Celer's memoirs of a Caprean summer
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Label: Humming Conch
Year: 2009
Format: CD
It feels like I have just come back from a refreshing break in Capri, and I never once set foot outdoor to go there but instead savoured the cool breeze of the Mediterranean sea and the rustling sounds of life on this lovely little Italian island from the quiet confines of my own lounge with Celer’s new Capri album on the German label, Humming Conch.
It seems I either take a closer look at artists on the DIY path of releasing music, or releases marking label inaugurations these days, and this collection of shorter, ambient pieces from Celer – who are rapidly becoming an impressive, omnipresent force these days – is an example of the latter, and the reason why we deliberate over their release on this new German imprint should soon be clear. Celer has long since established their name with a distinct feel for long compositions that sway across larger spans of time and to listener this kind of immersion in sound leads to the discovery of lovely soundscapes and details in the sonic picture of the husband and wife duo, Will Long and Dani Baquet-Long. However, it is shorter pieces of around 2-4 minutes that are centrepiece here, with the exception of a longer drone piece of 7 minutes, and over the course of 29 such compositions that ebb and flow as various scenes of the Italian island in summer are recounted and the listener is not allowed entirely to sink back and be soothed to sleep but given moments to come back and discover new details.
Processing sounds to the brink of ambiguity until they are only left with one sound seems a speciality of Celer. Though there are big variations in theme across the 29 pieces, the fascination with smudging out boundaries until sounds bleed into each other and then revel in the little ripples that occur to distinguish bits and pieces from the main stem here produces some very, lovely and warm drones based around piano and other recorded sounds. As a listener you can envision the sleepy town in summer haze, a gentle breeze in island trees, the clamour of the church bells, the shimmering reflections of the surrounding ocean, to name just some associations drawn from Celer’s work. Recommended listening!
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