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Brian Grainger / Collection
![]() Жанр: Dub Techno, Ambient, Dark Ambient, Drone, Minimal, Abstract, Experimental Страна-производитель диска: US Год издания диска: 2005-2024 Тип издания: WEB, CD, Vinyl Издатель (лейбл): Milieu Music etc Аудиокодек: FLAC (*.flac) Тип рипа: tracks, tracks+.cue Количество релизов: 640 Продолжительность: 1233:09:19 Источник (релизер): bandcamp, what.cd, REDacted, Orpheus Наличие сканов в содержимом раздачи: front Благодарность и Уважение: HASYAMASIA и alexkozlov2012 ![]() Brian Grainger - американский эмбиент-техно композитор, продюсер и владелец леблов Milieu Music (организован в 2004 году) и его саблейбла Recycled Plastics (организован в 2011 году). Музыка, которая издается на этих лейблах спродюсирована в домашней студии музыканта Botany Bay, расположенной в Южной Каролине. Grainger также совместно с David Tagg является со-основателем и со-владельцем лейблов Second Sun Music и Install. Brian Grainger издает музыку под многочисленными названиями проектов, самыми известными из которых являются - Milieu, Coppice Halifax и собственно Brian Grainger. Другие проектов Брайана: Pink Space, Vhom, Parallax, Phe_, Teenager, AQV, TMA3, Troth, и Bike. Также Брайан участвует в совместных проектах: CH*/CN (совместно с EOD), Waterstrider (совместно с Jonathan Canupp), Free Festival (совместно с Brian Ellis), VCV (совместно с David Tagg), SEAS (совместно с David Tagg), Viking Destroyer (совместно с David Tagg), Flax Harmonade (совместно с Lee Batchelor), Silver Honey (совместно с Jason Adams), Gauss (совместно с Eric Adrian Lee), Royal Opium (совместно с Lee Norris), Sunbeam Rail (совместно с Samuel Campbell) и The Blue Spaces (совместно с Luke Hazard). Грейнгер написал саундтреки к компьютерным играм Eufloria (как Milieu) и Eufloria Adventures (как Coppice Halifax) и к документальному фильму BBC о крокодилах Into the Dragon's Lair (как Milieu). - ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - November 21st Tape Three (5:29) 02. Brian Grainger - September 15th Tape (14:24) 03. Brian Grainger - September 22nd Tape Three (12:48) 04. Brian Grainger - November 21st Tape Two (30:19) The very first album Brian published under his birthname. Originally released for free at the Rain netlabel in 2005, this album is now available for the first time ever in FLAC and with updated artwork. released January 1, 2005 This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR008. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Drowned (1:58) 02. Brian Grainger - Whitecaps (3:29) 03. Brian Grainger - Oceanic (7:33) 04. Brian Grainger - Above the Sky (3:23) 05. Brian Grainger - A Soft White Chamber (12:58) 06. Brian Grainger - Lost in the Woods (4:13) 07. Brian Grainger - Wind Calmly Bends Our Hair (3:29) 08. Brian Grainger - Retuned Minor (8:15) 09. Brian Grainger - [untitled] (4:27) 10. Brian Grainger - [untitled] (4:51) Mastered By – Kevin Bartley Written-By, Producer, Photography – Brian Grainger ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM GENRE Unknown ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Calico (2:48) 02. Brian Grainger - Field Repeats (6:41) 03. Brian Grainger - Crop Smoke Blues (4:35) 04. Brian Grainger - Sun Peel (9:37) 05. Brian Grainger - We Walked Home (5:23) Credits Written By, Producer, Mastered By, Photography – Brian Grainger Notes Limited CDR available with the first fifty copies of Eight Thousander. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM DATE 2007 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - White Wall (12:13) 02. Brian Grainger - Window Feed (0:45) 03. Brian Grainger - Foreign Stations (1:59) 04. Brian Grainger - Rainy Night Perfume (6:13) 05. Brian Grainger - Theme For Moors (6:02) 06. Brian Grainger - Moors II (5:40) 07. Brian Grainger - Cloudhopping (8:21) 08. Brian Grainger - Moors III (2:27) 09. Brian Grainger - Porch Screen Dialogues (5:11) 10. Brian Grainger - Quiet (22:33) Photoplay Music is a completely live and unedited work of improvisation, recorded in a spontaneous session meant to coincide with a thunderstorm outside the 114RKD studio window in 2007. Using guitars, bass, organ, and several other instruments in tandem with metal and wooden chimes on the porch in front of the studio window, with everything recorded into an extensive setup of dual-delays and live microphones. The result is an overwhelmingly organic and deeply textured set of drones and vague impressions of distantly recalled melodic movements, swaying tumultuously in and out of time with nature itself. A limited edition CD-R pressing was produced in September 2007 at Milieu Music, which has long since gone out of print and into obscurity. This is the first time Photoplay Music has been made available digitally in any format. released September 1, 2007 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at 114RKD, 2007. This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR026. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - CH82 (15:37) 02. Brian Grainger - 25-907 (9:23) The first recording session undertaken specifically for a birthday gift to David Tagg. David turned 25 in 2007, and around this time we were deeply fond of very experimental recordings and sound-collage, and we would have been running the INSTALL label for almost a year by this point. As such, this session yielded very two strange fourtrack cassette sound-collages, wherein I can be heard wishing David a happy 25th birthday 25 times, and repeating the word 25 to an absurd degree. Instruments used included toy drums, accordion, harmonica, wind chimes, guitar, bass, and a massive amount of analog and digital live effects processing. Everything was improvised and layered very densely together, so that the final mix would be unique to the "played" mixer faders. The vocal ad libs and processing were inspired by Throbbing Gristle and early Beck records, and the claustrophobic improvisation was inspired by Birchville Cat Motel. As with future birthday recordings, a handmade sleeve was created and a CD-R was shipped off to Mr. Tagg after the recordings were completed. released September 14, 2007 W/P by Brian Grainger, for David Tagg's 25th birthday. Recorded at 114RKD, September 2007. This is Milieu Music number MMB001 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Filament (8:41) 02. Brian Grainger - Chalk (7:12) 03. Brian Grainger - Washer Spiral (10:36) 04. Brian Grainger - Milk (14:24) Originally issued at Install on a limited edition of 50 copies, as part of the label's ongoing Installation series. This album was #2 in the series between Dan Crall and Gareth Hardwick. Recorded using an unknown process involving guitars, organ and tape. The closing track "Milk" was later reprised in a more ambient form on the Second Sun Recordings 3" CD-R EP "Milk Plus". released October 31, 2007 W/P by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR037. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - 3000 Menhirs (3:05) 02. Brian Grainger - The Analog Botanist (25:48) 03. Brian Grainger - Golden Morning Vapors (14:48) 04. Brian Grainger - Soft Water Alchemy (20:35) 05. Brian Grainger - North White Pond (14:24) 06. Brian Grainger - Sequoian (10:22) 07. Brian Grainger - Fragrant Powder Bed (19:55) 08. Brian Grainger - Ether Wall (46:24) 09. Brian Grainger - 2CB Fantasy (2:25) 10. Brian Grainger - Antediluvean (1:16:48) Originally released on a limited edition triple-CD set, Porous Variations represents some of the most dense, longform drone Brian has produced. Recorded entirely live on organ, guitar and tape, and long out of print. Four hours of music! released January 1, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, Winter 2007. This is Milieu Music number MML033. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - [09:54] (9:56) 02. Brian Grainger - [08:40] (8:41) 03. Brian Grainger - [07:03] (7:04) 04. Brian Grainger - [23:13] (23:16) Recorded in Spring, 2008, White Anthelion was a late night session of experiments with field recordings and sub bass. Four suites of "invisible" drones, mixed on a woofer so that only stereo systems with substantial bass output would play them, warmly improvised over a rainstorm recording from the front porch of the 114RKD studio. This release was issued on a micro-pressing of 30 copies, packaged in stickered clear plastic sleeves with hologram paper inserts, and quickly went out of print. It was released alongside Night Anthelion, a similarly presented album of drones and field recordings. released May 1, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008. This is Milieu Music number MML021A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Humidity (20:54) released September 10, 2008 This is Milieu Music number MML037 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Silver Grass Perfume (5:48) 02. Brian Grainger - Porch Swing Blend (3:43) 03. Brian Grainger - Light Bent Clouds (4:25) 04. Brian Grainger - Backyard Country Romance (2:42) 05. Brian Grainger - Blind Forest Family (16:31) 06. Brian Grainger - Just In Between (7:46) 07. Brian Grainger - Sleeping Honey Ghost (8:22) 08. Brian Grainger - Night Smoke Memory (5:30) 09. Brian Grainger - Nine Billion Names (17:30) The album Brian started recording as far back as the Eight Thousander sessions, and also the record he has always intended to be written especially for Second Sun. Musically it covers alot of guitar-heavy territories...an epic 70 minute record that cycles through somber drone-beds, backwoods acoustics, gigantic distorted slabs of doom and beautiful bent melodies looping forever. Occasionally through the haze you can make out organs, basslines and field recordings that echo the album's cozy home cover art. This is Brian's first full-length at SSR under his own name, and as such we'd like to consider it his first proper solo album here, with unified concepts of art, sound, memories, locations and numbers all planted firmly in place. It's a very sad record that sounds like it's trying to find its way home again, even though it already knows that place no longer exists. Perfect listening for the advent of Autumn. released September 11, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRCD-09. