Format: 2x12", CD
Label: Self released
Catalog: LT7
Release date: 1/31/25

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Track list:

A1 One In the Future
B1 The Right Choice
C1 You Cannot Reform A Sin
D1 Fingers Of Fire

 

Press text:

And so we come to round 4 of the Long Trax series, the pivotal moment of truth. Four new deep cuts spread across 4 sides of vinyl in dual sleeves, and spun onto disc. An all-analog, hardware machine affair, full of glazed pads and spicy stabs, rhythm composure (composer) sequences, round booming basslines, and narrators from beyond. It’s the real thing, still chugging along.

Press reviews:

Musique Machine

Five long years since his last Long Trax release, Will Long (also known as Celer) returns with four fun, upbeat pieces of light dance with Long Trax 4. Long not only because of the composer but also the track length, these four songs are spread over four 12″ sides, presenting quite a layout for the grooves contained within. The eponymous project is quite a departure from the ambient works of Celer, but Will Long has been producing engaging house and dance music for nearly a decade so he’s well represented in both styles of electronic music.

Despite the difference between ambient and dance music, Will Long manages to keep them somewhat related on Long Trax 4. Coming from a more minimal side of the house scene, the four compositions offered up in this latest instalment manage to get a lot said with less instrumentation. Recorded with completely analogue sources, the richness and vibrance goes a long way, making the most of each beat and synth line. This in turn allows Long the space needed to compose without having to pack the track with an abundance of sounds, leaving the listener to turn on, tune in, and drop out with the soothing grooves. Here is where the comparison lies – the hypnotic and welcoming compositions give the listener adequate material to create their own meaning and journey, much like his ambient work as Celer. Starting the collection off is “One in the Future,” which is lightly constructed and dreamlike in tone. The higher synths are very bright and keep this one upbeat, with the light reverb helping to add substance to sparseness. This is where Will Long gets to shine, showing how to make sounds appear to fill spaces when they’re really not, maximizing each note and allowing the listener to fill in the blanks. “The Right Choice” follows, but instead of reverbed notes leading the charge, the synths are held a bit longer, with mid-length, soft, warbling drones making the statements here. Despite a persistent rhythm, the synths have an overall slowing effect on the song and this adds a really interesting juxtaposition. Moving more toward the traditional, “You Cannot Reform a Sin” plays more like a thin bit of electronica, utilizing the sparseness of the tracks before it, but with less heft to the synths. Wrapping up the 2LP set is “Fingers on Fire,” a very vibe heavy number that focuses on creating a “chill” atmosphere and allows its synths to shine. This is the most heavily layered of the songs on Long Trax 4, but even still, this one is built clean and lean.

Long Trax 4 is an intriguing look at how an ambient artist composes house music, where the focus lies, and which elements are the most important. Utilizing sparseness and blank space, Will Long creates four engaging pieces of electronica, each with their own strengths, but all with a similar motif. While this style of music may not be his most prolific, his work in the field is exciting and will definitely appeal to many fans of thoughtful electronic music.

Aural Aggravation
The brief liner notes are almost as perplexing as the cover art and the rest of Will Long’s Bandcamp page. I mean, you might think that the title is the key here. While clocking in around the eleven-minute mark, these compositions, as much as they’re far from short, well, I’ve certainly heard many longer trax, with many albums featuring a single twenty-minute piece on each side. But of course, it’s a pun. Sort of. Regardless, spreading these four tracks across four sides of vinyl feels somewhat indulgent, although I won’t go quite as far as to say exploitative, despite the temptation.Will Long has to date created an extensive catalogue of work, both with Celer, since 2004, and as a solo artist – and when I say ‘extensive’, I mean extensive, with Celer having released around a hundred albums (if you include collaborations and compilations), and his solo output is equally overwhelming in volume. The Long Trax releases have arrived sporadically between other releases, and are broadly connected, in stylistic terms. As Long puts it, ‘round 4 of the Long Trax series [is] the pivotal moment of truth. Four new deep cuts spread across 4 sides of vinyl in dual sleeves, and spun onto disc. An all-analog, hardware machine affair, full of glacial pads and icy stabs, rhythm composure (composer) sequences, round booming basslines, and narrators from beyond. It’s the real thing, still chugging along.’Less than a minute into ‘One in the Future’, I’m feeling late 90s chilled techno vibes, and I’m dragged back to a handful of club experiences where I fucking hated the music and I hated the posers.

