Blog Archives

Track list:
1 Lights Inside and Ahead
2 3.14 Transfer To Frankfurt
3 Deck Allusion
4 3.31 Night Train To Berlin
5 A Single Quantum Event
6 3.13 Beijing Layover
7 Associations With the Same Intention
8 3.21 Basel After A Rain
9 Ends That Come As Quickly As Beginnings

Release description:
Touring is a strange experience. There are disappointments and surprises. The audience you expected wasn’t there, but those shows usually end up being the best. I didn’t expect I’d see these cities. Frankfurt in the rain, or falling asleep in the back of a car in Basel, waiting for a show to start. You wake up and you’re in a different place, or already moving on to the next before you can experience the place.

All the tapes I dubbed for the tour I left in the first hotel, and did the rest on the trains en route. When we walked to the field at Tempelhof, it was totally covered with snow, and it was so cold my camera lens froze. Your hair whipped in the wind like a mustang.

I remember the taxi interiors in Poland, and how many women wore leather in Russia. I couldn’t find bookstores, but it didn’t matter. Meeting everyone was the best part of it, you experience these small events during the days or at night, and you think how we’ll remember this forever. Then you return home, and never speak with them again.

Tempelhof was recorded on tour in 2013 in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Russia. It was mixed in Japan between 2013 and 2015.

 

Track list:

1 Bleeds and swell blends
2 These dreams, how portentously gloomy
3 Natural deflections
4 Acrimonious, like fiddles

Release description:

Artist statement

A few years ago I took a road trip with my 80-year old uncle through parts of the American southwest. We drove to Moab, where the sunset turned the canyon walls orange in the early evening, and after midnight, passing puffy clouds still showed through the the navy blue sky. In the morning, the buttes seemed brilliant bleached in sunlight, and the view from above the canyon was completely silent save for the wind, and birds occasionally flying past. In the Needles district, the centuries-old petroglyphs were mixed with graffiti; spraypaint cans lying half-submerged rusted in the sand below. We drove through the back roads of the La Sal Mountains, and down across the windswept grey Colorado plateau.

Past the expanses of Monument Valley, on the outskirts of Kayenta, rainstorms loomed in the distance as teenage hitchhikers dotted the roadsides, along which were makeshift souvenir shops, alone like fireworks stands after a passed holiday. Climbing out of the desert, we passed through Aspen, through the ski resorts and celebrity mansions, where the average annual household income is $69,000, compared to $21,000 in Kayenta. The next day, our drive ended near Ouray, the fog rolling over the evergreen-lined roads.

Several years later, after leaving California, I put together a collection of tracks made with an electric piano and a wooden flute. Two tracks were copied onto two sun-baked cassette tapes I had found on the dashboard of a car, and the other two from a warped 12″ test pressing. Revisiting these pieces after living in Japan for several years, they instantly reminded me of the trip, and what I left behind in the United States. The tapes fluttered and stuck, drenched in hiss and grime. The record skipped, wavered, and dropped in and out. Yet with these imperfections, it completely reflected my memory of the places, and what they represented. There are sides to everything, whether it causes you to change or not.

– Will Long, 2015

アーティスト・ステートメント

数年前、８０歳になる叔父とアメリカ南西部を車で旅したことがあった。我々がドライブをしたモアブという場所では、夕方になると夕日が渓谷の壁をオレンジ色に染め、夜中を過ぎると、濃紺の夜空にふわふわの雲が現われては通り過ぎていった。朝になると、太陽にさらされたビュート（孤立丘）が輝いて見え、渓谷の上からの景色は、風と、時折飛んで行く鳥の音をのぞいては完全な静寂に包まれていた。ニードルズ地区にある、何世紀も前の岩面彫刻には落書きが入り混じっていて、錆びたスプレーペイントの缶が砂地に半分埋もれて残されていた。我々はラ・サル山脈の裏道をドライブして、吹きさらしの灰色のコロラド高原を超えて行った。

カエンタ郊外の広々としたモニュメントバレーを過ぎると、遠くのほうにぼんやりと暴風雨が見えた。沿道にはティーンエイジャーのヒッチハイカー達が点在し、簡易な作りの土産店が休日明けの花火の屋台のように寂しそうに並んでいた。砂漠を抜けると、我々はアスペンというスキーリゾートを通り過ぎた。セレブなマンションが立ち並ぶその辺りの一世帯の年収は69,000ドル、一方カエンタでは21,000ドルだ。

何年か後になってカリフォルニアを去ったあと、私は電子ピアノと木笛を使って一連の曲を制作した。その中の２曲が、車のダッシュボードの上で陽にあたって劣化したカセットテープの中にコピーされているのを私は発見した。そして残りの２曲は、歪んでしまったテストプレス用のレコードの中にあった。日本に何年か住んだ後でこれらの作品を再検討してみると、あの旅のこと、そして私がアメリカに置いてきたもののことがすぐさま思い起こされた。テープには歪みやひっかかりがあり、ノイズとホコリまみれだった。レコードには音飛びや音揺れがあり、音が大きくなったり小さくなったりした。けれどもこれらの不完全さは、それぞれの場所の私の思い出、そしてそれらが意味するものを見事に象徴していた。すべてのものには、両端がある。それが我々に変化を起こさせるものかどうかにかかわらず。

– Will Long, 2015

Press statement

Inspired by the American Southwest, “How could you believe me when I told you that I loved you when you know I’ve been a liar all my life” is the new album by American musician Celer, aka Will Long, now living in Japan. Sourced from an electric piano and wooden flute, tape loops were copied to sun-baked cassette tapes, and a warped vinyl tester, using the most basic format-inherent effects. Based on an idea of primitive Americana, it can be seen as a mediation on the different sides of music and cultural perception, or a reflection of inherent imperfections.

 

Track list:
Side A
1 Circle Routes
2 (12.5.12) Making tea over a rocket launch broadcast
3 In plum and magenta
4 (12.21.12) On the Shinkansen leaving Kyoto
5 Tangent lines
6 (12.20.12) Back in Kawaramachi, Kyoto

Side B
7 Equal to moments of completion
8 (4.8.13) A morning
9 Wishes to prolong
10 (4.8.13) An evening
11 Attempts to make time pass differently

Release description:
Hill towns and empty mountains pass by, but the smoothness of the train blurs the view, and it’s easier than ever to fall asleep in the low morning sunlight coming in through the train’s windows. We’re sleeping, or staring out at the cities and landscapes; it’s easy to imagine the sound, and connect it with these events. There’s a contrast and connection between this reality and imagination. They’re separate, but happening simultaneously. On a walk through the crowded streets of Kyoto, or a half-asleep morning, what was it like? Later, what do you remember?

During a walk home one evening, I stopped on top of the street with a view over the train tracks, passed the intersection across from Mini Stop and the bakery, and went up the hill into the our neighborhood. There’s a particular sound when you step on the entrance grate by the doorway, and when opening the mailbox. Someday, I won’t be in these same places again, and for now, this is what they sound like. Even these minor moments are important when you look back on the memory, and then look out from this overlook, seeing the city lights blinking in the distance.

Sky Limits is available as a 12″ black vinyl LP with full color, uncoated board sleeve, black paper inner sleeve, postcard, and download card. Edition of 300.

 

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