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Doll Wing Nail (6:51) 02. Brian Grainger - Test Flares (7:01) 03. Brian Grainger - Ninetysixth (12:46) 04. Brian Grainger - Subplane (3:40) 05. Brian Grainger - Sunny Bee Filterer (6:53) 06. Brian Grainger - Xix (17:55) Six massive, vulgar and megalithic pieces that would appeal to folks who enjoyed Porch, Porous Variations or the recent Borley Rectory set. Very heavy and untamed at times, but also very diverse and hopefully well-rounded in terms of textures and general moods. A lot of experimentation happening on this record, using synths, drum machines, feedback, AM radio signals and turntables to achieve tonalities, then augmented with deep sub-basslines or guitars. The material is still totally beatless, however through the use of various tremolos and delays, some tracks become quite rhythmic in their own way. A very obtuse and different album, but a very fun one that will likely lead to bigger and better ideas. released November 12, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, various months in 2008. This is Milieu Music number MML046. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Asleep In A Desert [Dreaming Of Waves] (20:55) 02. Brian Grainger - Entasis (20:49) 03. Brian Grainger - Sunburnt Under The Eyes (20:56) 04. Brian Grainger - The Aching Legs Of Weary Travelers (20:58) 05. Brian Grainger - Raise Dead On Planet Jupiter (20:55) 06. Brian Grainger - Black Oak Fires (20:52) 07. Brian Grainger - Calico II (20:52) 08. Brian Grainger - Headwound Garland (20:45) 09. Brian Grainger - In Rust (20:56) 10. Brian Grainger - Smoke Farm (20:54) 11. Brian Grainger - Dual Vessels [Approaching Cliffs] (20:05) 12. Brian Grainger - Mountain's Green Majesties (20:50) An ongoing monthly series of drone works for the 2010 year. Album is priced for a package deal of all 12 EPs, so until all 12 pieces have been released, it's more affordable to buy each one individually. released January 8, 2010 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Empyrean Crown (22:12) 02. Brian Grainger - Open Jaws Lined With Jagged Glass Teeth (12:02) 03. Brian Grainger - Diamond Tears On Slate (7:54) 04. Brian Grainger - Roman Emerald Orgies (18:35) 05. Brian Grainger - Pagan Horn (13:20) Credits Written-By, Producer, Photography – Brian Grainger Notes Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies, packaged in a black digipak with printed inserts and a brown paper wraparound strip. Interior insert reads: Recorded at 114RKD 2009-10 using electric guitar, organ and tape. Thanks to Dan, David, Sophia. Suggested for playback on audio systems with heavy bass response and high decibel levels. First 20 copies come with bonus 3" CDr of an unedited demo version of a track from the album. 10 copies exist with "Empyrean Crown (Version)" and 10 copies exist with "Diamond Tears On Slate (Version)". The tracks on this album are listed in the correct order on the sleeve, but the songs themselves are in an incorrect order. The artist's original intended sequence is how the tracks appear on the sleeve listing, however, this is how they appear on the CDr: 1. Pagan Horn (22:12) 2. Empyrean Crown (12:02) 3. Open Jaws Lined With Jagged Glass Teeth (7:53) 4. Diamond Tears On Slate (18:35) 5. Roman Emerald Orgies (13:20) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() Тип рипа: tracks Продолжительность: 35:27 Наличие сканов в содержимом раздачи: cover Tracklist: 01. Brian Grainger - White Demon Disco (3:43) 02. Brian Grainger - L.A. Spaceport Blues (6:28) 03. Brian Grainger - Milky Wave (4:10) 04. Brian Grainger - Yellow Skrag (3:23) 05. Brian Grainger - Bright White (3:58) 06. Brian Grainger - Rotodrone (13:44) Wielding his electric axe, Brian Grainger carves up six thick slabs of gooey psychedelic krautrock sludge that question the standards of fidelity. Once again proving to the Universe that he is less than a God, but more that a man. Take the white pill and see how far the pedal-worship goes... released May 17, 2011 Written and produced by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008-2010. Notes Digital download version, comes free with purchase of the physical format. Released on the artist's birthday. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Venus Wall (28:33) 02. Brian Grainger - Cloudsurfer (13:15) 03. Brian Grainger - Earth Analog (30:24) Credits Written-By [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 100 copies in re-closeable cardboard sleeve with color insert. Recorded Spring 2011 with organ, guitar, synth, FX devices and multitrack tape. Thanks to Tetsuo, David, Shinobu, Sophia. Copyright 2011 Analogpath and Brian Grainger, all rights reserved. Analogpath.com ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2011 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Willow Leaf (15:57) 02. Brian Grainger - Spring Valley (34:38) Following in the vein of previous albums that were more atmosphere than music, such as 2010's A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions or 2009's Black Curtain Warmth, Forcefield contains two longform pieces that hum and shimmer like a warm offwhite cloud barrier, surrounding your room and coating its walls with glowing layers of amoebic psychedelia. Forcefield could possibly even be considered an Autumn version of something like Compost Springtime Shed, and where that album moved in pastoral greens and blues, Forcefield saturates your brain with spiced browns and burnt oranges. Packaged in a black cardstock folder with gold ink stamping inside a clear plastic sleeve for the first 20 copies, with another 30 copies available in an orange paper sleeve with stamped kraft cardstock inserts. released November 5, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Autumn 2011. This is Milieu Music number MML080. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Entheogenic Radiance Crater (20:13) 02. Brian Grainger - A Bronze Structure [Visible From Orbit] (20:59) 03. Brian Grainger - Doper's Replications (20:37) 04. Brian Grainger - Epoch (20:56) 05. Brian Grainger - Blue Hotel Sadness (20:57) 06. Brian Grainger - Weathered Histories (20:42) 07. Brian Grainger - Feedback Clustre I / II / III (20:53) 08. Brian Grainger - Jupiter Brain (19:02) 09. Brian Grainger - Transepts (20:24) 10. Brian Grainger - Shadowy Silhouettes Of Fanged Seductresses (20:58) 11. Brian Grainger - I Was A Leper Who Warmed Himself By Your Fire (20:25) 12. Brian Grainger - Ten Thousand Winters (20:46) Time passes, people change, trees grow, songs get lost in the fade, and somewhere along the way, something new happens. Except it isn't entirely new, but familiar enough to make sense. Shades of previous lives resurface slightly, echoes of past songs come creeping slowly back. Those two iconic fir trees we pressed into so many surfaces with dark ink have themselves grown even taller, ready to bear the fruits of a second year's harvest. Twelve more months of unbreakable hand-crafted drones for the working man, delivered one month at a time, and culminating in a second boxed set after the year is finished. released January 16, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2012. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Diaphanous Trains (28:30) 02. Brian Grainger - Carving Lines Through The Night (9:06) 03. Brian Grainger - Weather Softly An Aching Chord (35:12) Train Line Triads is a record I've wanted to make ever since Sophia and I moved into our new home a year ago in April 2011. Months of staying up into the late hours and hearing the distant, ghostlike echoes of the local trains passing through the layers of forest and residence toward our home only served to inspire me. I'd usually hear the trains while I was reading in bed, so naturally I began to associate the sound with a calm, meditative state. I didn't expect to have any time to record anything new quite so soon after my daughter Penelope was born on April 10th, however hours of sleep deprivation and a very loose recording setup enabled Train Line Triads to manifest itself in my daughter's first two weeks of life. These three songs are meandering meditations that come from nowhere and go nowhere, just like the trains that seem to emerge and vanish from the ether in those early morning hours. Like many things that come to me only when I have been awake for 3 or 4 days straight, this album made total sense to the almost braindead composer making it, and in hindsight I think it captures some very interesting atmospheres that I might have otherwise erased in a more heightened state of awareness. If nothing else, this recording is a milestone for being the first recording I completed as a father. -Brian, April 29th, 2012 released April 29, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, April 2012. This is Milieu Music number MML085. