Evaporate and Wonder is the latest ripple in a steady Celer stream whose flow continues with the same reassuring regularity notwithstanding Dani’s departure several years ago. Will Long soldiers on manfully, wil(l)fully, if you will, maintaining their signature glacial-warm form of electronically-enhanced holy minimalism. It’s in particularly good voice here, and substantially less reticent than on certain more parsimonious recent works (cf. Dying Star). Though source material for the recordings is similarly limited—to improvised synthesizers and field recordings in this case, end results are gratifyingly less mean, more moody and magnificent, uncompromised by eponymous evaporative habit—indeed, wonders of diaphanous expansivity. The first of two long-form pieces, “Bedded in Shallow Blades,” is a glassine flow of radical etherealism within which low-end seep creeps through under a nebula of serpentine sonorities simultaneously solid, liquid and gas. A sound so close yet far away, as if a capture of echoes of something that once was straining towards release—towards an elusive eternal perhaps. This orientation is further evidenced on “Repertoire of Dinless Shifts,” on which silvery shoals of minnow-y timbres are maneuvered through a nocturnal hum of sublimated thrum. What ensues is a minimally orchestrated sequence of long drawn out languorous exhales of harmonically coloured haze, eschewing earth and fire for aether and air. Solicitous interventions in processing and composition issue in a fabric of a certain density that nevertheless retains an openness of texture, a supple body and lightness of cadence. Evaporate and Wonder is among the last works Celer recorded as a duo, and here their forces converge with particularly delicate precision in a numinous diptych washed in shades luminous and opaque, static yet shifting, barely there yet fully present, at once everywhere and nowhere.

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Celer’s Last.fm profile begins with devastating forthrightness: “Celer was formed in 2005 by Danielle Marie Baquet and William Thomas Long. From 2005 to 2009, Celer was the duo of Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long. From 2009 to the present, Celer is the solo ambient project of Will Long.” Yet fans concerned about the viability of future Celer output need not have worried; if anything, Will Long (who now lives in Tokyo) has released *more* music since Baquet-Long’s untimely passing. 2012 has been an especially fruitful year for the project, and while Long hasn’t much changed Celer’s classically pure drones, each of his various new albums offers a subtly different take on solitude, silence, and memory made manifest through achingly gorgeous slow-form ambient music. Indeed, Long is the rare recording artist who offers both quality and quantity in equal measure.

Recumbent in Wishes is a self released single track of  coagulating organ meditations on the inevitability of mortality. Layers of sustained notes and chords drift through the listener’s head space like strands of cloudy vapor in a thick early-morning fog. Long himself describes the impetus for the piece: “We all know that there is an end to life, and that sometimes it comes unexpectedly. Though, we always imagine it in the most heroic senses, thinking that we’ll fight through as hard as possible to the bitter end. However, sometimes when that time comes, no matter how strong was the will and heart of the person, something can be lost, and never found again. It’s a sad reality, but nonetheless a true moment of dying.” A veritable vacuum of solace and melancholy, Recumbent in Wishes is probably Celer’s strongest release of the year thus far, hearkening back to famously placid works like Eno’s Thursday Afternoon while imbuing its tones with the kind of spiritual longing in which Celer has long specialized.

Bliksem was originally a tour-only CD-R; fortunately for us, however, Long decided to make it available as a digital download as well. This one’s more cinematic and sweeping than Recumbent, trading the latter’s wispy organ drones for more dramatic synth strings and loops. The result is essentially widescreen Celer that wear its heart on it jumbo-sized sleeve yet never overwhelms the listener with pathos or volume. Like most Celer releases, Bliksem is meant to be absorbed more than studied. Like a scented candle, it’s meant to be passively appreciated as a kind of ambiance as opposed to the subject of a concerted listening effort. For fans of last year’s underrated Foolish Causes of Fail and Ruin.

Tightrope is an aural scrapbook released on UK-based ambient label Low Point that’s sourced from a 2010 performance at a Japanese temple in addition to “television, synthesizers, fire crackling in the fireplace, whistling, pipe organ, eating ice, acoustic guitar, laptop, an afternoon conversation, a medicine drip buzzer, car noise, my ringtone, contact mic and many others I can’t remember” from the same trip. So this is what a Celer field recording sounds like: smeared, stretched, gaseous, fragile. In other words, exactly what you’d probably expect, but beautiful just the same.

Lightness and Irresponsibility is another soft-as-fresh-snow two-track drone album, this time released on cassette by Californian label Constellation Tatsu. If Recumbent in Wishes recalls Thursday Afternoon, then Lightness and Irresponsibility, with its glassy keys and echoing atmospherics, recalls another of Eno’s masterworks, Neroli. This album negotiates with silence and empty space in fascinating (and, of course, slowly evolving) ways. Like a minimalist painting on an oversized canvas, this album’s impact depends as much on what the listener doesn’t hear as on what he does. Though it’s undoubtedly musical, Lightness seems like the shadow or aftermath of some melodic, droning landscape, or like the faint remaining outline of some body in motion recently departed.

Finally, we’d be remiss to not mention Celer’s brief but excellent 7″  with fellow ambient auteur Machinefabriek (aka Rutger Zuydervelt from The Netherlands). “Maastunnel” is an audio collage that’s much crisper and clearer than Tightrope, with fragments of dialogue punctuating the distant drones and backmasked instrumentals. B-side “Mt. Mitake,” meanwhile, is just as monolithic as its name implies, employing static-drenched chunks of sound not unlike the work of Tim Hecker. This record proves that Will Long is still a master collaborator, willing and able to put his signature touches on other artists’ strengths; in addition, it represents an expansion of aural scope for the Celer project, hopefully pointing the way towards future releases that continue to explore the in-between spaces between the material and the ethereal.

