Pockets of Wheat
Tracklisting:
01. Pockets of Wheat I – VII (59:09)
“They first became properly visible, these huge figures, just within
the tops of the bushes — immense, bronze-coloured, moving, and wholly
independent of the swaying of the branches. I saw them plainly and
noted, now I came to examine them more calmly, that they were very
much larger than human, and indeed that something in their appearance
proclaimed them to be not human at all. Certainly they were not merely
the moving tracery of the branches against the moonlight. They shifted
independently. They rose upwards in a continuous stream from earth to
sky, vanishing utterly as soon as they reached the dark of the sky.
They were interlaced one with another, making a great column, and I
saw their limbs and huge bodies melting in and out of each other,
forming this serpentine line that bent and swayed and twisted spirally
with the contortions of the wind-tossed trees. They were nude, fluid
shapes, passing up the bushes, within the leaves almost — rising up
in a living column into the heavens. Their faces I never could see.
Unceasingly they poured upwards, swaying in great bending curves, with
a hue of dull bronze upon their skins.”Algernon Blackwood – The Willows
Soundscaping Records are very pleased to invite Celer for the label’s second release, Pockets of Wheat, a most special album to us.
Celer is the sound, visual, literary, and artistic endeavor of the husband and wife duo of Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long. The album was recorded during a three day journey driving across the US from California to Mississippi, while the musician couple spent their days at a small hotel in Northern Texas. During these three days, they realized the concept of ‘Pockets of Wheat/Exteriors’, created illustrations for their intent of the music and penned down a library of notes and structures to use. Hence, made many field recordings and string recordings with equipment brought along, while other piano pieces were recorded later on an old, unused family piano.
From their room at the back of the hotel, they saw endless stretches of wheat fields. With open windows, the couple noticed the constant sound of the wheat blowing from the wind, an almost gentle, yet persistent, crackling and fuzz, but also changed constantly. Creating music in their original form, drawing on feelings of togetherness, intimacy, and the expansiveness surrounding them, with the ever-changing landscape, the concept of ‘Pockets of Wheat/Exteriors’ was perceived. With associations to the ghost of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, in entirety founded in nature, perceptions arose through constant interpretation of the sounds of nature; aggression, subtlety, intimacy, and distance.
Roughly five hours of recordings of cello, violin, piano, bells, crickets, and wind were then applied the idea of an ‘always changing but always the same’ idea to it. Splicing the recordings to about hundred 5-10 second tape loops, the loops were then played back from laptops and repeated in arbitrarily selected order by the two musicians without predetermined order. As such, the movements of the wheat in the fields by the winds were mimicked: always similar, but constantly changing.
The enclosed recording contains 7 movements, though they are strung together not to break the continuity. The several layers found within the recording are not always discernible, but are still there, just more subtle, as is the case with details in nature. Nature’s presence is also an imperative, though not the sole inspiration, but in the end the music of Celer in Pockets of Wheat expresses purely their feelings, identity and the atmosphere surrounding these moments, and in keeping with a continuous recording, captures the essence of what is heard in our daily lives, essentially one singular thing: sound.
Mastered by Andreas Nordenstam
Artwork by Trym Asserson
Graphics by Erik Sand
