
Celer - Perfectly Beneath Us [Field - 2024]Originally released on CD-R in 2012, Celer's Perfectly Beneath Us gets a well-deserved vinyl release and remaster courtesy of Field Records. This four-part ambient work revels in the soft, shimmering atmosphere of highly distilled drones and oscillations. Like an audio recording of the moving sky around us, Perfectly Beneath Us is enigmatic and beautiful, all while remaining fairly simple and classic. The original was limited to 100 copies, so thanks to Field Records, Celer's gem will be exposed to a bigger and wider audience. Perfectly Beneath Us is split over four tracks, however they meld together well enough that it feels like one long composition. From the opening note, the drones shimmer forth like a witnessing the birth of a new day. While the title of the album may reference "beneath us," the pieces here are very ethereal and high flying (so maybe the title is from the music's POV?) and begin to captivate from the fade in of the needle drop. This is ambient in the truest sense; not too much actually happens but the ultimate expression is very profound. Without mixing too many layers together, Celer presents a very warm but open work that uses minimal sounds and a lot of expanse to make its presence known. Airy but not too bright, Perfectly Beneath Us gives a strong feeling of flight and motion with the shimmering, lightly oscillating drones and the space that they're given hints at freedom and exploration. Despite this being a bit more minimal, there is a lot to take in as it is enigmatic and immersive. One would do quite well to play this on a nice system or headphones and just let the sounds take them away.
Although this album is twelve years old now, the quality of the material allows Perfectly Beneath Us to still sound fresh and new. Well done ambient has a timeless quality as evocative soundscapes can't really be defined by a current sound. In addition, this work has been remastered by Stephan Mathieu so that nothing has been lost to time and the work as impactful now as it was when it first debuted. Definitely snag this, turn on, tune in, drop out...well, for the run time, at least. Well worth the journey. To find out more     Paul Casey
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