Blog Archives

Track list:
1 80,000 Feet
2 Taking Measures Toward Morning
3 Cherry Souls Awakening
4 Scarfs, Blisters And Night Lights
5 Artificial Colours
6 Swift And Ersatz Cough To Morning
7 Fathom This Young Life
8 Metal Master
9 Diphenhydramine
10 Sluggish In The Morning
11 Seeing; That Side Of Teaching
12 Mi
13 Peak Pressure
14 Rain Machines
15 Voiceless Devilfish
16 Swarms Of Orange
17 The Divine Is Not Invisible
18 Passing Hills And Still Windmills
19 Petrified Forest
20 Ice Deserts Over Ross Island
21 Scratch The Chest Of Your Voices
22 Blind Darsan
23 Missed Language
24 Late Calms
25 “To Be Holy, Be Wholly Your Own”
26 Hyperopia
27 Right To Left
28 A Minor Echolocation
29 We Were Blond First
30 The Stars Are Only Smears
31 Orionne
32 5:59 AM
33 Ends Meet
34 Mass Clouds
35 Till The Clouds Roll By
36 Apricot Sunrise
37 Echelons

Release description:
Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), also known as “nacreous clouds”, are found in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes of 15,000–25,000 metres (50,000–80,000 ft). Due to their high altitude and the curvature of the surface
of the Earth, these clouds will receive sunlight from below the horizon and reflect it to the ground, shining brightly well before dawn or after dusk. PSCs form at very low temperatures, below −78 °C. These temperatures can occur in the lower stratosphere in polar winter. In the Antarctic, temperatures below −88 °C frequently cause type II PSCs. Such low temperatures are rarer in the Arctic. Apart from arctic regions, PSCs have also been known to be seen in Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and Northern Canada. Sometimes, however, they occur as far south as England.

This beautiful release features 37 short tracks of raw iridescent ambience (total time exceeding 78 minutes) reflecting the hyper-temporal nature of what are known as “nacreous clouds”. And like the clouds, the tracks are
quick to appear and disappear. Playback using the random shuffle mode of your CD player is highly recommended.

While this is undoubtedly an ambient release, it is unusual in that there are many short tracks instead of one or two long ones, and each of the tracks is notably “raw” in that they do not use additional processing like reverb to
enhance the initial processed sound sources further. This might prove to be a challenge for those who prefer their ambience buried under a thousand pounds of reverb, but it is not the intent of the artists or and/OAR to release
“just another ambient CD”. Instead, we invite you to explore an alternative method of rendering ambience in a way that is more immediate, therefore effecting the listener’s mind in a more personal and powerful way.

Track list:
1 (Part 1) A Once and Meaningful Life / Remaining Stretches /
Separations and Reactions / Doubts of Words /
Unless They Were Beautiful

2 (Part 2) What Our Mouths Make Them / Hanging Herself on the Lonely Fifth Column
(Gramophones That Remind Us of What Sounds Once Were) /
Openings of Love (Fireworks) / Extended Sways of Silence

Release description:
The music of Will Thomas Long’s and Danielle Baquet-Long’s Celer is an absorbing combination of classic ambient, minimalism, and – perhaps as thee most distinct characteristic – overwhelming romanticism. Longinng, melancholy, nostalgia, and the like seem to be recurring themes in Will and Dani’s works. Engaged Touches begins with hypnotic sounds of a train clattering on its tracks. This departure seems to set the whole piece into a context of travel and distance, moving away from and towards something, someone. After a while these sounds give way to a rousing, majestic set of string loops. Similar phases of different field recordings and grandiose loops take turns throughout the whole work. This brings about a dynamics of contrasts: the concrete and the abstract, the particular and the general, the mundane and the exalted, and so on. The phases of string loops take up most of the album and evoke a yearning feeling of distance, grand and epic. The title, Engaged Touches, however, refers to quite the opposite, the close and intimate. It feels as if it is these kinds of touches that the string loops wailingly, albeit very gracefully, long for. This is exactly the kind of powerful romanticism that seems to define so much of Celer’s work. Because of the heavy presence of string loops Engaged Touches reminds me of some of Celer’s earlier works. I would call it a classic Celer piece, if it weren’t for the fact that their oeuvre spans only a few years back, and it would be too early to ponder the distinct phases and the internal relations in their output. Engaged Touches is another beautiful addition to the rapidly growing body of work by Celer – an oeuvre that I already consider one of thhe most important in modern ambient music. – Antti Rannisto

Track list:
1 (Part 1) A Once and Meaningful Life / Remaining Stretches /
Separations and Reactions / Doubts of Words /
Unless They Were Beautiful

2 (Part 2) What Our Mouths Make Them / Hanging Herself on the Lonely Fifth Column
(Gramophones That Remind Us of What Sounds Once Were) /
Openings of Love (Fireworks) / Extended Sways of Silence