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() CD1 01. Brian Grainger - Exmouth (1:15:13) CD2 01. Brian Grainger - Goliath (1:16:08) We walked home, through spring valleys and rolling winter knolls, through the hot sadness of summer and the electric death of autumn. Under massive canopies of green and beside burnt stone streets, we tread on, toward an ambiguous end with all the confidence of the universe at our heels. We passed by dusty antique constructs of bark and sap that loomed above our heads like ancient giants, long since asleep or dead or petrified under the warm gaze of the sun. We heard birds sing, felt fog pass, counted clouds until there were no more clouds left, at which point we started counting stars. Beneath days of bronze and nights of soft lavender we walked and slept. We ate of the earth, plucking buxom red apples and other fruits from the wild overgrown cornucopia that surrounded us. We drank of the earth, savoring cold mountain streams that Pan himself might have distilled into wine, eons ago. Yes, we were here, we were ourselves, and we were happy. Upon clearing the gargantuan wood, we discovered an equally massive clearing. Miles of flower covered flatlands lay submissively out before us, sleeping and still unaware of our steps. We walked home, hand in hand, ear to ear, babbling mouth to babbling mouth. Toward other forests we strode, without fear and without care. Shining endless forests of alien metal and geometries. They called out to us from across the great expanse in their angular chrome tongues. Onward we trod, ebbing slowly toward the silver Gods with so much unseen magnetism, like petals in a stream. The skies slowly changed from a bonnet blue to an alabaster white, and as we arrived in the Old Gods' summit, there was no wind either. It was as if the entire outdoors gave way to a gigantic laboratory where we were only microbes. The tall sentinels greeted us indifferently with glares of white light on reflective metal. Deeper we pushed into the abyssal maze of perfect angles and calculated dimensions, still aware of our purpose. After what seemed like years inside the huge profane complex, we found a small still pond, almost invisible among the mirrored walls and ceilings. We remembered the small dry node we kept from our time in the antediluvian forest, and placed it in the small body of water. Quickly the liquid began to bubble and fizz, as if we had enacted some chemical reaction. Sprawling organic growth shot out of the pool, taking hold in every corner and inflating itself a hundred fold. A bright reddish brown arm of roots and wooden muscle reached up from the floor to burst through the aluminum overhang we were crouched inside. Sunlight, pure and bright yellow, poured into the room, revealing otherwise invisible gridlike indentations along the walls of the interior. In a flood of green, the powerful tree burst with soft leaves, hundreds of them. For the next half hour, everything slowed down to a near silence as weight settled, spaces gave way to expansion, until in one elongated sigh, the growth paused. We looked at each other, smiled, just now realizing we were holding hands, and began to climb up, up, up to our warm wooden hollow in the sky. released May 4, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Photographs by Andre Gansebohm. Notes Limited Edition of 50 copies. Includes a poem by Brian Grainger & 2 photographs taken by Andre Gansebohm. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2012 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2012 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - February 13th [Mother] (0:50) 02. Brian Grainger - February 13th [Father] (0:24) 03. Brian Grainger - February 13th [Daughter] (12:12) 04. Brian Grainger - February 21st (11:04) 05. Brian Grainger - February 22nd (13:44) 06. Brian Grainger - February 25th (10:21) 07. Brian Grainger - February 25th [Feedback] (2:25) 08. Brian Grainger - February 27th (10:56) 09. Brian Grainger - Shape One (11:04) 10. Brian Grainger - Shape Two (19:20) 11. Brian Grainger - Shape Three (43:27) 12. Brian Grainger - Shape Four [Intrasound Trails In A Thin Straight Line] (59:00) 13. Brian Grainger - January 1st [A] (11:55) 14. Brian Grainger - January 1st [B] (6:45) 15. Brian Grainger - February 9th (5:11) 16. Brian Grainger - February 10th [D / D / D] (33:08) 17. Brian Grainger - February 23rd (6:54) 18. Brian Grainger - March 1st (4:25) 19. Brian Grainger - March 8th (9:32) 20. Brian Grainger - March 15th (2:28) 21. Brian Grainger - March 22nd (8:51) 22. Brian Grainger - March 29th (3:21) 23. Brian Grainger - April 3rd [Precursor] (1:47) 24. Brian Grainger - April 17th [Introduction] (1:47) Womb Oscillations is a five-volume set of recordings, both unprocessed and processed, that document and abstractly represent the growth of my daughter before her birth on April 10th, 2012. As many people who know me personally can attest to - I am obsessively carrying an audio recorder almost everywhere I go, and will never pass on any opportunity to record things that I find fascinating, personal or important. As such, my wife's months of pregnancy gave me a chance to record things I'd never have a chance to again - the sound of my unborn daughter's heartbeat. I purchased a fetal doppler device in February 2012 and proceeded to have nightly "sessions" where we would isolate her heart-throbs and record them until she moved out of range. Once I'd collected about an hour of this audio, I went to work carefully processing it in different ways. What did a prenatal human heart sound like if I used it as the source sound to create a sustained tonal drone piece? I had to know. In addition to this recording and experimenting, I also began to do discreet room recordings during my wife's increasingly frequent ultrasounds. These field recordings were mostly meant as a set of personal memoirs from that time, although once again I could not resist the urge to process them in artful ways. So what I've ended up with is a massive work of deep and engaging experimental audio - split into five detailed volumes: Phase One: Naked Genesis [Unaltered Documents Of Prenatal Growth] (61:55) Phase Two: S1 [Feedback Sculpture Triptych] (73:50) Phase Three: S2 [Feedback Extension For Low-Decibel Playback] (59:00) Phase Four: Evaporants In Mono [Archive I] (56:59) Phase Five: Evaporants In Mono [Archive II] (39:05) Phase One contains the original and unedited recordings of my daughter's heartbeat in utero via a fetal doppler device and binaural microphone. Phase Two contains three "feedback sculptures" - drone pieces built using the audio from Phase One as the sole input source, alongside a complex system of exponential reverb processing. Phase Three contains an hour-long suite of a very minimal sculpture, specially mastered at a lower volume level for more atmospheric playback. Phase Four and Phase Five are the results of processing the ultrasound room recordings with analog reverb and selective equalization and compression - essentially reducing human speech and the acoustic sounds of physical movement to abstracted trails of tone and texture. This set has been kept away until the perfect release date - December 16th, 2012 - my 8th wedding anniversary and our first with our daughter. Considering the size and length of this project, only sixteen copies of the release are being produced physically. released December 16, 2012 Produced, recorded, processed and mastered by Brian Grainger at Botany Bay, 2012. This is Milieu Music number MML089. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Bottleneck (5:53) 02. Brian Grainger - Humidity (20:54) 03. Brian Grainger - Lavender Billows (20:31) 04. Brian Grainger - Trace (20:50) 05. Brian Grainger - Plywood Acoustics (8:27) 06. Brian Grainger - 6:16 AM, August 23rd (1:01) 07. Brian Grainger - The Descending Crystalline Hand (21:56) 08. Brian Grainger - Inkstain Ribbon Skyline (19:36) 09. Brian Grainger - Latent Cloak (20:58) 10. Brian Grainger - White Smoke (4:25) 11. Brian Grainger - White Canyon Erosion (6:56) 12. Brian Grainger - Perfumes Made From The Dusts Of Sunken Kingdoms (13:56) 13. Brian Grainger - August Fourth [In F#] (13:15) 14. Brian Grainger - Dustwreck (20:04) 15. Brian Grainger - Galivants Ferry (7:10) 16. Brian Grainger - A White Light In The Woods (20:30) 17. Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike At Dusk (8:24) 18. Brian Grainger - Happy To Be Going Home Again [Live On Phoning It In / Studio Recording] (21:45) 19. Brian Grainger - Dust Assemblage (19:15) 20. Brian Grainger - Sander (19:55) 21. Brian Grainger - Diesel Turbine Barricade (10:28) 22. Brian Grainger - Humid Evening Screen (11:06) 23. Brian Grainger - Bell Bath / Threaded Guitar (11:04) 24. Brian Grainger - Sander II (10:25) 25. Brian Grainger - AR 2008 (3:29) 26. Brian Grainger - Whitelight (6:18) 27. Brian Grainger - UA 2005 (8:15) 28. Brian Grainger - Whitemane (9:54) 29. Brian Grainger - Vengeance Droned (12:15) 30. Brian Grainger - Hands (7:03) 31. Brian Grainger - Power Crust (25:12) 32. Brian Grainger - Moth Cancer (2:59) 33. Brian Grainger - Roche Mouttonnée (7:55) 34. Brian Grainger - Olympus Mons (8:17) 35. Brian Grainger - Tocatta And Sludge In Z Minor (8:33) 36. Brian Grainger - Downers In A Mirrorball (6:21) 37. Brian Grainger - Undead Undead Undead (8:54) 38. Brian Grainger - Oubliette (20:03) 39. Brian Grainger - Black Diagram (1:13:43) Perfumes is a massive and exhaustively comprehensive collection of music written for now-extinct EPs, splits and compilations, as well as rare and unreleased material from the Milieu Music vaults. 8 discs, each one a meticulously arranged and sequenced album, bearing a vivid and tangential account of my experimental and drone work for the guitar (among other instruments) since 2005. Every piece has been carefully retrieved from the master tapes and remastered especially for this collection, and collectors will note the presence of many unreleased items in the set. A mindbending and essential release for any fan of my drone work or of experimental music in general - this is something you should buy and digest over a week off with either headphones or high fidelity audio systems with good low-frequency output. To further add to the significance of this collection, Perfumes is being released to herald the arrival of the fabled SUN-DAY set - a 24-hour work of ambient experimentalism that will be released one hour per month over the course of the next two years, starting in May 2013. Sun-Day was conceptualized in 2004 and recording work on the project has been in progress ever since. More information about Sun-Day will appear online in May. released April 18, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded on various dates and at various locations between 2005-2013. This is Milieu Music number MMD025. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Highschool Guitar (Lounge Version) (2:51) 02. Brian Grainger - Saccharine (New Wave) (2:47) 03. Brian Grainger - Star Collector (6:21) 04. Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike (5:14) 05. Brian Grainger - Lazerlight Jam (4:33) 06. Brian Grainger - Highschool Reprise (4:32) 07. Brian Grainger - Blue Wedding (6:47) released May 17, 2013 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Swamp Bike (5:14) 02. Brian Grainger - Night Bus (6:38) 03. Brian Grainger - Plastic Swamp Log (8:17) (24Bit) A Heavy Psychedelic Bedroom Guitar Fuzz Pop Dream. Digital Single. Includes Swamp Bike, Night Bus, and Plastic Swamp Log. Download the Swamp Bike Video for Free here: t.opsp.in/a19h9 released June 7, 2013 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - 857 West Harrelson Road, Summer 2000, Night (31:45) This is a raw, unedited and unaltered recording of a 13 year old cassette tape side. In 2000, I was in a band with three other friends, and we used to regularly rehearse in my father's house, which was in the actual middle of nowhere. He lived over a mile away from a single neighbor, in the deep country, right next to acres of overgrown swamps, on a plot of land that has remained in my family since sometime around the Civil War. Living there with him was hard sometimes, especially at night - you'd walk outside and swear someone was watching. Additionally, every time my friends or my sister's friends would visit, they would inevitably experience some kind of sound oddity (disembodied voices from outside or elsewhere in the house, strange noises from within the swamp like a heartbeat) that left them never wanting to come back again. Occasionally, this activity would also include failing lights, spots of unusual cold or even glimpses of figures in your peripheral vision - although the latter could always be attributed to the mind making things up in a stressful situation. On the night this tape was recorded, my band had just finished rehearsing and we were in prime prankster mode. Our drummer wanted to sleep on the couch, as he had to clock into work early the next day, and we were determined to mess with him. Me being the perpetual documentarian that I am, I decided it would be *extra* fun if we recorded it, so I set up a mic discreetly next to the sofa where he wouldn't see, and rolled tape. After a few minutes, we relented and went into my room on the other side of the house to let him sleep. A few minutes later, he bursts into my room scared out of his mind, telling us he felt cold for no reason, and that there were things tapping at the windows and he heard things moving the shades, even though the windows were shut and there was no one else in the house. We immediately assumed he was trying to get even with us, and then I realized we had taped the entire thing. We got the tape, brought it back and decided if anything actually happened, it would have been recorded. Sure enough, after you hear us leave the room, things start to bump the microphone and even stranger rhythmic pulses start to take the audio over. We were shocked. Even today, I have no explanation for what this really is. People might think I threw this together in a program, but rest assured every single person who was with me that night can verify that this tape is real. One of them even refused to ever come back to my father's place after this happened. It remains one of the weirdest experiences I've had in my lifetime of recording, and I thought the tape rip, along with the story of how it came to be, would make interesting night time discussion. As Ed Wood wrote in Plan 9 From Outer Space: "Can you prove that it didn't happen?" released November 11, 2013 Recorded by Brian Grainger, 2000 in Loris, South Carolina. Thanks to my sister Katie for locating this tape after I thought it was lost for years. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - 6:16 AM, August 23rd (1:01) 02. Brian Grainger - The Descending Crystalline Hand (21:56) 03. Brian Grainger - Inkstain Ribbon Skyline (19:36) 04. Brian Grainger - Latent Cloak (20:58) A Bleeding Prismatic Bridge Between Realities is the second of eight album-length collections of drone and ambient material, assembled initially for the 8-disc Perfumes Made From The Dusts Of Sunken Kingdoms box set. It compiles the following four tracks: 1. 6:16 AM, August 23rd (Originally released on the Coffee Break Ambient compilation at Audio Gourmet) 2. The Descending Crystalline Hand (Originally released on the #3 cassette split with Ophibre at Mirror Universe Tapes) 3. Inkstain Ribbon Skyline (Originally released on the Drone Poets 3xCD compilation set at Dead Pilot Records, UK) 4. Latent Cloak (Originally released on 3" CD-R at Milieu Music, MML041) released March 30, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, various dates. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD025B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Sander (19:55) 02. Brian Grainger - Diesel Turbine Barricade (10:28) 03. Brian Grainger - Humid Evening Screen (11:06) 04. Brian Grainger - Bell Bath / Threaded Guitar (11:04) 05. Brian Grainger - Sander II (10:25) Humid Porch Fantasies is the fifth of eight album-length collections of drone and ambient material, assembled initially for the 8-disc Perfumes Made From The Dusts Of Sunken Kingdoms box set. It compiles the following five tracks: 1. Sander (Originally released on the split-cassette Pine Needles/Sand with Ophibre at his Oph Sound label) 2. Diesel Turbine Barricade 3. Humid Evening Screen 4. Bell Bath / Threaded Guitar (#2-4 originally released on the Porch split CD-R with Ophibre at Milieu Music, MML014) 5. Sander II (Originally released on the expanded reissue of Pine Needles/Sand at Milieu Music - retitled Maine/Sander - MML032) released March 30, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, various dates. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD025E. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Moth Cancer (2:59) 02. Brian Grainger - Roche Moutonnée (7:55) 03. Brian Grainger - Olympus Mons (8:17) 04. Brian Grainger - Toccata & Sludge In Z Minor (8:33) 05. Brian Grainger - Downers In A Mirrorball (6:21) 06. Brian Grainger - Undead Undead Undead (8:54) 07. Brian Grainger - Oubliette (20:03) Signal Received From Dead Martian City is the seventh of eight album-length collections of drone and ambient material, assembled initially for the 8-disc Perfumes Made From The Dusts Of Sunken Kingdoms box set. It compiles the following seven tracks: 1. Moth Cancer (Originally released on the Dirgehead Distribution Co. Compilation 2008 cassette) 2. Roche Moutonnee 3. Olympus Mons (#2-3 originally released on the Olympus Mons 3" CD-R EP at Milieu Music, MML045) 4. Toccata & Sludge In Z Minor 5. Downers In A Mirrorball 6. Undead Undead Undead (#4-6 originally released on the split-compilation Halloween at Sunrise Acoustics) 7. Oubliette (Originally released as a 3" CD-R EP at Milieu Music, MMDL02B) released March 30, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, various dates. