楽製作を開始。Boards of CanadaやFishmans、L’Altraなどに影響を受けながら、より歌をメインとした楽曲にシフトしていく。2009年初の公式音源と なるデビュー・アルバム『Red Rocket Telepathy』を発表。日常と非日常を行き交うメランコリックなリリックを、抜群のメロディー・センスで編み上げた確かな歌世界を披露し、高い評価 を得た。最近では三重出身の気鋭の作曲家
金津朋幸や、イギリス人アーティストKonntinentの作品に参加するなど、その拙くも透明感溢れる歌声はアーティ スト、リスナーという枠を越え、幅広く支持されている。

http://www.myspace.com/cuushe

There’s a difference between sampling a Nina Simone song and sampling a forest. The wind and trees have no lawyers waiting to stake a claim on the composition that results. The composer John Luther Adams, for example, doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, worried that he’ll be hauled into Alaska’s Supreme Court to face charges of pilfering the recordings that have served as the bedrock of some of his works. The Park Service isn’t trolling whosampled.com looking for litigation fodder.

So, if there’s nothing to hide, then what is there to gain? To what extent does it matter, does it help, for a listener to know the source of a field recording appearing in music that takes that field recording and manipulates it, transforms it? The question isn’t central to “Pathways in the Inverted Forest” by Will Thomas Long, but it does linger.
For 20 minutes, the lulling track, a drone that shift this way and that, like a moored boat, gives one plenty of time to think. The brief liner note at the relatively new netlabel Absence of Wax informs us that the piece consists of synthesized sounds and field recordings, and was created in Tokyo, Japan, this past month.

We don’t, from the way the information is phrased, technically know that the field recordings are from Japan, or even from a forest — they’re implications of the title and cover image, but that is all. It’s worth spending time listening through the piece for its sample source. Are there telltale wind currents, textures, some aural fingerprint?

More on Long at thesingularwe.org and devinsarno.com/absenceofwax. He is best known as half of Celer, the duo he established with his wife, the late Danielle Marie Baquet, who passed away in 2009 a few weeks short of her 27th birthday.

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As 2011 begins, I’ve been working to start making music again.

Many of these things are just pieces of daily life, but not always fit for

publishing on labels. However, they are important, just as anything that

happens in our daily lives. They will be posted for very inexpensive prices

in their full quality, and all proceeds go directly to me, which will help me live.

Any, and all support is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your kind interest, always.

Sincerely,

Will

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In the eighteen months since Danielle Baquet-Long passed away, there have already been upwards of a dozen albums worth of material released which were recorded by her and her husband Will Long before her untimely death. Especially given the quiet, introspective nature of all this music, there comes a point where you have to wonder just how much more there is to say, or how many ways there are of saying it; even the title of this latest album may almost be verging on self-parody. But not for the first time, I’m confounded; once again I have found myself buying a Celer record, listening to it, and being stopped in my tracks by the powerful glare from its reflections. This new album, Vestiges Of An Inherent Melancholy, is a captivating journey – not just to a particular country, and to a particular time, but also to a very particular, and very personal, state of mind.

Vestiges Of An Inherent Melancholy is Celer’s second LP for the Blackest Rainbow label, after the dense collage of dark, deep, drones that was Dwell In Possibility. Despite the typically lengthy list of source sounds on Vestiges (cello, violin, pipe organ, field recordings, tape, samples, electronics), it is a simpler, and much more emotionally direct construction than that release. The front cover is decorated with a photo of Buddhist prayer flags draped across a dusty street, the bright colours seemingly having been drained from it by the ravages of time: it was in fact taken nine years ago by Baquet-Long during a lengthy stay in Nepal. Two “tracks” (while nine are delineated by title on the record’s sleeve, they seep into each other to effectively give two long continuous pieces) also feature field recordings made in Kathmandu.

Nepal is a country of such dramatic contrasts, from the warm, lush, tropical rainforests of the south to the cold, rocky Himalayas of the north, from the simplicity of rural living to the capital’s many complexities. In 2002, in both the peaceful Buddhist villages and the bustling chaos of the (primarily Hindu) capital there must have been a sense of exhaustion, worry and hope about recent events and forthcoming changes. A royal family had just been all but wiped out, an event which, when combined with a strengthening Maoist faction, was destined to lead to dramatic changes in the state’s status, changes which have still not fully stabilised. Vestiges Of An Inherent Melancholy is equally full of contrast, with those sections of extremely animated (and even slightly frightening) chatter slicing into sections of prayer-like serenity, with lush melodies appearing from amidst barren backdrops.

But much more than being simply an ode to Nepal, it feels like it’s more generally a reflection on transition, on a time when sadness for what was being lost was tempered by hope for the future. A quote from the film The Third Man on the album’s second side brings us back to post-war Vienna; similarly broken, burnt out and yet somehow optimistic. Yet underpinning the album there is that sensation, common to the hauntological musical canon, that all has not turned out as was hoped; that, to quote from Leyland Kirby’s most recent project, “sadly, the future is no longer what it was”. Sad, slow snatches of orchestral melody seem doomed to play out over and over, degraded and withered with time, giving much of the album the mood of work by Philip Jeck or indeed Kirby himself. The happy songs of old are transformed by the passage of time into something very different, very personal, and very poignant. When taken in conjunction with everything we know about the premature end to the Celer project, these Vestiges Of An Inherent Melancholy are at times almost unbearable.

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