I’ll admit, I’ve always had something of a fraught relationship with dance music and its culture. I suppose I’ve generally leaned towards rock, but have found spaces in my head and heart for some dance and adjacent, loving the KLF from the start, and so much of the electronic music from the late 70s and early 80s. Chris and Cosey’s Trance is a straight-up dance album, and I dig it not just because it’s a Throbbing Gristle-related release. But, as I discovered when visiting a club in Brighton on visiting friends in the late 90s, some stuff, I just struggle to connect with. And this is it. To add to my story, I attended an Optimo night in Glasgow in 2004 to see Whitehouse. It was a strange event, in that most were there for the downtempo dance, which was halted for three quarters of an hour while William Bennet and Philip Best cranked out the most punishing, ear-shredding set to the sheer horror of the majority, before smooth beats returned, to their relief. My experience was inverse to the majority. Whitehouse did not go down well: the end of their set did. As the relentless bouncing beats returned, I was happy to leave, as were my whistling, devastated ears.

‘One in the Future’ is the longest eleven minutes of nondescript sonic wallpaper I have had the pain to endure in over a decade. It’s the monotony that hurts. It’s soulless, tedious, and nothing happens. And this is a fair summary of the album as a whole. To my ear, to my mind, to my insides, it feels so devoid of… anything that I can connect to. The samples blare, the squelchy synths blip and bloop and pulsate over tedious beats and maybe I need different drugs or a different brain, but this is relentlessly tedious, monotonous and crushingly dull. Get me out of here!

Dasfilter

Der Tanzbär ist wieder da, hat meine Partnerin schon vor vielen Jahren gesagt, wenn ich mich in jene gemächliche Bewegungen versetzt habe, die man für plusminus 125 BPM eben so braucht. Nicht zu energetisch, aber auch nicht zu phlegmatisch. Mittlerweile ist auch der Bodyshape hinreichend tanzbärig. Die ersten Takte von Will Longs viertem Teil seiner wunderbaren Housereihe erklingen, und der Tanzbär erwacht, hebt seine Tatzen von der Tatzatur und fängt an sich zu bewegen, zum Glück guckt gerade keiner zu im mal wieder verwaisten Büro. Der Raum unter dem Kopfhörer wird immer größer. Endorphine machen sich breit. Scheint da sogar die Sonne übers Dach? Es auch nach so vielen, vielen Jahren enger Partnerschaft mit Housemusik immer noch faszinierend, wie sie einen aus dem Hier und Jetzt entführen und man sich ihr einfach hingeben kann. Metalheads mögen es beim Headbangen empfinden, Skafans beim Skaning, andere beim Pogen, die Kids wieder beim Jumpstyle … für mich ist es das Sich-Verlieren in der eleganten Repetition, die Spannungen abbaut, die Wut und Trauer darüber, wie nur ein paar Kilometer entfernt gerade die Demokratie sehenden Auges zerstört wird, für einen Moment lindert. Die vier Tracks, die Long ins Rennen schickt, sind lang, so heißt das Ganze ja auch, und lang-weilig im bestgemeinten Sinne. Warum sollte auch mehr passieren? Es ist alles gut so, und spätestens bei „You Cannot Reform A Sin“, wohl wahr, beginnt der Kopf schön zu schwummern. Die in „Fingers of Fire“ eingefügten Samples alter politischer Reden könnte man, abgeglichen mit der bescheuerten Gegenwart, zynisch wahrnehmen. Mich erinnert es aber positiv an den 2024 verstorbenen Chuck Roberts, der die stoischen Lyrics für „My House“ von Rhythm Controll einsprach. House is a feeling, let there be house, für immer.

Boomkat

Tokyo’s ambient deep house outlier stretches their legs on four durational swingers working shades away from the likes of Larry Heard and DJ Sprinkles All given a side each to execute their function with all the time and space required, ‘Long Trax 4’ reprises an economically restrained formula of dry drum machine, sparing chords and rich bass in a classic model, lent spirit with judicious samples of notable Afro-American civil rights figures.Long holds up their end on each count with supple cuts of strident deep house and gently insistent vox on ‘One in the Future’, the more opulent, radiant chords of ‘The Right Choice’, some really juicy acidic square bass play on ‘You Cannot Reform a Sin’, and the hypnotic, dusted flow of ‘Fingers On Fire’.

Chain DLK
The slow burn continues. With “Long Trax 4”, Will Long extends his signature deep house minimalism into yet another glacially unfolding meditation, where time bends and loops dissolve into memory. These are tracks that don’t demand attention but reward patience, drawing you in with their unshakable, hypnotic calm. Four longform cuts, each stretching past the ten-minute mark, built from the same raw materials: warm, rounded basslines, icy synth stabs, languidly pulsing rhythms, and the ghostly echoes of distant voices.