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD025G. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Wood Path (20:06) 02. Brian Grainger - Blue Wheatfield (4:14) 03. Brian Grainger - Crumbling White Oracle of Sadness (9:14) 04. Brian Grainger - Burnt Archway (11:56) 05. Brian Grainger - Pale Faced Blues (7:49) 06. Brian Grainger - Summit Park (14:42) Blue Wheatfield is an ambient blues album, where guitar improvisation blurs the lines between drone music, psychedelia and pure modal sadness. Intended to be a specific part of an as-yet-unnamed canon within the Brian Grainger oeuvre, Wheatfield most resembles its Attacknine cousin from 2007, Eight Thousander. Looping passages of chords and tangled textures give slowly in to huge catacombs of spacious sound, and bedroom loneliness hangs over the impressionist creator like a black umbrella. In truth, the artist's imposed listening order would be Eight Thousander, Nine Billion Names, (the yet to be released) Summer's Parting Ways and finally Blue Wheatfield, meaning that what we're hearing is the end of something...unless yet another link in the chain exists in an unseen destination ahead. The pondering of this possibility or the perceived connection Wheatfield bears to any of Grainger's other works is ultimately pointless - Blue Wheatfield stands alone, swaying slowly beneath a full southern moon and a black oil sky, pricked with the wounds of nine billion names of God. One by one, the stars go out... released May 17, 2014 [WR048] All songs written, recorded and performed by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2009-2010 and Botany Bay, 2014. All tracks laid to rest on two-inch tape. Mastered by Brian Grainger. Thanks to Sophia, Eric, Nick and David. Design by Eric Adrian Lee. www.milieu-music.com www.analogbotany.com © MMXIV Wil-Ru Records, all rights reserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Burnt Dirt Blues (7:36) 02. Brian Grainger - Forest Awaken (12:44) 03. Brian Grainger - Evergreen (8:48) 04. Brian Grainger - Shroud (11:47) 05. Brian Grainger - Moving Away (4:18) 06. Brian Grainger - The Fertile Earth (7:32) 07. Brian Grainger - Dawn On Pier Four (8:06) 08. Brian Grainger - Sunfall (8:54) 09. Brian Grainger - The Beautiful Blue Maiden In The Sky (11:12) This is a sampler, a nine track selection from the massive 24-album Sun-Day series, which is available here: sun-day.bandcamp.com briangrainger.bandcamp.com/album/sun-day-the-complete-box-set This collection was previously only available via download codes, hidden in order packages shipped from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CO_RD Tapes. released March 8, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded various dates and locations between 2004-2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMLP16. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - II/II (1:12:42) Sembre is a study in monochrome, presented in two stark formations which explore the polarizing results of both a naked live recording and post-processing used as a compositional tool. Created using only a minimal setup of a Stylophone, a variety of effects such as a Behringer pitch shifter, a Boss RC-20 looper, a Moog low-pass filter, an Akai V1 Variwah and a Danelectro Reel Echo delay. This configuration was then fed through a Mackie 12-channel mixer, Sony TC-165 cassette recorder and an Alesis Quadraverb for multi-band equalization, before finally settling on a Tascam digital recorder. However, none of the equipment used seems to be reflected in the recording itself. Rather, Sembre is an ebbing pulse of drone music that fixates on a single chord and fully considers it, all the while accumulating inertia and volume from layer upon layer of nearly identical sonic inputs. At once terrestrially warm and coldly alien, this music is best appreciated in an intimate setting, alone, where it can be appropriately measured and experienced by the listener. This is part two. released March 8, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer 2015. Final processing completed February 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photograph taken by Brian, Florida, Autumn 2015. This is Milieu Music number MMD031. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() CD1 01. Brian Grainger - B01a Hekatombaion (16:19) 02. Brian Grainger - B01b Hekatombaion (16:45) 03. Brian Grainger - B02a Metageitnion (16:07) CD2 01. Brian Grainger - B02b Metageitnion (16:55) 02. Brian Grainger - B03a Boedromion (16:30) 03. Brian Grainger - B03b Boedromion (16:54) A double-disc collection of all six tracks from the first three releases in the Bacchus Tapes series. Issued for the first time on a non-analog physical format. Bacchus tapes went dark after the third cassette in 2011, and is now finally being reinstated as an active series. To commemorate this, and bring these long out of print recordings back into physical existence, this double-album compilation has been assembled. Subsequent editions in the series will continue to be produced on VERY short run cassettes, with eventual (but not immediate) digital reissues such as this. The three tapes presented here were conceived and recorded to represent the three months of summer, full and thick with ungrounded electrical humming, amp spring verb splashes and heavy passages of chordal layering with organ, guitar & mixer feedback, electric bass and synthesizers. This is wild and bright music, intended for louder listening experiences. released January 13, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is CO_RD Tapes number β-C1. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Ameliorator (1:16:48) Ameliorator is the first work issued by Psøma Psi Phi, a boutique imprint specializing in many different shades of beatless sound. Created using a provenance of a single reel-to-reel tape loop, coalescing over an extended runtime via generative software processing. Ameliorator was conceived and built during a time of forced inactivity, while recovering from an intensely painful tendon injury that prevented me from easily standing or walking. It is intended to be both therapeutic sound and an aural representation of the process of healing. My inability to move very easily inspired me to create something very quiet, focused on the present moment, and filling that moment with a calm stillness. In these fashions, Ameliorator is an appropriate beginning to the Psøma Psi Phi ethos, and a proof of concept for things to come. **Editor's note: This recording is mastered at low volume, and intended for quiet room playback or headphone listening. In a space, the absence of color is just as vital as its presence. released May 25, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded using a Roberts 450A and laptop processing, Spring 2017 in Dayton, Ohio. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar Workshop. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦI. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Southern Sand (6:00) 02. Brian Grainger - Porchsleep (10:01) 03. Brian Grainger - Triad [Of Overcast Repetitions] (8:35) 04. Brian Grainger - Voussoir (11:23) 05. Brian Grainger - Moraine (8:02) 06. Brian Grainger - Triad [For A Withered Empire] (7:05) 07. Brian Grainger - A Glass Arch (14:54) 08. Brian Grainger - Bloodied Dust From The Boots Of Drunken Princes (9:38) 09. Brian Grainger - Seahorse Valley (14:21) 10. Brian Grainger - Marble Column Covered In Ash (6:17) 11. Brian Grainger - Blue Country Rain (23:55) 12. Brian Grainger - Triad [In A Sunburnt Field] (13:43) 13. Brian Grainger - Dustwreck (20:04) 14. Brian Grainger - Blue Country Rain [Coppice Halifax Excavation] (51:23) Silver Horns was recorded during a very hot Spring & Summer in Columbia, South Carolina, 2010. It feels now more distant in the past than it actually is, somehow, and perhaps that is a testament to the sense of disconnection present throughout many of this double-album's pieces. Assembled from two or three sessions of guitar improvisation, with a few tracks using a Lowrey organ for additional harmonic support or pedal bass, it was issued in a limited run of 100 silver tin boxes at Lunar Testing Lab's excellent Secret Station imprint, and has since been out of print. Deep, green and pastoral music, for wide-frame country vistas like the one I photographed on the cover, which brings to mind images of warm sunshowers, wild forestry and rolling hills of farmland. A very elemental record that is less music in parts and more atmospheric condition, supported by two hours of deep-country field recordings captured at my father's home in Loris, South Carolina. In addition to the original double-album being reinstated here, I've included a third disc, which contains "Dustwreck" (a digital-only promo piece given to patrons who bought the Secret Station edition) and a recently recorded 51-minute Coppice Halifax "excavation" of "Blue Country Rain", built using the original session tapes (back when the album was in a more embryonic