“Perfect Conditions,” the full length album by Celia Hollander out on 11/22/2024, revels in the unlikely sets of variables that lead to a resulting phenomena, such as ‘the perfect conditions for life on Earth.’ Each song is an expression of a natural phenomena born from the dynamic interplay between elemental combinations, with all sixteen possible pairings between the elements of earth, air, water and fire.
1 Air / Air : Pure Wind Gusts 🌬️
2 Earth / Air : Dust Devils 👹
3 Air / Fire : Sparks 🎇
4 Air / Earth : Wind Through Trees 🍃
5 Earth / Fire : Magma, Volcanic Eruption 🌋
6 Earth / Water : Deep Subterranean Water 💧
7 Fire / Fire : Single Flame 🕯️
8 Air / Water : Ripples On A Lake ⛲️
9 Water / Fire : Boiling Water ♨️
10 Water / Earth : River Water Rushing Over Rocks 🏞️
11 Earth / Earth : Magnificent Boulder Piles 🪨
12 Fire / Water : Evaporation, Sunlight Drying Up Puddles 🕳️
13 Fire / Earth : Forest Fire, Brush Fire 🔥
14 Fire / Air : Radiant Sunlight 🌞
15 Water / Air : Refreshing Mist 🌫️
16 Water / Water : Mid-Ocean Waves 🌊
Written and recorded between Los Angeles, CA and the Hudson Valley, NY, the album yields a musical dynamism as varied as the landscapes between the two coasts. Departing from Hollander’s last five instrumental releases, this album veers into the realm of experimental pop and dance with songs like Air / Fire, Water / Fire, and Earth / Earth featuring vocals and familiar song structure. While the majority of the tracks are driven by a rhythmic momentum (Earth / Fire, Water / Earth, Fire / Water, Water / Air) the album begins and ends with wavelike tonal swells (Air / Air and Water / Water), framing the album within a calmer, cyclical natural setting.
Despite this sonic-landscape hopping, a few listens reveals a consistent palette of samples, phrases and patches. Similar to the song titles themselves, these musical elements are used, reused, and poised to chemically react with each other until congealing into their own wild combinations. While being part of a larger system, each song is distinctly its own outcome: bright, brooding, explosive, calm, rushing or balanced.
Music itself emerges from a chaotic swirl of perfect conditions: ideas, improvisations, production, environment, mood, resources, time, community – all filtered through a composer into a sonic offering. In any piece, a slight change in production or the arrangement could entirely change the outcome. Comparably, the precarious balance of variables that sustain life on Earth (distance from the sun, protective magnetic field, insulating atmosphere, water, carbon, nutrients, oxygen) is so precise that even the slightest change could result in a completely different world — or the absence of life altogether. Perfect Conditions basks in the wonders of this world, from the arrangement of a piece of music to water breaking into a boil.
*Vinyl available on bandcamp
All music written and produced
by Celia Hollander
Saxophone on 11. Earth / Earth and 13. Fire / Earth
by Patrick Shiroishi
Mixed
by Celia Hollander and Evan Shornstein
Mastered
by Sam Obey at Sway Studios, NY
Artwork
by Celia Hollander
