Drone Records

CELER - Sky Limits

Format: CD

Label & Cat.Number: Baskaru karu:35

Release Year: 2014

Note: washes of long synth & drone waves are taking turns with small acoustic snapshots of daily life field recordings; suggestive daydream-muzak with as strong Asian aura... CD version now available

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €14.00

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Dreams Wide Awake

"Hill towns and empty mountains pass by, but the smoothness of the train blurs the view, and it's easier than ever to fall asleep in the low morning sunlight coming in through the train's windows", writes Will Long, the artist behind the Celer moniker, in his liner notes to Sky Limits, one of his most fulfilling records to date.

First created as a duo project in 2005, Celer has been US-born musician Will Long's solo vehicle since 2009. Through the years and thanks to an astounding rate of production, Celer has become a reference in the field of ambient electronic music. The care Long puts in his ethereal albums and his flawless musical intuition have earned him the critics'praise and invites to release material on key labels such as Spekk, Glacial Movements, Humming Conch, Experimedia, and/OAR, and now Baskaru.

Sky Limits consists in a series of daydreaming-prone, strings-laden ambient tracks interspersed with field recordings of daily life in Tokyo and Kyoto. This album is a reflection on the evanescent nature of memories, dreams, and reality.

In addition to Celer, his main project, Will Long plays in Oh, Yoko (with Miko) and Hollywood Dream Trip (with Christoph Heemann). He also runs the Two Acorns label.

www.baskaru.com

"For a while I assumed that Celer was no more, due the passing of one half of the duo, but since 2009 Will Long also uses this name as a solo vehicle. He has released his music on many labels, such as Experimedia, Glacial Movements, Spekk and now Baskaru. Here we have a new album of eleven pieces, which all have a title and not necessarily form one long piece but could also be treated as such, of music that is very ambient mixed with a bit of field recordings. From his current location, Tokyo, he offers what seems to be the entire opposite soundtrack of a busy city. Much of this sounds like processed string music, not unlike the kind of strings processed by Marsen Jules. Music that floats by, really, really gentle and calm. Not the kind of stuff I would let pass without looking out the window and think of some weather related metaphor. It fits this sunny yet cold (how would I know: I haven't left the house all day) January day, and now, especially at the end of the afternoon, the
evening starts to fall and lights begin to fade: this seems to be the perfect time of the day to start this CD and then, about an hour later, it's most likely dark and we have moved to a variety of moods here, all from the various possibilities on offer from the string sounds (light, dark, somewhere in between, together, alone), which he mixes with very quiet field recordings from Tokyo, just faint traces it seems of someone talking, some sparse sound, the rumble of far away traffic; Tokyo has quiet areas too, I know. This is Celer the way we like it; it's not the kind of music that Celer wouldn't do, and that's perhaps the downside of it. It doesn't seem to be something 'new', for whatever that is worth. But perhaps that's reviewer talk; maybe the fan wants more of the same?" [FdW/Vital Weekly]