Posts tagged ambient

Coming in early March is a new album titled Zigzag, on the Japanese label Spekk. This is a very special album for me, and and step in a different direction as well. The CD is packaged in a 170 x 145mm large & wide custom-made cardboard sleeves, and along with the first orders is Seesaw, a limited edition CDR album in a handmade package, available only with the purchase of the Zigzag album. Thank you for your support, and please don’t miss this special album.

Press text:

Several years ago while living in the United States, I became interested in the minimalist music of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and new wave of the early 1980’s, with the steady pulses, the constant harmonies, and endless continuity. The music had a strong persistence, and while the listener can drift away from following it consciously, the rhythm stays grounded. In it there is something human, like a heartbeat.

At the time I had the idea to use this inspiration with my own music, giving the music a tempo, and a new pathway in a forward direction. I created Zigzag, and agreed to release the album through Spekk, but after several years, the project was delayed, and I went on to other projects, and the initial inspiration and concept disappeared.

In the summer of 2013, I found out that my wife and I would have our first child. Around this time, plans began to come together for the release of Zigzag. After missing the first few doctor’s appointments, I was finally able to attend, and for the first time heard the baby’s heartbeat. It seemed like such a fateful connection between the baby and the music. When new life begins, everything points toward the future.

– Will Long, 2014

After waiting in production for several years, Mystery Sea has released the work ‘Seasick’ by Chubby Wolf, the solo project of Danielle Baquet-Long. I’m very glad for such a special release to happen for Chubby Wolf on such a great label.

Press release:
A mis-use of mistrust,
a clouted loop,
a taking under.
a view of islands hidden by a cloak of sea steam,
a loss,
a hidrotic tide.
Thus, I sigh at the sea, and
the sea sighed back at me.

– Danielle Baquet-Long
In a very short span of time and of creative obsession, Celer have managed to amass an astounding body of works…but this didn’t help to quench the thirst yet, and Danielle Baquet-Long, half of this symbiotic duo, under her wry moniker Chubby Wolf, sketched her own repertoire of twisted ambient patterns through spontaneous & diligent experimentation – this led to some brilliant discs, as for instance, “L’Histoire” on Gears Of Sand… Here on “Seasick” comes another of her sadly posthumous treasures, and it’s truly a pinnacle…some stirring ode to the immanence of the sea, and the ever shifting horizon strewn with ships going who-knows-where…
An imposing slow unfolding lament respectfully & subtly enhanced by Mathieu Ruhlmann’s mastering who dared to sprinkle Dani’s soundscape with aural debris giving the whole work a new aura & pertinent direction…

After all, Dani is still sailing…

In front of us,
a vertiginous sea,
submerged crevasses
frozen moments of uncertainty
that makes our hearts sink
into this solemn immensity…

And when we get closer,
It’s all ebullience,
an endless wash of disparate elements
pulled from a disintegrated cosmos…

So, we’ll leave this world,
as naked as when we entered into it,
just shot through by its piercing beauty & sly unease,
SEASICK, but somehow reconciled…

CD ltd to 250 copies
200 initial copies come with an additional art card on 300 gr satin paper

Link

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.

‘We are nothing but a view of the world.’
– Maurice Merleau-Ponty