Press reviews:

Textura
Tightrope, by comparison, is a more recent Celer production and thus presumably representative of the group’s current sound. Created in 2010, the single track, seventy-minute piece captures the now Tokyo-based Will Long working alone under the Celer name; however, based on Tightrope, the differences between the originating model and the current one are slight. In customary manner, the work utilizes a broad range of sound sources, with piano, television, synthesizers, whistling, pipe organ, acoustic guitar, laptop, a medicine drip buzzer, car noise, and numerous other unidentified sounds as base material; on paper, the work is described as a collage that Long assembled from twenty-four separately titled pieces. But again, in true Celer fashion, all such elements have been transmuted so thoroughly that their identifying characters have long vanished, leaving us instead with a softly wavering, organ-like dronescape that unfolds ever-so-placidly. Softly surging washes of sound whistle and whisper, their layers overlapping one another like gently cresting waves, and the work ultimately plays like an infinitely long sigh distilled into serene aural form. Admittedly, neither of the Celer releases adds anything terribly novel to the Celer sound-world—much of what’s presented in both recordings will seem like familiar territory to long-time Celer devotees—so one might best think of them as two more pieces to be added to an ever-growing discography or as ideal entry-points for anyone new to the Celer galaxy.

Meditations
Celer夫婦の奥方Chubby Wolfも7″を発表していた英Low Pointより、今度はCelerでCDを発表!!!
2010年の日本ツアー時にも、完成前のこの作品の断片を使用していたそうです。シンセ類の他にピアノ、テレビ、火がバチバチと鳴る音、更にはアイスを食 べているときの音等も加工して使用した、上下に揺れるミニマリズムが心地良い全1曲の大作!!! 限定500枚。お勧め!!!!

ATTN:Magazine
The 70 continuous minutes of Tightrope is actually 24 separate pieces, but there are no explicit transitions to show for it. In bringing each composition together, Long decided to do more than simply thread them together in chronological sequence; rather, the pieces are interwoven and placed over one another, forming a blur of mixed intentions and tonality, tugging Tightrope this way and that, sparking gorgeous harmony and accidental rubs of dissonance. It’s a ball of warm, ethereal tone that constantly writhes and rotates – sometimes shrinking into little remnants of low frequency hum, sometimes flowering open into thick lashings of texture.

In the same way that Long has collated 24 fragments to form a singular entity, his eclectic selection of sound sources amount to a timbre that feels pure and unified. Sometimes, it feels like Tightrope could quite easily have spawned from one synthesizer – all of its tones moving with the gooey patience of hot melted wax – but placing full concentration on any one element of the audio soon unlocks its intricate, characterising traits; specific balances of frequency, speed of dynamic transition. Regardless, it’s still impressive to think that piano, television, medicine drip buzzer, eating ice, acoustic guitar and the crackle of fire in a fire place (amongst many others) are all present somewhere within the haze.

Tightrope is ultimately a blur. It derives inspiration from Long’s trip to Tokyo with Yui Onodera, and was completed upon his return back to the US. Once the listener acknowledges that the music is founded on Long’s fresh reminiscences, the album’s structure and behaviours starts to make sense somewhat; just as memories arrive as a rush of partial detail and contorted chronology, Tightrope swirls multiple sensations and experiences into an essence of a place and time. There’s a certain indistinction to the piece that can sometimes cause interest to tail off, as if Long’s recollections are too vague to solidify in anything more than murky blotches of colour or disembodied smells that can’t be placed, but it’s never long before a certain shimmer of hidden static or ghostly whistle lures the listener back in.

Boomkat
‘Tightrope’, Celer’s first album of 2012 was created two after Will Long had returned home from touring Japan. It is constructed from source material he first used at a performance at a temple in Tokyo, and later re-arranged, layered and assembled back in the U.S.A. Traces of piano, television, synthesizers, a crackling fireplace, pipe organ, acoustic guitar, ringtone and other ephemera are smudged into one continuous exhalation of blurred harmonics which somehow evoke subtle emotions in much the same way a faint smell might trigger memories long forgotten.

Foxy Digitalis
Tightrope is an aural scrapbook released on UK-based ambient label Low Point that’s sourced from a 2010 performance at a Japanese temple in addition to “television, synthesizers, fire crackling in the fireplace, whistling, pipe organ, eating ice, acoustic guitar, laptop, an afternoon conversation, a medicine drip buzzer, car noise, my ringtone, contact mic and many others I can’t remember” from the same trip. So this is what a Celer field recording sounds like: smeared, stretched, gaseous, fragile. In other words, exactly what you’d probably expect, but beautiful just the same.