Capri is a strange place. A short boat ride away from Naples, the island has a reputation of being eternally beautiful but for most people is only temporarily accessible. It is only fitting that Danielle Baquet and Will Long, who in their work as Celer paid special attention to sonic ambiguities and atmospheric in-between states, dedicated an entire album to it. Capri was originally released in February 2009, five months before Baquet’s untimely death due to heart failure, and digitally re-released by Long in 2012 as an extended version featuring 37 tracks. Now Long has reissued this expanded and fully remastered version (minus the piece »Others World«) for the first time on vinyl.
Baquet and Long were a prolific duo, but their music never felt rushed—on the contrary. Based on field recordings as well as recordings of the two playing piano, horns, acoustic guitar, string and other instruments, they subjected this raw material to rigorous editing. They often obscured the origins of the sounds that informed their droning, shimmering ambient soundscapes. Capri on the other hand is mostly made up of—relatively speaking—shorter pieces, a few of which do not fully sacrifice the concrete sounds upon which their built to to the emotionally affective process of abstraction that characterised the duo’s work.
It is the perfect approach to soundtracking an island that feels both vibrant and dream-like, that much like this music appeals to the senses while evoking diffuse emotions. The time is out of joint, and there is no there there.
