CELESTIAL

I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT

Stunning debut of lilting bliss 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’, from Roméo Poirier's poolside washes to Move D’s lilting Conjoint productions, 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, the six songs make a real virtue of reverb, echo and ferric hiss that swaddles their lyrical phrasing with a cottony texture. Favouring an analogue haze over digital clarity, their sound unspools with a kaleidoscopic, nostalgic quality surrendered in shimmering waves of bliss and a 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’ - basically a smudged take on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross', 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.