CD – Two Acorns

Two reel-to-reel tape machines and two tape loops of keyboards with similar time structures but each with different overlapping chords. What flows from Akagi’s grooves are the very quietist sounds, beatific and enveloping to listen to. No wonder that Will Long, aka Celer, has designed this sequence for a live yoga event at Yougenji temple in Northern Tokyo. There are several combinations that are acted out simultaneously here, integrating manual alterations of the volume and high/low settings into equalization, with a strong tendency to favor a warm and meditative atmosphere. The theme of ‘remembrance’ acquires new nuances throughout the 80-minute track, even though it is fed by a basic musical structure. Memories are a form of “attention” and, as in many guided meditations, deep relaxation is able to connect more easily with our very essence. At Two Acorns, a label founded in 2010 by Long, there is no attempt to describe the project or classify it stylistically; it seems almost a private affair, or, rather, something very intimate and sensitive that flows from a dormant perception in evoked memories of familiar routines, for which – finally – all the dust, all the dead past is transcended, transformed into a vibrant calmness and natural order. Quietism in music is certainly not a new phenomenon: “somehow this music continued to fill my mind with those memories of sitting in her room” the composer recalls, speaking of his grandmother “watching TV late at night with her when my parents were out to dinner, or the hazy lace curtains on the windows, moving in the afternoon breeze.” References run the gamut from classical antiquity to the twentieth century, yet the music is also a background, a rather sentimental and elegiac setting that speaks about our most intimate feelings.

 

Celer – Akagi