"An arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds"
While Will Long's staggering fecundity as Celer has finally slowed lately (mid-June already & only two new albums this year?!), the beauty & emotional weight of his work is unflagging. Indeed, the three most recent Celer releases - Sky Limits, Jima & the snappily-titled How could you believe me when I said I loved you when you know I've been a liar all my life - feature some of his most ravishing, affecting sounds.
Pieces like the quavering, gossamer Tangent Lines (from SL) are as delicate, as precious as the noting, investing & storing moments of significance that Long describes ("Someday, I won't be in these same places again, and for now, this is what they sound like. Even these minor moments are important when you look back on the memory, and then look out from this overlook, seeing the city lights blinking in the distance...").
Memory is a notable theme across these releases. The literally sun-baked How is especially rich with reminiscence ("Revisiting these pieces after living in Japan for several years, they instantly reminded me of the trip, and what I left behind in the United States. The tapes fluttered and stuck, drenched in hiss and grime. The record skipped, wavered, and dropped in and out. Yet with these imperfections, it completely reflected my memory of the places, and what they represented. There are sides to everything, whether it causes you to change or not...").
Out of "the most basic format-inherent effects", Long conjures something profound, embodied in the exquisitely simple, lulling Bleeds & swell bends.
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
A little LMYE paean to Gareth Hardwick, whose Low Point (our label of the year back in 2010*...) has now racked up a decade as a beacon of challenging, compelling music - both his & others'.
Below, a vaguely reverse-chronological immersion in Hardwick's deeply reflective, always affecting work - not quite all the way back to that Bologna Pony LP001 or his subsequent solo I Dream of Red, but almost: from the soothing dreaminess of 2005's home-recorded Three Degrees of Separation to the rich, inter-locked textures of this year's Two Songs.
* Profile includes an illuminating interview with Hardwick that explores Low Point's "logical progression", as well as vinyl love & label challenges...
Blurb: "Employing the same minimal palette of guitar and field recordings but now drawing upon urban, rather than coastal themes; Two Songs is iron, brick and dark asphalt in response to the grey-blue swell and salt wind of Of the Sea and Shore.
Side A is built around a buzzing drone, an arc light on concrete, which by degrees dissolves to an autumnal hiss; that low, constant mixture of rain, distant traffic and human life which sits just below the threshold of consciousness for anyone living in a city framed by spare, untreated guitar. The same drone, now dulled and ragged, reappears on Side B as a coda to a gently oscillating wash of interwoven harmonics.
Small shifts in texture, timbre and dynamics are concisely entwined to create an atmospheric and evocative EP."
(from sound&fury comp Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow, Vol. 1)
Photos by Abbey Rees-Hales.
Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.
