Taken from 'I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night' LP/Download [ELP063]

Sublime debut of lilting sketches for guitar x synth by manc bosom buds Celestial, quietly resplendent in a classic vein of soft touch Balearic blues and kosmische hues that comes very highly recommended if you’re into anything from The Durutti Column to Vincent Gallo’s classic ‘When’ album or even the instrumental splendour of HTRK at their most diaphanous.

Bathed in moonlight, ’I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night’ is the gorgeous debut by childhood friends Celestial, arriving in the glistening wake of 2021 gems on the same label by Romance, Not Waving, Spivak, claire rousay & more eaze. Convecting a richly sanguine sound gleaned from a Sequential Circuits Sixtrak synth and Fender guitar with the results mottled to frail AGFA tape, it’s the modest and warm soul on display that speaks to a quieter side of the rainy city psyche, picking up a fine thread of etheric inspiration that leads back to The Durutti Column via Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack and Iasos’ intoxicating new age, with a fragile, gauzy vision of instrumental songcraft ripe for getting lost in dappled fantasy.

Practically synaesthetic in their spatial sensitivity and psilocybic tactility, the six songs make a real virtue of reverb, echo and tender hiss that swaddles their lyrical phrasing with a cottony texture. Subtly but crucially favouring analogue enigma over digital clarity, their sound unspools with a kaleidoscopic, nostalgic quality surrendered in shimmering waves of bliss and back-of-the-eyes swirl between the hash haze of ‘Endless’ and northern gothic tone of ‘Lonely Weekend.’ Tape hiss resembles drizzle outside in the lowlit langour of ‘Hat Full of Rain’, and we can practically taste the petrichor in ‘The Perfumed Garden’, leading to ASMR levels of synth tingles with an unmistakeable northern melancholy of ‘At The Rivers Edge’, especially in its gloaming coda.

A reel low-key stunner.

Mastered by Alessio Natalizia

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CELESTIAL - THE PERFUMED GARDEN [ELP063]

GLENN GOULD - prelude and fugue No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846
PANORAM - Azolyna
PIGBABY - Why Don't You Stay, For A Moment
COCTEAU  TWINS  - Dials
TRYPHEME  - Don't you feel the same ?
KENJI  KAWAI -  Crossroad
WHITEARMOR - Eternal hills highest crest
VEGYN - Britnaeys new baby
SMLR - & I Wanted But I Couldn’t
MICHAEL HEDGES - Ursa Major
JS DONNY - dream-mars
TIN FOIL STAR  - you never even tried
RANDY ROGERS - Just For You
ALBATROS - l’albatros
MAXIME DENUC - Infinite end
YOKO KANNO - Yuto
BRIAN ENO  - Just Another Day
LAUREL HALO  - Light + Space
VELDT - sanctified
SERPENTWITHFEET - Heart Storm
RABIT feat EMBACI - no ceiling
DORIAN CONCEPT  - Turn Away
WHITE RING  - Do U Love Me 2
WET - Blades of Grass
GIRLS IN HAWAII - Flavor
SAYA GREY - SADNESS RESIDUE (ERASER ROOM)
HORACE ANDY - Love Of A Woman
DIP IN THE POOL - Dormir
BLONDSHELL  - Kiss City
CHRIS LEE ( LI YUCHUN) - Only You (Clark Remix)
MIDNIGHT JUGGERNAUTS - SHADOWS (M83 REMIX)
CFCF - Codependence
U-ZIQ - Ritm
ARCA - Obelisk
SHY GIRL - Heaven
PETER TALISMAN - We Have To Leave This Town Because I Have Done Something Unforgivable
DAS BEAT - Ariadne
THE CLEANERS FROM VENUS - The Mercury Girl
DIAMOND RINGS  - Which End Is Up

Trypheme & Khaled Hejira ( Sieste Ambient @ Station Station Radio )

Baptismal

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