There is a little story by Celer’s Will Long along this CD about days of work and hours of leisure, walking to and back from work and swimming, but all of which may not necessarily relate to ‘Alcoves’, or perhaps it does and the music is all about his current, quiet life? It’s not easy to say, since music if the music of Celer is very quiet and ‘Alcoves’ is not different. There are four pieces here and the first three flow into each other, whilst the fourth, about half of the rest of the CD, seems to be a piece by itself. Whatever Celer does, and after so many of his releases I still have no clue what it is actually is, it all seems to evolve (rather than revolve) about heavily computer treated sounds that form long, slowly sustaining sounds; an endless amount of sustaining sounds, slowly fading in and out. Just a few layers (it seems), adding to fragile nature of the music. This is just like many other Celer releases, and surely I made this remark before. I could look it up, but I won’t. No, I’d rather sit back and listen to the music,
flipping through a magazine, without trying to read much of it. I re-read Long’s notes about the weather, “The clouds in the distance are reaching over the islands, their overcast arms swooping and dropping warm rain”, and I look at outside to see very light clouds mixed with autumn sunshine, and while it doesn’t feel warm inside the house, it looks like a beautiful day. Its one of those days where I should consider not staying at home, but go out and have that walk myself, a nice 4KM stretch
somewhere among the small forest in beautiful sunny Nijmegen, not far away from the HQ. I could bring Celer’s music on a pair of good headphones, or, alternatively, listen to birds. I could consider that, but I won’t, knowing myself.
No, I’d rather stay inside and pick up the flexi disc ‘On Or Near Surface’, which Celer announces, is a bonus track to the ‘Alcoves’ album. I can’t drag my turntable outside on a sunny afternoon’s walk, can’t I? But I was thinking “Celer and vinyl”; is that a good combination? Now, obviously I am known to argue that good techno surely should be on vinyl, delicate ambient on CD (or higher bitrate downloads) and gritty noise on a cassette, so why should Celer put his delicate music on what is clearly an inferior medium, the flexi disc? Now, I love flexi-disc, ever since as a fifteen year getting one with the music magazine that proofed to be so important in my life, and partly that is because the quality easily deteriorates and I guess that’s the attraction for Celer as well. His music is delicate and sometimes builds from crackles and now these crackles are present in playback and the piece will further decay and crackle and it will always make a new piece of music. Good choice, and perhaps a good gimmick, for once. Not to be repeated too often, I’d say.