Release description:
The music of Will Thomas Long’s and Danielle Baquet-Long’s Celer is an absorbing combination of classic ambient, minimalism, and – perhaps as thee most distinct characteristic – overwhelming romanticism. Longinng, melancholy, nostalgia, and the like seem to be recurring themes in Will and Dani’s works. Engaged Touches begins with hypnotic sounds of a train clattering on its tracks. This departure seems to set the whole piece into a context of travel and distance, moving away from and towards something, someone. After a while these sounds give way to a rousing, majestic set of string loops. Similar phases of different field recordings and grandiose loops take turns throughout the whole work. This brings about a dynamics of contrasts: the concrete and the abstract, the particular and the general, the mundane and the exalted, and so on. The phases of string loops take up most of the album and evoke a yearning feeling of distance, grand and epic. The title, Engaged Touches, however, refers to quite the opposite, the close and intimate. It feels as if it is these kinds of touches that the string loops wailingly, albeit very gracefully, long for. This is exactly the kind of powerful romanticism that seems to define so much of Celer’s work. Because of the heavy presence of string loops Engaged Touches reminds me of some of Celer’s earlier works. I would call it a classic Celer piece, if it weren’t for the fact that their oeuvre spans only a few years back, and it would be too early to ponder the distinct phases and the internal relations in their output. Engaged Touches is another beautiful addition to the rapidly growing body of work by Celer – an oeuvre that I already consider one of thhe most important in modern ambient music. – Antti Rannisto

Track list:
1 A Less Distinguished Tributary / Seagrass / Mentioned Fumes / The Light Obtainable In Spaces We Share / Extending and Directly Below / Inoffensive Sets of Misdirection / Calculated Din / Wetness Is Close To Likeness / Horizontal Reflections / Australis / A Buoyant Object, That Rests And Moves In Such A Way / When Recounting Futures, Don’t Fail To Mention Me

Track list:
1 Culling The Past From Unsentient Weeks
2 Indentions On Summits Of Hands
3 Tended Pouring

Release description:
The duo of Celer is comprised of husband and wife Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long. Using processed strings, pianos, regional field recordings, and electronics, Celer has composed a masterpiece of sentimental experiences and realism; the sound of raw emotion.. Tender and touching, yet poignant and stirring, Close Proximity and the Unhindered Care-all is composed of 3 parts that encapsulate over an hour of music, and on-location field recordings.

Part 1 creeps quietly through your room until its presence is felt, fading, and field recordings are bringing back distant memories. Part 2 starts on a melancholy note and ends in a sea of stunning ambience, drifing, and fizzling out. Part 3 embraces and carries you off to a distant, but strangely comforting world where it shares its secrets with you, and yet disappears at the peak of discovery. It is an honor for SRA to be able to share with you this masterpiece of sound art by Dani and Will, and we hope it brings comfort to a world where things are often taken for
granted and then forgotten. When listening to such a heart-rending album, itʼs hard not to feel somehow connected with the glowing love Dani and Will undoubtedly have shared, and Celer will always be remembered, and cherished in this way.

Packaged in a 8 panel classic digipack with a matte UV finish, the artwork consists of poetry by Dani, and layout, design, and cover photography by Johnny Utterback.

Track list:
1 Brittle

Release description:
Musically, all of the sounds contained on ‘Brittle’ were created by piano, violin, cello, tingsha bells, harpsichord, and whistle. There are also field recordings from the inside of a room, with the windows open, but containing largely only room noise. The resulting recordings were then structured into 19 different tracks, which were then restructured into one single forming track of 74 minutes. All of the different pieces were merged together, to blur interruption and to allow the possibility of unfocused repetition.

The album is arranged to move in a specific way, not simply section by section, but by subtle movements that swell and sway calmly. Instead of creating an environment to sink into, Celer hope that the piece will instead act as a blanket, moving with the listener through gentle sways, shifting tones and small spaces of silence that are as unpredictable as thought.

Track list:
1 Mouthfeels Of Capreae
2 Polaroid Family Portrait
3 Unequal Temperament
4 Ascensionaires
5 A Pause
6 An Erne Of A Sigh
7 With Ice, Anent The Steam
8 We Missed You Favonian
9 Listen To The Inverted Sounds, Falling
10 Op.0
11 Is Lands
12 Bracelets Passed To Spanish Hands
13 Paired Plateaus
14 When Ice Makes You Weep
15 Transposing Piano
16 In Characteristic Form
17 Transcribe This Past
18 Still Running
19 In A Past Of Haze, These Beaches
20 I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm
21 Sonata For Dual, Unaccompanied Piano
22 Craven Gardens
23 Lint White
24 Others World
25 Symtolomny
26 Anacapri
27 Lists Of Sycophants And Wishing
28 Rich Telescopes
29 A Sorted Ending

Release description:
“Capri” by Celer is a beautiful 78-minute work, containing 29 tracks full of piano, strings, horns, acoustic guitar, field recordings and the warm breeze of the Mediterranean sea.

