What is Celesteville?

Celesteville is me, Jacob Anderson, plus whoever I can rope in to play drums. My dream is for Celesteville to be the world's most peaceful, beautiful pop band, but I have some issues to work out before that dream becomes a reality, including my love for world music, "outsider" music, and distortofart metal (c.f. Gang Wizard)

Celesteville has been around for about five years or so; before that, I've been in many, many other bands, almost all of which labored in complete obscurity.  See the Yak Brigade page for the nostalgia trip.

RECORDINGS:
 

Major works

• A House on Stilts trilogy, consisting of the following:
  
  • Purest Blue Light: Upwards of half an hour of Eastern-tinged omphaloskeptic mayhem live on KBOO, this is a record that you need to hear at least once, although it may be overkill to play it more than once. Make sure that one listening is in the dark, and make sure that you are feeling kind of desperate. Tons of references to Tualatin, OR.
  • Lingua Ignota: The difficult album recorded just after returning to Oregon. Some moments of transcendental pop beauty, some moments of my heart falling out through my feet and clattering. Like throwing a handful of seeds onto your garden, but you're not sure if the seeds are geraniums or cockleburrs.
  • Sing Like Birds: The triumphant return to form, recorded with amazing Bellevue, WA-based band luv(sic). Sweet jangly pop, some gnarled moments but they fit right in. This is the album I play for my coworkers and my parents and one of Tape Mountain's finest moments thus far.
• Kohoutek: CDR on Tape Mountain.  The belabored result of my lost last years in California.  It was going to be on Blackbean & Placenta but it got too old and we had to put it out to pasture on the Tape Mountain.
• Unconsumed: 7" on Tape Mountain.  Nicely-recorded semi-pop songs served up on a lathe-cut. Rereleased as a CD-R, attempting to keep the same packaging scheme.
• Invisible Tape on Unread Recordings of Omaha, Nebraska.  Wobbly lost songs served up on a bed of hiss.

Compilations etc.

• "White Shoulders" on Hard on the Eyes, Easy on the Ears comp CD on Blackbean.
• "Away in a Manger", a scary version on It's a Blackbean Christmas 12" on Blackbean.
• "Appear to Be" on some Blackbean CD or other.
• "24 Lines about 24 Lines" on Granted Passage cassettes.

Celesteville links:

• Interview on the Airborne Virus site
• Quesadilla's interview (click on "iotm")
• The All Music Guide's Celesteville page, by Ned Raggett.
• A review of A House On Stilts trilogy: I Am Cancer
• Reviews of Kohoutek: * Aural Innovations * Splendid E-Zine
• Reviews of Invisible Tape: * Blastitude * Splendid E-Zine
• What is "Lingua Ignota" all about?
• What was the "Ephrata Cloister"?

Manifesto

1. Down with cool!
2. Down with practice!
3. Up with inept attempts at breakdancing!
4. Up with ineptness in general!
5. The smell of manual typewriters!
6. Robots made out of tin cans and old calculators!
7. The future!
8. Trees!
9. Take only the music that you need for it is a limited resource!
10. Up with sitting in dark rooms lit only by the moon through skylights!
11. Up with the lost things you thought you'd never find!
12. All these things, we want:  Eventually!