Track list:
1 (Part 1) A Once and Meaningful Life / Remaining Stretches /
Separations and Reactions / Doubts of Words /
Unless They Were Beautiful
2 (Part 2) What Our Mouths Make Them / Hanging Herself on the Lonely Fifth Column
(Gramophones That Remind Us of What Sounds Once Were) /
Openings of Love (Fireworks) / Extended Sways of Silence
Release description:
The music of Will Thomas Long’s and Danielle Baquet-Long’s Celer is an absorbing combination of classic ambient, minimalism, and – perhaps as thee most distinct characteristic – overwhelming romanticism. Longinng, melancholy, nostalgia, and the like seem to be recurring themes in Will and Dani’s works. Engaged Touches begins with hypnotic sounds of a train clattering on its tracks. This departure seems to set the whole piece into a context of travel and distance, moving away from and towards something, someone. After a while these sounds give way to a rousing, majestic set of string loops. Similar phases of different field recordings and grandiose loops take turns throughout the whole work. This brings about a dynamics of contrasts: the concrete and the abstract, the particular and the general, the mundane and the exalted, and so on. The phases of string loops take up most of the album and evoke a yearning feeling of distance, grand and epic. The title, Engaged Touches, however, refers to quite the opposite, the close and intimate. It feels as if it is these kinds of touches that the string loops wailingly, albeit very gracefully, long for. This is exactly the kind of powerful romanticism that seems to define so much of Celer’s work. Because of the heavy presence of string loops Engaged Touches reminds me of some of Celer’s earlier works. I would call it a classic Celer piece, if it weren’t for the fact that their oeuvre spans only a few years back, and it would be too early to ponder the distinct phases and the internal relations in their output. Engaged Touches is another beautiful addition to the rapidly growing body of work by Celer – an oeuvre that I already consider one of thhe most important in modern ambient music. – Antti Rannisto