form, bearing a totally different title). While this 3xCD-R reissue is not quite as lavish as the silver tin box the album was originally released in, I feel that this version makes up for it in completeness. released May 30, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, Spring-Summer 2010. Field recordings captured at 857WHR, Loris, SC, March 2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. An alternate mix of "Moraine" was previously released on the album A Giant Hand (MML046B). The title of the album is taken from a track on Noxious Variations (MML063). David Tagg played additional guitars on "A Glass Arch". Photography by Brian, somewhere on the interstate between SC and OH, 2010. This is Milieu Music number AD24, and issue #24 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Gardensoil (58:54) 02. Brian Grainger - Gardensoil (Cont'd) (1:12:08) Gardensoil was originally recorded in demo form on a Yamaha QY-70 - an unlikely candidate for constructing longform, deep ambient works, yet an able tool all the same. The initial recordings were then taken from their cassette tape vessels and elongated, processed and nurtured to grow into the two extended pieces presented here. Intended to be experienced at low volumes, and mastered according to this intent, Gardensoil is an exercise in non-recurring melodic motifs that are presented as spaced apart events, organically happening and not happening, in an effort to distance the familiarity of the ear between tonalities. The first piece, which was previously issued digitally as part of the 4-hour charity compilation 3067 Megs at Recycled Plastics, explores the lower end of the frequency spectrum, over a backdrop of suburban field recordings. The second piece, previously unreleased in any form, inverts this approach in favor of midrange and higher frequency activities set against a nearly imperceptible analog hum. Together, they provide a lush and minimalistic sonic bath that subtly colors any room it fills - perfect for lazy nights indoors with a paperback, a cozy chair and/or your substance of choice. released October 5, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop, 2016-2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, Botany Bay, October 17 2011. This is Milieu Music number MML123. © and (p) Milieu Music 2017. All lights observed. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Francois H / Andy B / Joe U / Benoit P / Jonathan W / Jose S / Rik J / Dave W / Levi G / Chris S / Justin T / Burton T. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Location [1/2] (1:59:29) 02. Brian Grainger - Location [2/2] (18:24) Location is a composite recording, assembled via two sparse and barely processed room recordings from both of my previous studios (Rolling Knoll and Botany Bay), bound together with a noise generator and a sleep-deprived, lazy handed improvisation on the Korg MS-20 analog synthesizer. Channeled live across just over two hours through an Alesis Quadraverb patched into the vintage circuits of a JVC KD-A11 cassette deck and rendered down to a very low volume via the ample EQ curves of my Peavey FX2x24 mixing board. The result is a discrete atmosphere of occasional movement in a vast pool of white noise and vaguely tonal suggestion - spaces transmuted into sound, transfigured for spaces. NOTE: Like Ameliorator before it, Location is mastered at a quiet level, and it is recommended for playback on speakers/systems with a wide dynamic range, and headphones, preferably with noise cancelling capabilities. released October 22, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2017, using binaural room recordings of Rolling Knoll and Botany Bay in Columbia, SC, Summer 2016 in conjunction with Korg MS-20 analog synthesizer, Grass C-TCM, Alesis Quadraverb, JVC KD-A11 cassette deck and Peavey FX2x24 board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist.This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦIII. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Country Low (4:55) 02. Brian Grainger - San Fernando Valley (7:12) 03. Brian Grainger - Silent Ways [Tapeweather Mix] (6:32) Country Low is the first exclusive release to be issued via the Milieu Music Fan Club. Writing and recording work began after a poll was taken at the Fan Club website, wherein members voted on what kind of single should be recorded. The session was extensively filmed and, subsequently, a mini-documentary was released here: youtu.be/ch1jTVYIlEQ released October 28, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, September 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMFC001. Photograph by Brian, Dayton Summer 2017. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - An Empty Sea (1:15:00) Recorded live in-studio and streamed via audio/video feed to the Milieu Music Fan Club, AN EMPTY SEA is an improvisation in the "old style" of how I used to make records for Second Sun Recordings and INSTALL, my experimental imprints with David Tagg. As such, this recording recalls much of those earlier years in the way it builds up into a massive drone wall from the ether, cresting just below the clouds before withering back down into the waves below. It's a monument to the past, and to being stranded at sea dreaming about a long forgotten lover. Cast your wine and jewels overboard, and burn all your maps. There's nothing left for you here except the ocean's salty tears and a scorching orange sun. Lie down, and give yourself to the Earth. released May 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised live at White Pillar Workshop, November 25 2017, using a Casio MT-210 and Arturia Microbrute processed via Boss RV-3, BBE Two Timer, Pioneer SR202W, Danelectro Reel Echo, Moog LPF, Boss RC-20 and Alesis Quadraverb, channeled via a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph taken by S.M.G., Conway SC, December 2017. Processed by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML126. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - III (51:50) Following the first two "sides" of Sembre - a monochromatic drone excursion - is this third iteration / configuration of the same idea. Recorded during a snowed-in Winter evening in December of 2017, using four synthesizers laid to four-track cassette, Sembre Side Three slowly approaches like a greyscale tide from a soft white dawn, swelling into round brushstrokes and thin, trailing lines. At times, almost translucent, and at others, incredibly dense with the weight of silence compacting around the soundwaves invisibly...plaintive chords resonate in slow motion, while the higher and lower octave registers serve as pointillist outlines of a shape in space. A sad structure, stripped bare of almost any of the usual reverbs and delays that are omnipresent in ambient music. Heavily influenced by the work of Eliane Radigue, Folke Rabe, Eleh and Alvin Lucier, among many others. released May 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using a Roland SH-32, Boss DS-33, Arturia Microbrute and Korg MS-20, in conjunction with a Tascam 414 cassette recorder and external filters such as the Moog LPF, Akai Variwah, Digitech Synth Wah and the internal FX processors of the Boss DR-880. Additional looping via a Boss RC-20, and EQ/mixing via a Mackie ProFX8 mixer. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Rudolf Kremers, UK - used with permission. Crop & contrast processing, as well as text and design, by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD042. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #001) (1:17:35) 02. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #002) (1:12:40) 03. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #003) (1:13:11) 04. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #004) (1:13:00) 05. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #005) (1:11:10) 06. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #006) (1:12:55) 07. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #007) (1:14:08) 08. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #008) (1:10:40) 09. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #009) (1:12:48) 10. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #010) (1:13:40) 11. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #011) (1:11:10) 12. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #012) (1:13:22) 13. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #013) (1:12:30) 14. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #014) (1:11:20) 15. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #015) (1:11:30) 16. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #016) (1:12:25) 17. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #017) (1:13:20) 18. