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CD Feature/ Celer: "Nacreous Clouds"

  Tobias

Nacreous Clouds germinate in the polar winter of skies draped across Alaska, Iceland, Scandinavia, Northern Canada and, most notably, the Antarctic. Tokens of these rare cloud types, these mother of pearls, are wrung from household objects and natural instruments such as cello, violin, piano and bells on this, Celer's first contribution to the And/Oar catalogue.

In a space of seventy some odd minutes, thirty-seven small tracks appear - made up of processed tape loops - and are generally rigorous, moving and yet clear-eyed. The filmy sheets are delicately poised as they curl and uncurl, stretch and contract, almost mimicking the way in which these clouds tend to reveal the wind and the waves of the stratosphere. Perhaps not surprisingly, the speed of the pieces changes like small spasms and the odd work ascends higher or lower than the majority of others.

During tracks like "Swarms Of Orange" and "Seeing; That Side Of Teaching", furthermore, there is noticeable emphasis on vivid and slowly shifting iridescent colors. It's real music for synaesthetes, for whom the hue of a note or chord is not a metaphorical device but an objective fact. Sans reverb and other such processing techniques, these pieces manage to strike at the emotional registers with some immediacy.

By Max Schaefer

Homepage: Celer
Homepage: And/Oar Records