The flood of unreleased Celer material seems to have subsided a bit in recent months, but a steady posthumous trickle of Dani Baquet-Long’s solo recordings has now appeared in its wake.  To my ears, the aesthetic difference between Celer’s drifting drone and Chubby Wolf is negligible at best, but Turkey Decoyreaffirms my belief that most of the best Celer-related material is reserved for their vinyl releases (of which this is one).  This easily stands among Dani’s finest albums.

Articulating the difference between Baquet-Long’s excellent work and her lesser work has always been an extremely difficult task, as the individual instruments are almost always processed into an amorphous, warm blur of sustained drones in either case.  I guess great Celer/Chubby Wolf songs simply sound a bit deeper, darker, and more finished than usual, traits that several of these songs possess  Additionally, Turkey Decoy boasts some subtly enhanced variety for a Baquet-Long release.

For example, Dani sometimes allows natural-sounding piano notes or unexpected interludes of dialogue or field recordings to emerge from the haze, but such elements tend to be used only for color, texture, or transition: the heart of these pieces is still invariably glacially swelling sustained drones.  Dani was obviously no slouch at composing excellent drone music, but I find any divergence from the Celer template to be especially welcome after so many similar releases.  Aside from the novelty factor, however, I genuinely  enjoy the “non-musical” components of her work in general, as they provide a welcome contrast to the languid drones and add a little bit of mystery and surreally ambiguous context.  Also, sometimes they just sound great, like the barking dog that accompanies the ominous opening thrum of “Intrusively Coexisting.”

Happily, Dani went a bit further than her standard fare on quite a few pieces.   The aforementioned “Intrusively Coexisting” is probably my favorite piece on the album due to its unexpected menace, but the opening “Cantankerous Baby” is similarly successful at evoking brooding unease.  I was also quite fond of “Sushi On A Hot Day,” which nicely augments its languid reverie with a cricket-like chatter.  Even the less adventurous pieces here are quite good though–this is simply a very solid and thoughtfully sequenced batch of songs that drifts along in sublimely dreamlike fashion.  In fact, I think I prefer this to several of Celer’s more beloved releases.  I did not expect that at all: given how hugely prolific Dani and Will were during Celer’s lifetime, it seems almost astonishing that some of Dani’s best work is just now being released.

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With a mysterious and at-once bright beginning, ‘Tone Sketch’ booms in its’ own comfortable extents, both purely experimental, and purely the difference of the future pop, awakening and triggering novel inspiration. After successful releases on labels such as Cotton Goods, Dynamophone, The Land Of, and Symbolic Interaction, Hideki Umezawa, known solely as Pawn, ushers into his musical world a new stride for the Progressive Form label, renowned for releasing artists such as Aoki Takamasa and Shuta Hasunuma. With all that ‘Tone Sketch’ represents, its backdrop becomes its’ forefront, an absorbing mixture of exploratory textures, wobbling tones, and crunching frequencies of sharp particles, all cut into possibly an all-new ‘pop’ habitat. Not characteristic of Pawn’s previous works, the album also features guest appearances by a number of guest collaborators, which appear on all but two of the albums’ 12 tracks.

Pawn’s attention to detail and control of mixture is never more apparent than on ‘Tone Sketch’. There is subtle control, but freedom in variation and evolution, allowing the pallette of sounds to pass perfectly on and on, with tracks like the opener ‘Morning Tone’, building upon crisp beats, resonant patchworks of sparkling tones, and smooth pianos, or the deconstructing ‘Star Shards’, featuring soulful ruminations by Flau Records artist Cokiyu (who Pawn has also remixed). With minuscule variations, Pawn’s  sway of power glides throughout in a calm motion, changes not seeming abrupt, but as tempos and patterns change, they remain open, and fervent. Possibly the standout track of the album is not surprisingly ‘Painted Wall’, one of the tracks Pawn solely controls, displaying a mastery of collage-style organization in an almost surrealist progression, changing both in surface motion and color, matched with crystalline swells, and pulsing, stepping bass.

‘Forest Trail’, which features Fraqsea and Pleq, is a dizzying, upbeat affair that compounds throughout, pushing through layers of swirling vocals, remaining grounded yet fooling method and time, vocals sustaining the center. It’s disorienting, yet electrifying. ‘4 Grid Complex’ with Nyolfen climbs in beats, completely hooking and pummeling the stereo field on a dancefloor of piano and glitching skips. It’s perfectly arranged, and models the present moment in movement of future and time.

Opposing are tracks such as ‘Qop’, ‘Prepared Statement (with Marihiko Hara)’, and ‘Tokyo Resonance (with Sooner)’, which fall into a more disenchanting and manic form of arrangement, but this state allows its randomness mixed with playfulness, and it fits the outside confusion to complete a perfectly-circulated atmosphere of bobbing, playful organics.

As the longest track of the album, ‘Strange Animal’ (which features Cuushe) is a blended soundscape of sizzling layers of noise, deep echoes, and smooth vocals, chanting and phrasing through the music’s swirling air. The vocals request and answer, both moving, yet completely unsteady. When the beat enters the song nearly halfway, it punches through, and ends as an amalgamation of future pop; an impressive, addictive digital lullaby.

The closer, ‘Discolored Photograph’, walks forward at a calm pace, drums as footsteps, voice samples repeating but barely giving a presence, with strings steadily rising, but not overwhelming with a shrill nature that such additions sometimes create. The centerpiece is the beautiful piano melody, which stays throughout to the end, enrapturing the album into what may be its most straightforward, yet mysterious track. Not straying, it remains straight ahead, summarizing with consistency, imagination, and craftsmanship. ‘Tone Sketch’ is one of the most inventive albums I’ve heard all year, demonstrating not only a multicolored blend of colors and artistry, but demonstrating that for Pawn, composition is only the beginning of imagination.