DRONARIVM DR-01, CD, ltd 222
“I remember photos and negatives of sun-scorched Nepal scattered around the floor, notebooks written in randomly and seeming empty, and the evening lights of the outside night that seemed like they wouldn’t ever darken. We drove to Santa Ana over the 405 freeway to record the cars going by, but ended up watching the lights, buying whisky, and sitting the car listening to scratched Joanna Newsom CDRs and Eno’s Discreet Music. When the night was finally asleep and quiet, everything seemed still and the streets seemed dead, except for the swaying palm trees, and the glow from the kitchen light that was never turned off. Even the things that don’t exist anymore are still there, even if they aren’t apparent and obvious as much as they once were”.
Now available for the first time on CD in an edition of 222 copies as the inaugural release of DRONARIVM, it includes photography by Danielle Baquet-Long, and design by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek).
DRONARIVM 
Review by maeror3
Every release of “Celer”, no matter if it is new material or, as in this particular case, a reissue (“Rags Of Contentment” was produced two years ago as a limited edition cassette), is introduced with a short story from Will Long. It is even more likely a stream of consciousness inspired by recollections of things and people that surrounded musicians when they worked on one or another album. This CD is supplemented by pictures from Nepal which Danielle Long took when she travelled around the country: Apparently, serious faces of those who live on top of the mountains and roofs of temples that lean on the sky are to sensitize a listener to a well-defined “exotic” mood, but a few phrases from Will himself, as currently one and only member of the project, drastically changes this mood. Will projects night silence of Santa Ana outskirts, a car where Brian Eno’s CDs are played, and black night cloth that is ripped occasionally by only bright flashes of passing motors. And you know what? It is a perfect description of “Rags Of Contentment”. Night, flashes, space filled with music that flows through a half-open window and disappears into silence…and probably a stack of those pictures that help to refresh recollections and day-dream a little, while gradually drowning oneself in tired half-slumber. This half-slumber is the ideal state for listening to “Celer”, and it is caused by this music too.
“Pleased To Be In A State Of Sour Resplendency” represents thirty seven minutes of quiet sounds which seem to be smoothly swimming past you at a distance, of trembling and vibrant sounds in the night cool air which overlap each other and equally slowly move apart. It is an acoustic imitation of car lights, fading in the steamy window like a flicker which dies out slowly and which for a sleepy person seems to be eternal, frozen in time. “Things Gone And Still Here”, a meditation on things gone and still ongoing here and now, develops this mood, turning with exemplary minimalism the predecessor’s sounds which are already unhurried into vanishing, wearing thin pieces of some inidentified melody, and if you want you can hear sad and even dramatic notes in it, or is it your own assumption in an effort to fill lacunas of this narrative with no beginning and end?
“Rags Of Contentment” is “another” album of «Celer», another long journey through the womb of night, through memory, through blurred dozy phantoms and vague evanescent silhouettes. Very quiet, even intimate and definitely beautiful music.
Review at Igloo Mazagine.
Ragas of calm, resignation to luscious ennui and irrepressible resolve. The record apparently brings to mind Nepal and Eno’s Discreet Music for Will Long, and a night spent outdoors between sundown and darkness in Santa Ana, just being there. Carried away by the big meaningful.
Read full: http://goo.gl/wkSjX
Review at Music Won’t Save You
Sullo sfondo, come sempre, resta l’inestricabile nostalgia di Long, sublimata ancora una volta nel tentativo di fermare il corso del tempo, alla ricerca di istanti ed emozioni che acquistano senso proprio nella loro fugacità. Del resto, non risiede forse nella materializzazione di moti d’animo sub-liminali, il senso più profondo di tanta musica ambient-drone?
Read full: http://goo.gl/74sMJ
Review at Culture Is Not your Friend
Fans of barren landscape and musical desertification would love this brittle release and with a very good reason. After this album ends, the only drawback I can think of in relation to this album is the fact that time seems to fly forward as soon as the last second of this album dies, as if to remind me that the world is hurling itself into catastrophe, no matter how hard I try to stop it through Rags of contentment.
Read full: http://goo.gl/JrDrT
Review at Kulturterrorismus
Danielle Baquet-Long (R.I.P.) & Will Long alias CELER erschufen mit “Rags Of Contentment” ein zeitloses Meisterwerk, dessen Intensität/ Dichte „überrollt“ & entspannt – meine absolute Empfehlung! PS: Erstaunlich welche Mengen an großartigem Output das kreative Ehepaar Long in seiner gemeinsamen Zeit “zusammenschraubte”, als wenn sie eine Ahnung gehabt hätten.
Read full: http://goo.gl/kQlim