Il terzo capitolo della collaborazione tra Rutger Zuydervelt e Will Long è un nuovo 7″ realizzato in edizione limitata di duecentocinquanta copie, oltre che in formato digitale.
Con “Hei/Sou” si chiude dunque la trilogia di miniature che ha suggellato l’incontro tra due tra i più raffinati e prolifici scultori di paesaggi ambient-drone, che per l’occasione hanno deciso di riassumere le loro abituali lunghe suite in pezzi dalla durata totale intorno ai cinque minuti l’uno.

Il frutto dell’esperimento questa volta sono due brani di placide texture ambientali, i cui lievi drone sono puntellati esili tracce elettroniche, più evidenti in “Sou”, sotto forma di sibili e screziature sintetiche, mentre “Hei” tende a saturazioni più sorde irregolari.

Come già il precedente “Numa/Penarie“, anche questi brevi frammenti costituiscono un esercizio di concisione ben riuscito, il cui understatemen risulta pienamente coerente con il concept paesaggistico nipponico che l’ha ispirato. Completano l’opera due video realizzati da Marco Douma.

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There are some surprising inclusions cropping up in the three long-form compositions ofEpicentral Examples of the More or Less, the latest from Will Long’s Celer, and it’s to his credit that they so artfully compliment the lengthy drones that dominate these pieces, and the longform ambient idiom in which Celer operates. For much of the set we’re in familiar territory: sustained warm hiss, washed out haze, hints of resonant industrial gloom, and the pervasive and expected continuation of these tropes makes their disruption all the more surprising.

Most unusual and unexpected are the looped chords of bright synths which introduce the final ‘Fill Your Light With Lessness / Untitled / Guilt As A Return To Melancholy’ (all pieces are similarly titled), a rhythmic phrase which could signal the beginnings of a peak time Innervisions number. These fade to reveal a snatch of film noir dialogue, a man highlighting a woman’s vulnerability, before lapsing into a familiar swathe of granular waves, pitched between Caretaker misery and Pop Ambient pleasure. The former tracks play with similar shifts in tone and approach, less dramatically: ‘Motionless at Lake Underhere…’ shifting subtly from blurred gauze and warehouse clang; ‘Layered Where I Can Listen Closely’ moving from a choir of squeaking chipmunks through to purring walls of gentle feedback. I’m not sure what these fractured structures imply but they keep you from nodding off, which may be what some listeners seek from Celer releases.

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Titles suggestive of something – but what? Elusive… literary………

Is this album meditative? Zen-like?

What?

(Ambient music? I don’t like the term. Outside my normal preference for beatless noir music professing to depict scenes of dread & horror, this music is welcome; a relief, a space in which to climb, away from the noise of the city here in Zone 1 & so much busy music on the hard drive – clutter – many would benefit from restraint…)

To paraphrase the title of one section, the sound of machines played by Will Long flood the room…

Less being more in this case, Long extracts maximum effect from the application of minimal tones with added (possibly field) recordings such as people in a room (a public space?) and a long spoken (Russian?) word intro. Yet all is not completely calm in the garden…there being interruptions, or rather, evolving passages a brittle sound. Reclusive intensity perfectly describes those parts. Intensity (being relative) plain and simple also bursts into life.

Much of this engages by stealth, and should be played frequently to pass any self-imposed barriers erected against refinement of this kind. And I’m talking to myself there.

The final track is 46mins long. One sustained, subtly shifting (ceremonial) organ(nic) tone poem (or) hymn to minimalism.

Hei/Sou.

Will Long with Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek)

A 7-inch.

I last bought a 7-inch record in 1977.  But here, again, is mechanised wonder of the most pure (dare I say) variety. Where a small cathedral is duly erected with wave-upon-wave of sound moving from ear-to-ear  and through an almost child-like (in the best sense) melody. And  finally bolstered (very gently) by a bass tone, fading into the distance, as it began, to the sound of simulated cymbals.