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Will Long (aka Celer) and Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) work together in a series of 7″ records, the first one ‘Maastunnel / Mt. Mitake’ comes together with two downloadable videos by Marco Douma. Note that the Dutchman Rutger Zuydervelt works as Machinefabriek since 2004 releasing several albums on labels in the likes of Type, 12K, Digital, Staalplaat or the emblematic Mort Aux Vaches. Has collaborated with renowned artists from the experimental electronic field such as Aaron Martin, Peter Broderick, Frans de Waard, Steve Roden and Anla Courtis, among others. Meanwhile Will Thomas Long has continued very active releasing records since 2005 as Celer, a duo that formed with his wife Danielle Baquet-Long, who passed away in 2009. This new seven inches is made out of fragments of a long recording and ‘Numa’, the first track, spread over a soundscape of bright lights, certainly melodic and with a drone background. The accompanying video shows perfectly the abstraction and luminosity of the track. ‘Penarie’ offers a mix of compressed sounds and ambient layers whose images in the video shown as stick and intercrossed figures.

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The 70 continuous minutes of Tightrope is actually 24 separate pieces, but there are no explicit transitions to show for it. In bringing each composition together, Long decided to do more than simply thread them together in chronological sequence; rather, the pieces are interwoven and placed over one another, forming a blur of mixed intentions and tonality, tugging Tightrope this way and that, sparking gorgeous harmony and accidental rubs of dissonance. It’s a ball of warm, ethereal tone that constantly writhes and rotates – sometimes shrinking into little remnants of low frequency hum, sometimes flowering open into thick lashings of texture.

In the same way that Long has collated 24 fragments to form a singular entity, his eclectic selection of sound sources amount to a timbre that feels pure and unified. Sometimes, it feels like Tightrope could quite easily have spawned from one synthesizer – all of its tones moving with the gooey patience of hot melted wax – but placing full concentration on any one element of the audio soon unlocks its intricate, characterising traits; specific balances of frequency, speed of dynamic transition. Regardless, it’s still impressive to think that piano, television, medicine drip buzzer, eating ice, acoustic guitar and the crackle of fire in a fire place (amongst many others) are all present somewhere within the haze.

Tightrope is ultimately a blur. It derives inspiration from Long’s trip to Tokyo with Yui Onodera, and was completed upon his return back to the US. Once the listener acknowledges that the music is founded on Long’s fresh reminiscences, the album’s structure and behaviours starts to make sense somewhat; just as memories arrive as a rush of partial detail and contorted chronology, Tightrope swirls multiple sensations and experiences into an essence of a place and time. There’s a certain vagueness indistinction to the piece that can sometimes cause interest to tail off, as if Long’s recollections are too vague to solidify in anything more than murky blotches of colour or disembodied smells that can’t be placed, but it’s never long before a certain shimmer of hidden static or ghostly whistle lures the listener back in.

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The 7″ with Celer is more like one would expect to find from Rutger Zuydervelt, and perhaps Celer as well. Not exactly the kind of music one should put on the limited time frame of a 7″ I would think, as these delicate drone patterns need their time to develop. Now it seems to happen a bit fast, but both ‘Numa’ and ‘Penarie’ are fine examples of what atmospheric and drone music should be like. It comes with a postcard to download not just the music but also two films by Marco Douma with interesting light patterns. In ‘Numa’ very abstract and in ‘Penarie’ outside with electricity cables and  bursting sunlight. Dreamy music and dreamy visuals. Excellent stuff. That’s the way we like them.

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Tokyo resident Celer and Dutchman Machinefabriek enjoyed making that lovely ‘Maastunnel’ 7″ so much that they decided to continue working together on a series of 7″ platters. ‘Numa / Penarie’ is their 2nd pair of works and follows very much in that blissed-out, abstracted form, trimming down longer experiments into bijou ambient treats. A-side ‘Numa’ emerges from a chrysalis of shimmering tones into a more heavy set subbass organism glowing with lushly harmonised pads. B-side’s ‘Penarie’ diffuses what sounds like warped brass into stereo swirling arrangement before subsiding into plangent chords sounding like the peal of wedding bells heard from miles away.

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A couple months back, we reviewed Celer & Machinefabriek‘s Maastunnel / Mt. Mitake 7″.  Since then, the two have toured together, released a postcard and download document (Greetings from Celer & Machinefabriek) and bookended the tour with this second 7″ offering, which continues in the vein of tender, processed ambience.  Included in the package is a download of two impressionistic videos from Marco Douma, which can be previewed via the release page.

The collaboration seems to have benefited both artists.  As two of the scene’s most prolific producers, their output has at times seemed overwhelming; the presence of a counterpart allows each to stretch boundaries and consider previously unimagined sonic twists.  As previously reported, Celer has developed a slightly more abrasive edge, evident in Bliksem‘s final minutes and apparent here at the 2:18 mark of “Numa”.  The rising drone and crunchy electronics enrich the short composition – a distillation of a longer work – by providing welcome contrast and an element of danger.  Like the cover art, this piece is a collage, and its strongest part is its promontory.  As the piece returns to its ambient base, the listener remembers where it has wandered.  The footstep hints of the fourth minute fall like mud dragged from the song’s center.  ”Penarie” introduces the interruption earlier at approximately 1:23, dissolving into near-silence before floating down the river like the couple on the cover.  A very slight ticking climax (beginning at 4:00) yields to soft electronic ripples and brings the timbre back to where it began: a cycle completed in only ten minutes.

Numa / Penarie is described as the second part of a series, which means that more should be on the way; both artists are on the right track, and after three more 7″s, we should have a very nice album.

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