Track list:
1 In the End You’ll Just Disappear

Release description:
Created for an installation to be played on 3 speakers in a triangular shape facing the center of a room. Each speaker played a continuous loop of a low end cut (speaker 1), a mid end cut (speaker 2), and a high end cut (speaker 3). From the center of the room, they should be perfectly mixed, yet evolve due to small differences in start times.

Available as:

• CD edition on Two Acorns

Track list:
1 Capacious Apparitions
2 Anabranch Inter-vales
3 Elapsed Paradise
4 Glitter Patterns

Release description:
“I’m spending the days cataloging books and filling the shelves of the new library. In the early afternoons, the new library employees come in and we learn about their system, and how to work it. It’s a 4km walk out of the edge of town, along the hills and red dirt roads with broken palms back to our house. I’ll listen to the radio, or the wind as I walk. When I get back you’re on the phone with family, and our child is outside the window playing in the sand nearby. When she comes back in to join you and have a snack, I’m already wading in the water, floating on my back, and drifting further out. The clouds in the distance are reaching over the islands, their overcast arms swooping and dropping warm rain. Showers barely pass, and they blow by like shadows against the flickering, distant blue lights of the town. I can see the light from our window when I look up, treading water, and even the ocean seems grey and quiet here in the middle. Behind me is another island, led by a green mountain, grey and black with clouds hanging over. The water moves underneath, a sea snake swims by, and the surf spins.”

– Will Long, Saipan, 2016

Available as:

• CD edition on Two Acorns

Track list:
1 Callisto

Release description:
“Have you ever looked up into the sky at night, and it seemed that you could see beyond the stars? How many times have you looked up, but how few do you actually remember? I remember two times:

The sky seemed to roll, the stars flickering in the humidity of the late-August evening. It makes your throat feel dry and your body strained. Staring up, “We can’t see stars like this at home”, we said to each other. Lying on the concrete slab behind the garage, and at one time standing, we kept on watching – the factory near of my hometown humming, passing cars on the nearby highway sizzling in the distance.

…Or when we were in the onsen town in the mountains – there was nowhere to walk to at night, but we trudged through the snow so I could take photos, our shoes soaked and our feet freezing. You could see your breath in the air. You can’t hear snow fall. We opened the wooden sliding door and walked back into the warmth of the light.

The next day we looked out, all the leaves were brown in the freezing November, and the stars were hidden. The blue river was ahead and down the hill, and we didn’t even think about what was or wasn’t above from the night before, past the stars now hidden by the sun.

When looking up, the least important thing is what you see – or that there is even anything in space, beyond the blackness. The beauty and the demons share the space where we are already.”

– Will Long, 2016

Available as:

• CD edition limited to 300 copies

Track list:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Press description:
‘Inside the head of gods’ is an EP of music made to accompany the paintings of Taichi Kondo for his exhibition ‘What’s my name?’ at Finale Art File in Manila, Philippines, April 6 – April 30, 2016.When I first saw his paintings, they gave me a very clear sound of music. I had many ideas, and there were many elements of each of his paintings to represent through music. When I began creating the music, I made many different kinds of tracks with different lengths, structures, timbres, quiet or loud, rhythmic or not, analog or synthetic, field recordings or noise.. but later, while these different pieces did represent the music, it didn’t sound right in a true setting – not with what I imagined the gallery space would represent, and how it would be heard.In the end, I chose to use only the first track I made, which was around 20 minutes of organ music. I listened in different settings, replayed it in different ways, and mixed and remixed it. At first I thought it was too simple and minimal, but when I listened back closely, all of those elements from before were actually there, just in a similar form of each other, rather than separated. Like the paint on a canvas, it’s all made of paint – the colors and shapes are what makes it different.

‘Inside the head of gods’ is intended to be listened to at medium volume, in random playback mode if available.

Edition of 300 copies. CD comes packaged in a simple, full color pocket sleeve. Minimal and friendly.

Track list:

1 Akagi

Release description:
In the fall of 2012, I was asked to create music for a live yoga event at Yougenji temple in Northern Tokyo. The performance was centered on the yoga instructor with the musician playing to the back of the audience, so that music served more as a live soundtrack for the event. For this I created a new piece of music using two reel-to-reel tape machines, and two tape loops of keyboards with similar time structures, but each with different, overlapping chords. They played simultaneously, crossing in different combinations, and with manual alterations of the volume and high/low settings on the machines. While changing, it maintained the same sound and makeup throughout.

During the performance many people fell asleep, and seemed to drift off to another place. Sometimes it seemed like they were waking up, but it was only the evolution of the yoga exercise matching the music. Surprisingly, throughout the entire performance, and ever since, whenever hearing the piece of music, I am immediately reminded of my grandmother. When I was 6 years old I moved with my parents to the house of my great grandfather, next door to where my father grew up, and where my grandmother still lived. She had been bed-ridden for several years by that time, and would remain so until her death when I was 11.

Somehow this music continued to fill my mind with those memories of sitting in her room, watching tv late at night with her when my parents were out to dinner, or the hazy lace curtains on the windows, moving in the afternoon breeze. I remembered that stillness, the warmth of her voice without any complaints, despite the restricted isolation, and the ever-present surroundings never changing. Seeing the audience in these motionless-to-waking states brought this memory back to me, though exactly why I can’t be sure. However, because of this, the music was given a background, and a dedication.

– Will Long, 2015

２０１２年の秋、私は北東京にある養源寺という寺院で行われたヨガ・イベントのための音楽制作を依頼された。そのパフォーマンスは、ヨガ・インストラクターを囲みながらミュージシャンがオーディエンスの背後で演奏するというもので、音楽がイベントのための生のサウンドトラックのような形になっていた。このイベントのために私は、二台のオープンリール・マシンを使って新しい作品を作った。キーボードで作られたコードの異なる二つのテープ・ループは、似たような時間構造で重り合っていた。それらのループは同時に再生しながら様々な組み合わせで交差し、機械上での手動の音量と高域・低域のセッティングによって変化していった。変化しながら、全体を通して一つのサウンドとなっていた。

パフォーマンスの最中、多くの人々が眠りに落ち、別の場所に行ってしまったかのように見えた。時々、彼らが目を覚ましていくかのように見えたが、それは単にヨガのエクササイズの展開だった。それは音楽にマッチしていた。驚くべきことだが、パフォーマンスの間中、またそれ以来ずっと、その音楽の断片を耳にするたびに、私には祖母のことがすぐに思い起こされる。６歳のとき私は、曾祖父が建てた家に両親とともに移り住んだ。その家の隣には私の父が育った家があり、そこに祖母はまだ住んでいた。祖母はそれまで何年ものあいだ、そして私が１１歳のときに彼女が亡くなるまでずっと寝たきりだった。

どういうわけかこの音楽が私の心に満たし続ける記憶は、祖母の部屋で座っていたときの思い出だ。
両親が外食に出かけ不在の夜、遅くまで彼女と一緒にテレビを見たこと。窓際で午後のそよ風に揺らされて霞むレースのカーテン。あの静けさ、祖母の暖かい声。制限された孤独と、変化の起きることのない環境のなか、彼女は決して不平をもらさなかった。どうしてかは私にも分からないのだが、静止と覚醒の状態にある観客を見ながら、これらの記憶が私の中によみがえった。しかし、この記憶のおかげで音楽は背景を持ち、祖母に捧げるものとなることができたのだ。

２０１５年、ウィル・ロング

All music by Will Long
Recorded and mixed 2011 – 2015 in Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan
Special thanks to Rie Mitsutake
For M.L.L.