If there is a church to mécanique musique Will Long must be it’s organist and with fellow orator Zuydervelt adding his voice it makes for a fascinating, beguiling sermon. Here, brimstone & fire rhetoric is replaced by an insistent whisper in the form of understated rhythm coaxing us to believe.

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Though promising collaborations are a regular enough occurrence in underground music, seldom does the whole exceed the sum of its constituent parts. However, this final instalment in a trilogy of 7-inch singles from Celer and Machinefabriek is happily a case of two musical styles complementing each other quite perfectly, resulting in two short tracks of top-tier ambient exploration which can’t help but leave this particular listener wishing for more.

Hei/Sou comes with vintage Japanese postcards and follows similarly carefully packaged releases from the Celer and Machinefabriek pairing, named Maastunnel/ Mt. Mitake and Numa/Penarie, respectively. Like its predecessors, the creation of the two-sided single was facilitated by the internet, connecting the Rotterdam-based Rutger Zuydervelt and Tokyo resident Will Long over thousands of miles and several time zones.

Despite the artists’ significant physical distance from each other though, the music contained within this release feels like a cohesive whole and both of the two roughly five minute numbers contain sonic touches from each artist, lending Hei/Sou the appearance of a truly joint effort, with gentle soothing drones joined by subtle electronica to great effect. Each track is a fine example of subtlety and understatement, and Hei/Sou is also bundled with two accompanying videos by Marco Douma which lend an additional perspective to the music.

While this author doesn’t wish to hazard a guess as to where this work stands in regard to the voluminous previous works of Machinefabriek and Celer, it does feel like one of the better offerings from both in recent months and one can only hope that this inspired pairing continues to produce such results.

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Due compositori prolificissimi e avvezzi alle lunghe durate alle prese con il difficile esercizio della concisione: alla fine dello scorso anno, Will Long e Rutger Zuydervelt hanno intrapreso una collaborazione, dapprima sfociata nei due brani di “Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake” e alla quale viene adesso fornito stabile seguito in quella che sembra destinata a essere una serie di 7” in vinile.

I due brani di “Numa/Penarie” provengono da una serie di più articolate registrazioni, condensate in dieci minuti che mantengono fede alle loro componenti d’origine, evidenziando da un lato le impalpabili texture dell’artista americano e dall’altro le sperimentazioni analogiche di quello olandese.
Lungi dal costituire rappresentazioni brevi ma monolitiche, i due brani seguono un percorso di continua trasformazione: in “Numa” tremule ondulazioni raggiungono il grado di saturazione per poi venire puntellate da qualche pulsazione e da variopinti detriti sonori, mentre le più evidenti tastiere della prima parte di “Penarie” lasciano gradualmente spazio a modulazioni vaporose e quasi romantiche.

Si direbbe dunque un esercizio pienamente riuscito, che tuttavia potrebbe suscitare qualche interrogativo sull’enorme mole di produzioni di entrambi gli artisti, che qui dimostrano di saper concentrare addirittura in miniature di pochi minuti molto di quanto solitamente espresso in dischi interi.

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While some on holiday are sucked into over-crowded commercial tourist traps, and others are off in their resorts or private villas, some of the most memorable places and experiences are the somewhat unusual, even off the beaten-path locales.  Picture postcards often contain brief accounts or memories of travels to these places, being descriptive, cryptic or comical anecdotes of a given day’s events, compressed into a few short phrases—a substitute for longhand letters.  They also serve to freeze a moment in time in a more permanent and retrospective fashion than the immediacy of a quick e-mail or photo sent via the internet.   These moments in time are what the trilogy of releases by Celer (Will Long) and Machinefabriek (Rutger Zuydervelt) are like.

It started when they performed together in November, 2010 in Tokyo, Japan and then decided to collaborate remotely on a series of short releases beginning in October, 2011 between Tokyo and Rotterdam.  The pieces started as larger works and eventually were edited into musical postcards, or drone poems* of sorts, evoking a place, event or state of mind.  Artwork found by Long in Tokyo has been used for the covers of the 7 inch vinyl releases with design and graphic layout by Zuydervelt.  As much as I appreciate the convenience of digital-format music, there is something quite special about the 7 inch record, packaged in artful sleeves of re-purposed postcard and souvenir images.  Even better, each piece is accompanied (via download) by a beautiful and timeless video interpretation by multimedia artist Marco Douma.

