Celer / Nacreous Clouds, (CD and/33)
Released on and/OAR August 7, 2008
We are very pleased to announce that our new album on and/OAR
has been released! www.and-oar.org
About:
Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), also known as "nacreous
clouds", are found in the winter polar stratosphere at altitudes
of 15,000–25,000 metres (50,000–80,000 ft). Due to their high
altitude and the curvature of the surface of the Earth, these
clouds will receive sunlight from below the horizon and reflect it
to the ground, shining brightly well before dawn or after dusk.
PSCs form at very low temperatures, below −78 °C. These
temperatures can occur in the lower stratosphere in polar
winter. In the Antarctic, temperatures below −88 °C frequently
cause type II PSCs. Such low temperatures are rarer in the
Arctic. Apart from arctic regions, PSCs have also been known
to be seen in Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska and Northern
Canada. Sometimes, however, they occur as far south as
England.
This beautiful release features 37 short tracks of raw
iridescent ambience (total time exceeding 78 minutes)
reflecting the hyper-temporal nature of what are known as
"nacreous clouds". And like the clouds, the tracks are quick to
appear and disappear. Playback using the random shuffle
mode of your CD player is highly recommended.
While this is undoubtedly an ambient release, it is unusual in
that there are many short tracks instead of one or two long
ones, and each of the tracks is notably "raw" in that they do not
use additional processing like reverb to enhance the initial
processed sound sources further. This might prove to be a
challenge for those who prefer their ambience buried under a
thousand pounds of reverb, but it is not the intent of the artists
or and/OAR to release "just another ambient CD". Instead, we
invite you to explore an alternative method of rendering
ambience in a way that is more immediate, therefore effecting
the listener's mind in a more personal and powerful way. (Text by and/OAR)
"We originally recorded ourselves playing instruments such as
cello, violin, piano and bells. We also made recordings of
household sounds (such as showers, running water in the
sink, and television static), plus the wind outside, beaches
cars passing, walking on gravel streets, etc. Afterward we went
through everything, choosing specific parts in lengths ranging
from 3 seconds to 3 minutes, and made tape loops of
everything. At this point, we arranged the different tape loops
into patterns and speeds meant to resemble the clouds and
their actions as much as possible. When mixing the loops, we
played three to six of them at a time, on different reel-to-reel
tape players connected to both of our laptops and channeled
back out into a Kaiser filter." (Celer)