Long’s approach has always been about restraint, a deliberate economy of means that recalls the austerity of early DeepChord or the meditative flow of Larry Heard at his most introspective. But where the “Long Trax” series began as a kind of political statement – house music stripped of excess, leaving space for sampled voices critiquing capitalism and injustice – this fourth installment leans even further into abstraction. The messages are still there, drifting in the ether, but they no longer anchor the music; instead, they haunt it, spectral reminders of conversations half-heard through the fog of reverb and delay.

Opener “One in the Future” unfurls like a sunrise over an empty city, pads swelling and receding in slow-motion waves, while “The Right Choice” settles into an even deeper groove, its hi-hats ticking like a distant metronome marking the passage of hours. “You Cannot Reform A Sin” brings in a muted urgency, basslines pressing forward as voices murmur warnings from another dimension. Closer “Fingers of Fire” might be the most subtly dramatic piece here, a slow crescendo of flickering chords and submerged intensity, stretching time until it almost disappears.

For those already attuned to Will Long’s world, “Long Trax 4” is another chapter in an unfolding saga of minimalist devotion. For the uninitiated, it’s an invitation to let go, to step into a place where house music moves at the speed of thought, where the groove is eternal, and where silence, repetition, and space are just as important as sound. It’s still the real thing, still chugging along, and it still refuses to rush.

Luminous Dash
Een house review op de Luminous Dash-pagina’s, zowaar. Het gaat dan ook niet om plastic Eurodance, of kouwelijke mainstage turbotechno, maar om echte house, met warme gloed, zin voor roots, en mikkend op intiemere settings.

Daarbij kiest Will Long – ambientliefhebbers kennen hem van zijn talrijke Celer-platen – voor een intussen trademark aanpak. Teruggrijpend naar stilistische essenties uit de beginjaren, met selecte analoge hardware: een Roland TR-707 of 727, Juno 6 of 106, een al even vintage DX7 synth, en een MPC2000, een in dance en hiphop populaire sampler uit eind jaren 1990. Dat instapmodel tekent integraal voor One In The Future, waarin al snel ook een ander Long trax-motief naar voor komt: gesproken samples uit de zwarte geschiedenis. Met zoals bij de vorige drie uitgaven een portret van elke historische figurant op een hoeskant, hier in volgorde Huey Newton, Martin Luther King, Winnie Mandela en Adam Clayton Powell. Mensen met een mening dus, over burgerrechten, apartheid, oorlog en vrede, omgang ook met (al dan niet verloren) volkseigen dromen.

Long Trax zijn doorgaans een beetje ‘long tracks’: wat langer uitgesponnen materiaal, waarin echo’s van het vroege, veeleer minimale werk van pakweg Virgo Four, Jungle Wonz, Mr. Fingers of Ronald en Rheji Burrell (in de scene bekend van vele NuGroove-platen) doorklinken, maar dat tegelijk een snel herkenbare eigen aanpak doorademt, inbegrepen een vaak terugkerende 116 bpm. Met vooral in The Right Choice en Fingers Of Fire veel warme pads er overheen.

Er spreekt niet zelden iets melancholisch uit, ondanks de strijdbare speeches; iets van een buitenstaander in ieder geval. Zo beschouwt Long zichzelf ook al langer: opgroeiend in Mississippi nooit echt aardend in het door raciale scheiding getypeerde diepe zuiden, en sinds 15 jaar als inwoner van Japan ook niet helemaal opgenomen in die deels toch wel traditiegerichte, soms zelfs etnocentrische cultuur.

Benoemt Long z’n platen zelf als “outsider music”, er klopt een warm, zachtjes bloedend hart voor de wortels van de house doorheen.

First Floor
Putting MLK samples in a track was once commonplace, but these days it’s an undeniably risky choice, one that lands most artists who attempt it in devastatingly cringey territory. Will Long must have known that when he was putting together “The Right Choice”—a highlight of his new Long Trax 4 release—yet the Tokyo-based producer forged ahead anyways, slotting King’s righteous words into a deliciously deep slice of house music. How deep? “The Right Choice” cruises along for more than 11 and a half minutes, but while its rich tones are indeed pillow-soft, the song never once feels snoozy. With its bare-bones rhythms and palpable sense of soul, the song sits comfortably alongside the work of deep house giants like Larry Heard and DJ Sprinkles, its meditative grooves sure to be all but irresistible to anyone lucky enough to encounter Long’s music.