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #018) (1:13:35) 19. Brian Grainger - (Iteration #019) (1:14:15) Expanding on/subtracting from an approach that previously yielded an eight-hour generative ambient piece (issued under the Milieu moniker - see: milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/living-in-the-shadow-of-a-recursive-bell-whose-chime-echoed-the-dawn-of-consciousness ), Cursive Bell is a nineteen-volume set of drone reductions and distillations, designed for low-level playback in indoor/outdoor settings. Ideal for a sleep assistant or an unobtrusive tone coloring for creative and work spaces, Cursive Bell originated on analog and digital synthesizers, modular feedback and medical tone generators, before being processed extensively via FFT transforms, low resolution downsampling and copious blending with reverbs and delays. It builds upon my previous ethos in the Workingman's Drone series - minimalist sonic escapism, produced by and for the common (hu)man. Fantasy as utility, work as art, volume as philosophy and time itself as an effects processor. In keeping with this perspective, Cursive Bell has been designed as a budget release from the ground up. Nineteen printed discs are housed within ink-stamped white paper sleeves, bookended by two pieces of hand-cut basswood bearing ink stamping, held together with two heavy duty rubber bands. 23 hours, 5 minutes and 13 seconds of physical and digital audio. released June 13, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Built using studio recordings captured on January 13th, 2018, and transfigured at White Pillar Workshop, June 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦIV. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Pine Valley (5:12) 02. Brian Grainger - Passing (5:12) From the forthcoming album "Summer's Parting Ways" Following the psychedelic loop-forests of Eight Thousander, the tired-eyed pop of his 2x7" split with Orick, and the bedroom nostalgiac Highschool Guitar 12", Brian Grainger returns to Attacknine with a new single for Summer. Pine Valley is a sunwarmed joyride of detuned electric guitars, fuzzy organ pedalbass, crashing waves of feedback, and lethargic drum machines - an instrumental micro-symphony for open car windows, seabreeze, stoned backseats, and teenagers making out on porch swings at dusk. While most listeners are likely more familiar with Grainger's more electronic work as Milieu or Coppice Halifax, or even the droning ambient recordings he's issued under his own name elsewhere, this side of his work may yet surprise you, having more in common with alternative bands in the 1990s than any of the aforementioned material. Pine Valley is especially significant as it heralds the long-rumored opus of sad magic Summer's Parting Ways, an album that has been in progress on one level or another since 2007's Clover Farm EP (and recorded especially for Attacknine). It comes with a suitably sun-dazed video by Nick Huntington, and is backed by the b-side Passing, an outtake from the Summer's Parting Ways session recordings, itself brimming with quiet wistfulness that offers a welcome comedown after the euphoric surf of Pine Valley. Following this single will be other selected tracks, presented with b-sides/videos of their own, to lead up to and further contextualize the Summer's Parting Ways release. Also be on the lookout for the announcement of Summer's Parting Ways as early copies will ship with a bonus disc containing a second album's worth of outtakes, covers and alternate mixes! released July 13, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Hospital White (58:48) "To remember that we did know once is not a sign of possession but a sign of loss; it is like the number of an engraving which is no longer on its nail, the title of a volume no longer to be found on its shelf. My mind is the empty frame of a thousand vanished images." -Henri Frédéric Amiel, July 8th 1880 released October 30, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, October 29 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, traveling between Dayton and Chicago, March 2018. This is Milieu Music number MML130. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - The Brown Morning (9:38) 02. Brian Grainger - Freeburg's German Forest (14:20) 03. Brian Grainger - "It's Only Fog..." (6:03) 04. Brian Grainger - Wooden Bones (12:34) 05. Brian Grainger - Cold Roads I (6:41) 06. Brian Grainger - Feasibility Study (2:27) 07. Brian Grainger - Cabal Bridge (5:15) 08. Brian Grainger - Walter Street Fires (3:51) 09. Brian Grainger - Cold Roads II (3:28) 10. Brian Grainger - Time Enough at Last (10:37) 11. Brian Grainger - Ashcan District (7:36) 12. Brian Grainger - Cold Roads III (2:58) 13. Brian Grainger - Poisoned Vineyards (3:13) 14. Brian Grainger - Hope Is the Yolk in the Eye of the Mind (3:36) 15. Brian Grainger - Cold Roads IV (5:14) 16. Brian Grainger - His Winter (15:30) 17. Brian Grainger - Park in the Dark (12:10) 18. Brian Grainger - Obeisance (4:19) 19. Brian Grainger - Die Schlafende Erde + The Endless Sleep (8:31) 20. Brian Grainger - Knock (8:07) ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Sections of a Large Beast's Skeleton Protrude from the Leafy Floor of the Ravine (1:31:42) Nine years ago, I began the Workingman's Drone series, a serialized EP catalog issuing one 20-minute drone recording each month. The series issued 12 EPs in 2010 and another 12 in 2012, and has been on hiatus since. Now, seven years later, I am finally ready to offer a third exploration of these surreal sonic forests, and for the first time in the Workingman's template, each month's edition will be a full-length recording, instead of a 20-minute piece. For Workingman's third, I have also opted to implement some basic rules for the way these recordings are allowed to manifest, the first being that each month's installment will be created using only a single synthesizer, and the second rule being that each month must use a different synthesizer than the last. In the seven years since I've carved paths through these tall trees, I have relocated to a new home 600 miles away, and expanded my studio considerably. As such, these recordings are intended as intimate and focused studies of the machines that are generating them, isolated and given full command of the frequency spectrum and stereo field. This first recording was constructed using a Korg Volca Keys polyphonic analog synthesizer, in tandem with the following reverberation and delay units: Pioneer SR202W spring reverb, Boss RV-3 digital reverb, BBE Two Timer analog delay, Alesis Quadraverb digital reverb/delay and two onboard custom DSP FX built into my Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing board. Due to the intense level of calm induced by the constant vibrations present in these sessions, the runtimes of these recordings can sometimes run well past the length of a CD-R's 80 minutes. The digital edition of each release will be the unedited full session recording, while the CD-R editions will contain edits or composites that accurately represent the work while still being able to fit on a single disc. released January 15, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, September 22, 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Cover decals printed by David Tagg in Atlanta GA. This is Milieu Music number WD25, and 25th in the Workingman's Drone series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Winterspheres (55:01) 02. Brian Grainger - Winterthrum [1000 Hz Duophonic Reprocess] (54:13) Originally issued at Moody Drones as a digital-only affair containing the title track, Winterspheres appears here as a seasonally appropriate expanded physical edition, augmented by a second duophonic reprocessed mix of the original session. Winterspheres was created using a process of selective sampling on a Boss RC-20 looper, pulling tonal material from an ever-changing patch on a Roland SH-32 polyphonic digital synthesizer. Played by hand, and recorded to tape, with a minimum of FX processing used, it recalls the methods employed by myself and David Tagg for our prolific recordings at SSR from 2006-2010. Winterthrum reapproaches the tape recording and, by way of repeated downsampling and additional reverberation, manages to generate a warmer more restrained take on the piece. Further still, a live session as Coppice Halifax was undertaken to mutate the source tape alongside drum machines and an analog bass monosynth, and this recording has been issued as Winterthaw: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/winterthaw released January 30, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Winter 2017 (original session) and Winter 2018 (1000 Hz session). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. #1 originally issued at Moody Drones as MD08, June 4th 2018. Design & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD39, and issue #39 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalogue. Many humble thanks to James & Sage at Moody Drones for graciously allowing Milieu Music to reissue this material. