Celer were a husband and wife team of Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long, producing experimental ambient music from their home in California. They met around 2004 and in 5 years produced over 30 full-length albums of home and field recordings which they self-published, each one lovingly crafted and packaged. Tragically Danielle died in July 2009 of heart failure at the age of just 26 and Will Long announced that new recordings under the name Celer would cease. Unreleased recordings they made together are being gradually released though.
Ambient music is often misunderstood and under appreciated. When done well it can quite literally be a musical poetry and Celer were well qualified in this. Both Will and Danielle are/were multi-talented artists both in the fields of music and literature; she a painter, a poet and also a solo artist (recording under the name Chubby Wolf) and he a writer of short fiction as well as a very accomplished musician.
It's interesting to note that for all their obvious expertise for language that both had, they never felt the need for words in their songs. A love of music and a love for each other shone with every song. It is, I should think, impossible to build the kind of patient atmosphere of their music if they weren't completely in tune with each other. The output is quite staggering when you consider the end result. Some artists take a lifetime to produce what they were recording on an almost monthly basis.
I find real beauty in the minimalism of music, when all superfluity has been pared and what you have left is the pure essence. Celer had this talent and on hearing one of their tunes back in 2008, I was instantly hooked. I can't for the life of me remember the name of it. All those albums and all those exotic song titles but I guess it's not that important. Every time I've gone back to explore their music I've come away with something different and life-affirming. It's possibly the sparsity of the music that creates the space to allow you properly to listen to it. One album that they did make back in 2008 sticks in the mind though. I say album but I think that might be too restrictive a phrase - it's a composition in 3 parts, the last being over 40 minutes long. It's title was never more apt and never more fatally portentous: I Love You So Much I Can't Even Title This (The Light That Never Goes Out Went Out)
This is a track from their 2009 album, In Escaping Lakes:
And this is a full recording of another album from 2009, Brittle:
Albums I've been listening to today: Bobby Gentry - the Best of the Capitol Years, Various Artists - Computer Incantations for World Peace, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Holly Miranda - Choose to See EP, Jah Wobble - Celtic Poets, edIT - Certified Air Raid Material
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