Chubby Wolf as reviewed by EARlabs and Textura...
EARlabs:
"A small pink spray painted box with a drawing of a girl in red. This is what I found in my mailbox some weeks ago. It’s slightly busted, but still looks sweet. In the box there are 4 business card cdr’s with their own designed sleeve. To complete the whole set there are two small cards in it one with a short poem and the other with credits. Yes, it’s a cute release as a whole.
We are talking about the release Meandering Pupa by Dani Baquet-Long here presented as Chubby Wolf. Baquet-Long is one half of the really productive ambient duo Celer, which she forms with her husband Will Long.
It might not come as a surprise that Meandering Pupa isn’t a long release with just 5 tracks divided over 4 business card cdr’s. It’s not sure if the pieces are written specially for this format, or that the format was chosen for the short tracks but of course it’s a good way to limit one self.
The 5 short tracks fit quite well with the music Baquet-Long also produces with Celer, but there is a certain playful touch to the pieces that makes it just a little different. We hear soft meandering harmonics, soft blissful drones and field-recordings.
The 5 pieces all tell their own short story of beauty and mystery. Especially in the piece “Before we get to grinding” this works out very well. The tones that sound like an organ are floating as if clouds are forming, leaving a dreamy soundscape. In all the pieces the harmonics play an important role forming their own melody. Because of this you hear there has been put much joy in this music.
The only the piece that doesn’t follow the droney harmonics approach is Melting Upwards. The sounds in this piece are reformed with a granular touch. It shows another side of the music by Chubby Wolf and is a welcome turn.
Meandering Pupa is a nice introduction to the solo music of Dani Baquet-Long. It’s a bit short, but as a starter it works very well. And coming in such a nice packaging even more worth getting."
TEXTURA:
While not wishing to downplay the contributions of Will to the Celer
sound, Danielle manages perfectly well to approximate it all by
herself on the Chubby Wolf release L'histoire. Using nothing more than
toy piano, heart monitor, and electronic processing, Danielle creates
eleven crystalline whirlpools of meditative sound sculpting that draw
the listener into a suspended deep listening state. At times the track
titles succinctly capture the essence of a given piece; filled as it
is with limpid streams of glistening and glassy stillness, “Toy Pianos
Underwater,” for example, sounds pretty much as one would expect it
to, as does the seventeen-minute “Perceptual Constancy of Ripples.”
There are contrasts too, as shown by the differences between the
high-pitched setting “Oh, And How It Was Stunning: Writhing” and the
more aggressive, almost industrial drone, “Anti-body Library,” whose
reverberant tendrils swell into a dizzying throb. Like ghostly wisps
drifting through a long-abandoned mansion or inchoate impressions
wafting through one's unconscious during slumber, L'histoire is
understated, even by Celer standards, with Dani shaping her restricted
sonic palette into seventy-three minutes of quintessential Celer-like
sounds.
June 2009
"A small pink spray painted box with a drawing of a girl in red. This is what I found in my mailbox some weeks ago. It’s slightly busted, but still looks sweet. In the box there are 4 business card cdr’s with their own designed sleeve. To complete the whole set there are two small cards in it one with a short poem and the other with credits. Yes, it’s a cute release as a whole.
We are talking about the release Meandering Pupa by Dani Baquet-Long here presented as Chubby Wolf. Baquet-Long is one half of the really productive ambient duo Celer, which she forms with her husband Will Long.
It might not come as a surprise that Meandering Pupa isn’t a long release with just 5 tracks divided over 4 business card cdr’s. It’s not sure if the pieces are written specially for this format, or that the format was chosen for the short tracks but of course it’s a good way to limit one self.
The 5 short tracks fit quite well with the music Baquet-Long also produces with Celer, but there is a certain playful touch to the pieces that makes it just a little different. We hear soft meandering harmonics, soft blissful drones and field-recordings.
The 5 pieces all tell their own short story of beauty and mystery. Especially in the piece “Before we get to grinding” this works out very well. The tones that sound like an organ are floating as if clouds are forming, leaving a dreamy soundscape. In all the pieces the harmonics play an important role forming their own melody. Because of this you hear there has been put much joy in this music.
The only the piece that doesn’t follow the droney harmonics approach is Melting Upwards. The sounds in this piece are reformed with a granular touch. It shows another side of the music by Chubby Wolf and is a welcome turn.
Meandering Pupa is a nice introduction to the solo music of Dani Baquet-Long. It’s a bit short, but as a starter it works very well. And coming in such a nice packaging even more worth getting."
TEXTURA:
While not wishing to downplay the contributions of Will to the Celer
sound, Danielle manages perfectly well to approximate it all by
herself on the Chubby Wolf release L'histoire. Using nothing more than
toy piano, heart monitor, and electronic processing, Danielle creates
eleven crystalline whirlpools of meditative sound sculpting that draw
the listener into a suspended deep listening state. At times the track
titles succinctly capture the essence of a given piece; filled as it
is with limpid streams of glistening and glassy stillness, “Toy Pianos
Underwater,” for example, sounds pretty much as one would expect it
to, as does the seventeen-minute “Perceptual Constancy of Ripples.”
There are contrasts too, as shown by the differences between the
high-pitched setting “Oh, And How It Was Stunning: Writhing” and the
more aggressive, almost industrial drone, “Anti-body Library,” whose
reverberant tendrils swell into a dizzying throb. Like ghostly wisps
drifting through a long-abandoned mansion or inchoate impressions
wafting through one's unconscious during slumber, L'histoire is
understated, even by Celer standards, with Dani shaping her restricted
sonic palette into seventy-three minutes of quintessential Celer-like
sounds.
June 2009