Celer: Sadha
Celer

Ten Reasons to Celebrate Celer

1. For its credo: “No guitars, no drums. Not now, not ever.”

2. For citing George Gershwin, Gavin Bryars, Bernard Hermann, Gustav Mahler, Béla Bartok, and Italo Calvino as influences.

3. For packaging Sadha's two painted discs inside a handmade, also-painted case.

4. For packaging said discs within a Tibetan silk sleeve.

5. For including with the release a tiny colour photo of Mount Kangchenjunga in India and Nepal (taken by Celer member Danielle Baquet-Long), two poems, and a dictionary photocopy that clarifies the meaning of the word ‘Sadha' (“with, together with, in the same manner…”).

6. For dedicating Sadha, with no apparent trace of irony, to ‘marital union' (Celer is comprised of married couple Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long).

7. For listing amongst its production resources Theremin, still films, tape splicing, loops, piano, orchestration, and stencils.

8. For not only clarifying that “Celer is pronounced /sle/ in French” but for also stating that they “will never correct your pronunciation.”

9. For featuring three wondrously-titled settings on Sadha's opening disc: “Sans Heavens, Hand in Hand,” “Kangchenjunga, Turning Settings, Parallel to Peace,” and “Snow Voyeurs on Our Shoulders, Above Twin White Suns.” In “Sans Heavens, Hand in Hand,” ethereal symphonic washes gently ebb and flow, with the washes' volume and intensity imperceptibly increasing throughout the piece's twenty-eight minutes until finally cresting out in a whisper; all three epics spin variations on Celer's grandiose Gas-meets-Eluvium-meets-Deathprod-meets-Basinski style.

10. For devoting disc two to a single, fifty-five minute piece, “The Once Emptiness of Our Hearts,” a time-suspended oasis of lulling, celestial tones that seemingly could go one forever.

July 2007