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AlbumREVIEWS: '€˜Tempelhof'€™ and '€˜Soryu'€™ by Celer

Using his Celer moniker, experimental musician Will Long has been responsible for creating some of the most moving ambient music of the decade

Marcel Thee (The Jakarta Post)
Fri, November 27, 2015

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AlbumREVIEWS: '€˜Tempelhof'€™ and '€˜Soryu'€™ by Celer

Using his Celer moniker, experimental musician Will Long has been responsible for creating some of the most moving ambient music of the decade.

On his latest releases '€” two records released close to each other but not musically connected '€” Long continues to churn out delicate pieces of both drifting hums and orchestral swells that never stop feeling engrossingly personal.

Both the subtle clarity of the more classically ambient Soryu and the majestic washes of Tempelhof are mesmerizing in their own ways. Combined, they create a truly unparalleled journey of and for the soul.

An incredibly prolific musician, it seems daunting trying to keep up with the Celer catalog, but those who do will find themselves rewarded with album after album of moving moments.

Now based in Japan, the American musician'€™s life has brought him to different parts of the world, both for work and as places which would inform his music. A few years ago even saw the 34-year-old living in Jakarta as an English teacher and creating an album that included field recordings of the city'€™s audible grind.

That mix of visceral field recordings and thoughtful analog processing makes the basis for the majority of Celer'€™s output. Taken at face value, listeners too used to these kinds of music may find themselves at a loss trying to distinguish between the records, but those with the patience and thirst for disquieting arrangements will easily experience each Celer album and the songs breathing very specific narratives.

Recorded on tour through Europe and Asia, Tempelhof is a more outward journey, whereupon layers of reel-to-reel loops and analog synth work flourish in and out of each other to create walls of gently moving string-like swells. Each of the drone-styled tracks are intertwined with field recordings of spaces and places that include Frankfurt ('€œTransfer to Frankfurt'€), Berlin ('€œNight Train to Berlin'€) and Beijing ('€œLayover in Beijing'€).

This creates a vivid, yet dreamlike clarity to the album, which '€” like the majority of ambient/drone albums '€” works best when listened to as a whole, not piece-by-piece.

The manner in which '€œNight Train to Berlin'€ shifts into the endless crescendos of '€œA Single Quantum Event'€ is a mesmerizing emotional shift that is again repeated with how the casual airport announcement of '€œLayover in Beijing'€ creates a specific visual before letting the minimalist movements of '€œAssociations With the Same Intention'€ glide through.

Tempelhof'€™s majestic closer, '€œEnds That Come As Quickly As Beginnings'€, announces its melancholy through its title and delivers whispered, faraway hums that sound like a long-lost choral recorded under an oceanic dome.

The more careful nature of Soryu is more difficult to assign a specific feeling to. Diligent swells drifting between each other like winds ghostly echoing through an empty house, the one-hour-plus track that makes up the whole album is about setting up a mood that shifts between the thoughtful and the carefree, the pensive and the expressive.

Soryu'€™s melancholiac pinnacle comes at its 20th minute, as hovering feedback and hums collide as one, before landing into ground-like low hums close to its 50th minutes. It is a not an album to be heard as much as felt.

Spending time with Tempelhof and Soryu '€” or any Celer release (both albums are available in physical and digital formats through celer.bandcamp.com) '€” require a necessary amount of emotional preparation that not everyone may be accustomed to.

In each case, patience is indeed a virtue, but even more so is a wanting for music that transcends conventional delivery and is crystal clear in its emotional narrative. It'€™s never easy, but the rewards are transcendental.


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