Celer – Cursory Asperses (Slow Flow Records)

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cursory asperses

Where a blind grasping at a teeming mass brings a brief respite, supplanting the absolutely undetermined and making of the future one’s own nest egg, Cursory Asperses lowers the eyelids as the world, slow and gossamer, sinks down to you.

In this place, where, far from tumult, it is the quiet that bathes and inundates, the secrecy that signifies, and the relative uselessness that guides, the ears prove better able to stretch their sensitive sails and actively attend to the aural ice-ferns and other such crystalline images of flora, water and wind.

From field recordings found at an isolated stream in the woods, along with piano, strings, bells, theremin, whistle, and voices, Celer weave trailing mantles of wispy cloud. The nearly hour long composition surprises for its almost ceremonial construction. Silvery, brittle soundscapes exude a flotation tank calm. Despite this slight remove, the piece also has the sense of an opening out upon the elements; its atmosphere embraces and is stirred gently by indistinct sounds, motions, colors largely tempered but of a quiet jubilation and exaltation.

As the piece moves on, an upward spiral becomes apparent, the piece eddying into white-capped pensive atmospheres. The piece then returns to the lower registers, finding a kind of natural completion. It’s a simple recording, to be sure, yet riddles rest easily here.

Max Schaefer

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