Biography
Will Long, an American musician, writer, and photographer living in Tokyo, has earned recognition for an expansive body of ambient and drone work issued chiefly through the Celer project and for minimal house productions released under his own name. He started Celer in 2005 with Danielle Baquet, a California musician, artist, and music therapist whom he later married. The pair produced nearly two dozen self-made CD-Rs whose music ranged from luminous, minimal drones to denser, more emotionally intense ambient pieces, often drawing on field recordings, reel-to-reel tape loops, and acoustic instruments. These self-released albums slowly attracted a devoted following, so that by 2009 most new Celer material appeared on international labels such as Infraction, Spekk, and Digitalis. Danielle also recorded alone as Chubby Wolf; she died of heart failure in 2009, after which the bulk of her solo recordings and several unfinished Celer tracks were issued posthumously.
Long maintained the Celer project, continuing to issue digital albums himself while placing physical editions on assorted independent labels. In 2010 he inaugurated his Two Acorns imprint with Generic City, a collaboration with Yui Onodera. After touring Japan together, Long decided to settle there. He married singer/songwriter Miko, and the couple began releasing music jointly as Oh, Yoko in 2012. He also worked with Christoph Heemann under the name Hollywood Dream Trip and issued Berlin School-inspired solo material as Rangefinder.
From 2016 onward Long began releasing music under his own name that layered pared-down house beats and pointed vocal samples onto warm, rolling synth pads. Comatonse Recordings issued several 12-inch singles, each containing an overdubbed version by DJ Sprinkles—label owner Terre Thaemlitz—and collected them on the double-CD set Long Trax. Months later the tracks attracted belated notice from the underground dance-music press, leading Long to record for the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound. After that imprint released his remix of Lindstrøm’s “Tension” in 2017, Long Trax 2 followed in 2018.
Long maintained the Celer project, continuing to issue digital albums himself while placing physical editions on assorted independent labels. In 2010 he inaugurated his Two Acorns imprint with Generic City, a collaboration with Yui Onodera. After touring Japan together, Long decided to settle there. He married singer/songwriter Miko, and the couple began releasing music jointly as Oh, Yoko in 2012. He also worked with Christoph Heemann under the name Hollywood Dream Trip and issued Berlin School-inspired solo material as Rangefinder.
From 2016 onward Long began releasing music under his own name that layered pared-down house beats and pointed vocal samples onto warm, rolling synth pads. Comatonse Recordings issued several 12-inch singles, each containing an overdubbed version by DJ Sprinkles—label owner Terre Thaemlitz—and collected them on the double-CD set Long Trax. Months later the tracks attracted belated notice from the underground dance-music press, leading Long to record for the Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound. After that imprint released his remix of Lindstrøm’s “Tension” in 2017, Long Trax 2 followed in 2018.
Albums
Singles
