Since 2009 Celer is the solo project of Will Long; before that it was a duo. I assume the sad story to be known. The music on his latest CD was inspired by the American Southwest, where Will Long travelled with his 80-year old uncle and something of a wide open feel of the landscape is what we get in these four lengthy pieces. Long recorded some music using an electric piano and a wooden flute, and copied them on a sun-baked cassette; the other two pieces here were taken from a faulty test pressing of a record that never happened and while it fluttered and stuck, it became new music. I am not sure which is what here, I must admit. It’s hard to think of any of these four pieces as something of sun baked cassettes and/or faulty test pressings. Especially if one reads on the information that Long plays ‘reel to reel, tape loops, graphic equalizer, mixer and slide projector’ – and then going back to the music and hearing these wonderful gentle sounds. If one has no clue, one could easily think that we are dealing with some refined synth doodling, a bit of overtones from sound effects, and nothing from electric pianos and/or wooden flutes. In ‘Acrimonious, Like Fiddles’ we hear a faint trace of a crackle; otherwise this seems all very clean. I can imagine that Long cuts a few loops on his reel-to-reel machine, slow it down a bit and plays around with them feeding it through his graphic equalizer and slowly changes the colour of the sound, while the sound itself remains the same. I was reminded to some of the music on the ancient Dutch label Kubus Kassettes as well as De Muziekkamer, and especially their first release ‘Kamer Muziek’. It has that same tranquillity, the same next to nothing changes, and just minor variations in sound colouring. It might not be something that you didn’t hear from Celer before, but I think this is one of the most refined releases I heard by Celer. Excellent release.