The soon-to-be-released Hei/Sou is the last in this trilogy.  Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake and Numa/Penarie were the first two releases.  Digital files are also available and the vinyl pressings are limited to 250 copies each (Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake vinyl is now sold out).

Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake are readily identifiable places.  Maastunnel is a tunnel in Rotterdam and this track has some mystery.  The piece opens on the outside approach to the tunnel (with the ambient sounds of water).  There is an apparent twist in the plot where voices can be heard, “I didn’t see his face…he might have been just anybody…just anybody.”  Suddenly, a break to the interior where vehicles are passing over expansion joints creating pulses that resonate throughout the underground structure before a quick return to the roadway above-ground.  Mt. Mitake is a contrast to the underworld.  It starts with a sense of floating in the clouds.  The second section creates a sense of tension with the calming effects of the first section in the background; kind of a panoramic view with scenes changing.  The peaceful opening section returns to close the track.

Numa/Penarie are more obscure experiences.  Numa is almost like a collection of sounds experienced throughout the day; clusters of lights buzzing, bell-like sounds, subways braking, jets taking off in the distance.  The second section is more intense (again, a feeling of being underground), expansive and layered with lower frequencies underneath.  The close brings a return of lighter and higher frequencies, returning somewhat to the opening themes.  Penarie is somewhat perplexing; it’s dense, electric and unrestrained.  It expands and contracts with clusters of tones.  Then there is a pleasant interlude of Mellotron-like waves before mixing with the original themes and sounds, while being accompanied by a clock and then fading quickly, almost like a fleeting dream.

The forthcoming Hei/Sou is the more contemplative of the three releases, and the most abstract.  Hei starts with a cymbal-like percussive and then drifts into a gentle sustained keyboard mantra with a wandering background of gentle buzzing and contrasting deep bell-like tones.  The cymbals return and are combined with a placid cluster of sound.  Sou opens with a Morse-code-like pulse and omnipresent warping tones that gradually combine with a fabric of lightly sequenced rhythms, and there they hang in suspension as the pulsing grows stronger and then fades.  Gradually an undertow of deep liquid sound emerges to the foreground and the rhythms are overtaken and then disappear.

These self-released sound postcards are beautifully presented visions of places and experiences.  Where will Celer and Machinefabriek be traveling to next?

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Clearly satisfied by the outcome of their first seven-inch release, Maastunnel/Mt. Mitake, Will Long and Rutger Zuydervelt return for another installment, this one similar in concept and titledNuma/Penarie. Put together in Tokyo and Rotterdam earlier this year, the two tracks contain original sound elements stitched together from longer source material, and the release is enhanced by its postcard collage presentation and two complementary videos created by Marco Douma.

The tracks themselves are a contrasting pair, the first “Numa” very much in the Celer tradition in fashioning a mood of becalmed iridescence, even if some measure of turbulence briefly intervenes halfway through its five-minute run. “Penarie” immediately distances itself from the other in opening with horn-like synth flurries, though it, too, gravitates repeatedly in the direction of soothing splendour. In both pieces, one often witnesses an ongoing oscillation between the ambient stylings of Celer and the rougher textural play of Machinefabriek. Needless to say, that’s a good thing, as the collaborators’ respective tendencies render the material less homogenous and predictable than it otherwise might be.

Douma’s videos form a nice part of the package as they evolve in accordance with changes in the musical textures—as the music becomes grainier, so too does the video display. “Numa” offers a logical analogue to the musical material as it’s abstract in nature but powerfully evocative, with the visual content suggestive of sunlight reflections on rippling surfaces and showing geometric shapes viewed through a prismatic mist. By contrast, real-world elements, such as electrical towers and hydro wires, appear more identifiably during “Penarie,” though the video retains the dream-like quality of “Numa.”

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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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