All the material for this record was created on Capri, an Italian island on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, during a short summer residency, giving the tracks a very mild and summery feeling. Listening recalls walking near the harbor waves, the salty wind sweeping up the streets, the decayed dwellings set against pristine resorts, and the deep colors of the Blue Grotto.

Field recording material is hidden, but in the foreground, just shaded and processed into a breeze. But the warm droning and compact sound carries the spirit of summer-night on a island very, very well. Recorded in a single room with a piano and a few borrowed instruments, and processed either outside a cafe or half-sleeping during the stay, the resulting tracks are only quiet reflections of short experiences.

Like all Celer releases you can hear these slowly evolving melodies, first hidden through a slight haze, but getting sharper and clear by-and-by. Some of the shorter tracks are just sketches or fragments, found in the streets blowing by, carried through the air to your ear. The sounds mirror the merest moments, where every tone fits, is left to uncurl, each detail is well considered, and is set with a very high sensibility, haunting the hills and harbor outside the quiet, sleeping Capri.

Track list:
1 This Thinking Globe Exploding
2 The Carved God Is Gone; Waking Above The Pileus Clouds
3 Stargazing Lily Lacks The Flower
4 Retranslating The Upside-Down Mountain
5 A Crush, A Hero-Worship & Hyperrealism
6 The Separation Of The Two-Phased Apple Blossoms
7 Delaying The Entropy; In Emptiness, Forms Are Born

Release description:
Limited to 500 copies in digipak. Remastered by Chihei Hatakeyama with new layout by Rutger Zuydervelt, an unedited version of Track 6 and a new track from the original sessions entitled “Retranslating The Upside-Down Mountain.”

Track list:
1 An Imaginary Tale Of Lost Vernacular
2 Waiting Until Something Else Happens
3 The Street Of A Rainy, Gray Day
4 A Renewed Awareness Of Home

Release description:
For this collaboration work, I made a lot of field recordings. Songs of migratory birds that come to a big lake only in winter, the sound of breaking ice, frozen on a lake, the peal of huge bells in a temple, voices in prayer to the Buddha, footsteps in the subway, on the ground, made by coming and going people, machine sounds at a construction site, rain flowing into a steel pipe with a hard sound, the oscillation sound of rubbing iron which was recorded through a contact mic set on steel, the conversation of people walking in the city, noise of vehicles and trucks, kids voices from an elementary school, and so on. Like a time trip to transcend places, these sound-scapes are presented as a imaginary tale. To collaborate with foreign artists became a chance for facing Japan again for me. Reflecting on each of our localities to compose let us be aware anew of the vernacular which has been lost in the global world. Artists can’t be unrelated to the characteristics (culture) of places (surroundings) where they live, and they are influenced obliviously in some way. By watching our everyday surroundings closely, we can engender a most realistic language of where we live, and how we think. I sense that peculiar, unfamiliar cultures and customs are invaluable wealth in human history. – Yui Onodera

In this collaboration work with Yui Onodera, we contributed many instrument sounds, and field recordings such as the streets of Los Angeles, rain on our doorstep, water draining into the gutter, cars passing on wet and slippery streets, people walking on their way home from work, talking in an airport baggage claim, crosswalks, airliners flying over, taxi rides, riding bikes through traffic, conversations in restaurants, the Metro Link train in Los Angeles, and walking on quiet streets. In our part of mixing, since we were working with someone’s instrument sounds and field recordings from a city that we haven’t visited, much was left to our imagination to re-create an environment and city setting for the piece. Trying to keep a balance between the heavily processed material and the entirely unprocessed material, created a natural bridge of movement inside the city. Processed elements became backdrops and scores to real activity, sometimes simply drifting away from the daily life, or the finding the soul of the pieces. When these two entirely different cities came together, it created an all new way of looking at, and hearing the city’s movements around us. Cultures parallel one another, with the views of the skylines and empty streets left the only visible evidence of similarity. – Danielle Baquet-Long, Will Long

Track list:
1 The Brightness Of Faraway Life
2 Pouring Me Into The Rest Of You
3 How I Imagine My Hand Holds Yours
4 On The Edges Of Each Season
5 The Feeling Of Trancing Through A Silent Expanse
6 I Could Almost Disperse
7 Distant Explosions
8 Flickers (Goodnight)

Release description:
Dying Star was recorded in the fall of 2008, using only a vintage analog synthesizer and mixing board. It was completely improvised, with no overdubs or post-processing. The intention was to produce a completely improvised work while remaining completely pure and secluded, the resulting recording stands as a fading presentation of memory, time, and loss, set against the ending day.

Presented at a low volume, the ideal and intended procedure for listening is with headphones, with the volume set specifically at 80%. Through intimacy, tenderness, and isolation, the resulting imaginings are stately presented, yet consistently withering away; and throughout the duration, energy pushes forward, strains, explodes, but eventually crumbles.