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - We Find Truth In The Bliss Of Sleep (2:05:57) Nine years ago, I began the Workingman's Drone series, a serialized EP catalog issuing one 20-minute drone recording each month. The series issued 12 EPs in 2010 and another 12 in 2012, and has been on hiatus since. Now, seven years later, I am finally ready to offer a third exploration of these surreal sonic forests, and for the first time in the Workingman's template, each month's edition will be a full-length recording, instead of a 20-minute piece. For Workingman's third, I have also opted to implement some basic rules for the way these recordings are allowed to manifest, the first being that each month's installment will be created using only a single synthesizer, and the second rule being that each month must use a different synthesizer than the last. In the seven years since I've carved paths through these tall trees, I have relocated to a new home 600 miles away, and expanded my studio considerably. As such, these recordings are intended as intimate and focused studies of the machines that are generating them, isolated and given full command of the frequency spectrum and stereo field. The third volume of Workingman's third was constructed using a Boss DS-330 Dr. Synth polyphonic digital synthesizer, in tandem with the following reverberation and delay units: Pioneer SR202W spring reverb, Boss RV-3 digital reverb, BBE Two Timer analog delay, Alesis Quadraverb digital reverb/delay and two onboard custom DSP FX built into my Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing board, plus additional pitch augmentation via a Digitech WH-4. Due to the intense level of calm induced by the constant vibrations present in these sessions, the runtimes of these recordings can sometimes run well past the length of a CD-R's 80 minutes. The digital edition of each release will be the unedited full session recording, while the CD-R editions will contain edits or composites that accurately represent the work while still being able to fit on a single disc. released March 25, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, March 16th, 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Cover decals printed by David Tagg in Atlanta GA. This is Milieu Music number WD27, and 27th in the Workingman's Drone series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Metal Edict (2:03:19) Metal Edict is one such 'sleep fiction' as mentioned in the label's statement of intent, and a deep listening experience for both headphones and room playback. Built using a single source recording of a piezoelectric microphone attached to an industrial appliance, which then became layered and processed via a number of studio machines and effects units, Metal Edict hovers like a fog on a distant and desolate planet. Red sand dunes as high as mountains, like frozen waves, ripple across a surrealistic landscape, and somewhere inside the cloudy haze above them we can make out a single inorganic structure - a dark plinth, a solitary watcher standing what could be miles into the sky. This much is all there is to observe and contemplate, the rest has been left unsaid by the artist's subconscious, leaving Metal Edict to provide a liminal space between here and there. Meaningful or meaningless? Substantial or vacant? Purposeful or random? There are no words etched on this Metal Edict to provide an answer. released March 29, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, March 2019, using a piezoelectric microphone in tandem with pitch processors, analog/digital reverberation and delays and a number of resonant low-pass filters and parametric equalizers. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦX. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Blue Anthelion (1:17:22) Following the retrieval of the long-lost Grey Anthelion album, as well as the reinstating of the 2008 Anthelion sessions (White / Night / Red / Black), I came to realize that there was still much left to say using this sound-assembly approach I conceived over a decade ago. Anthelion recordings are one of many attempts to distill elemental and atmospheric sound into something vaguely musical, or at the very least tonal, while also rendering any potential instrumental voices down to texture and faux-environmental surroundings. So, with the advent of the 2019 Spring season, I felt it appropriate to renew, revise and reiterate with Anthelion once (or actually twice) more. Blue Anthelion was considered as a softer, sunnier counterpart to Green Anthelion, which is more forestial, and even dusky in parts. Dozens of field recordings are layered carefully and deliberately to create a swirling humid mass of Spring atmosphere, while a smeared lens goes in and out of focus on reflected sunlight across the surface of a river. Thunderstorms transfigured into bit-reduced sub bass fog, swimming pools spattered through panned delays like dub chords, rainfall washing over Carolinian and Ohioan rooftops, windchimes swaying in the gust of April showers. A wide stereo field of high and low frequencies operating as psychedelic weather. The temperature, texture and pressure changes of Springtime, routed to 20+ output channels and conveyed across a digital spiral. released April 29, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML135A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Green Anthelion (1:02:39) Following the retrieval of the long-lost Grey Anthelion album, as well as the reinstating of the 2008 Anthelion sessions (White / Night / Red / Black), I came to realize that there was still much left to say using this sound-assembly approach I conceived over a decade ago. Anthelion recordings are one of many attempts to distill elemental and atmospheric sound into something vaguely musical, or at the very least tonal, while also rendering any potential instrumental voices down to texture and faux-environmental surroundings. So, with the advent of the 2019 Spring season, I felt it appropriate to renew, revise and reiterate with Anthelion once (or actually twice) more. Green Anthelion is a summation of so many diverse sound sources, location recordings and captured events. Strange experiments such as recording piezoelectric microphone feedback through a car stereo system while driving, melt into compound field recordings of lawnmowers, public parks, grassy play dates in sunny suburban neighborhoods, swingsets and open studio windows. The somewhat signature element of Anthelion recordings - the noted presence of windchimes - recurs here, albeit beneath a haze of ring modulated speech and psychedelic arrays of outdoor sounds. Green Anthelion is an attempt at representing the sound of Spring rebirth, overgrowth, blooming. A blind and naive renewal of life from the soggy leaf debris of Autumn's death, and a deep listening experience suited to both headphones and open-air speaker configurations, especially those with sub-bass output range. A green sonic bath, a Stravinskian rain summoning ritual to drive away the Winter. released April 29, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML135B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Yellow Anthelion (1:07:10) Once again, the seasons change, and from the thick of Summer heat comes two more iterations of the elementally-infused ANTHELION series. The first of the pair, YELLOW ANTHELION, distills the blinding brightness of a noonday sun, the spirited birdsong in the backyard valley and the distant wind blowing through flags, trees, grassy lawns and open windows. Various FX chains and generative/recurrent/self-oscillating processing configurations have been employed to take the incoming source sounds of field recordings and other Summer textures, and transfigure them into a wider array of audio that takes full advantage of higher and lower realms of the frequency spectrum. The result is one equally Earthen and alien, a swirling surrealistic mindscape of sonic paint that moves and breathes as if it were the Summer itself, taking influences from field recordists such as Chris Watson, Irv Teibel, David Burraston, Dan Gibson and Kiyoshi Mizutani, as well as pioneers like Wendy Carlos, Mika Vainio, Richard Chartier and Francisco Lopez. A headtrip that will appeal to ambient bedroom listeners as well as hi-fi experimentalists and weather/texture seekers. Additionally, two Coppice Halifax excavations of each Anthelion will be soon issued as YELLOW COMPOST and ORANGE COMPOST. A link will be posted here when these recordings become available. released August 9, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded June-August 2019 at the White Pillar Workshop using various portable microphones, digital recorders and tape machines, in conjunction with several dozen FX units and software processors. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML138A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Umber Anthelion (1:05:22) "...the sunburned hands I used to hold..." With the weather once again turning, new Anthelion recordings have been underway, rumbling the walls of the basement Workshop, surrounded by cold wet dirt and dead leaves. For Autumn's captivating months, I opted to assemble a number of different aspects of the season for inclusion here, as if I were designing a perfume or blending a paint. Composting together several different recordings of leaves, wind, early afternoon days of muted sunshine and chilly hints of Winter approaching, and calm purple nights under skeletal valley trees as we stand next to a metal windchime on the back porch, remembering Spring. Buried beneath all of these things is a heavily processed recording of an old standard that always comes to mind during this time, reduced to a ghost of a vibration, echoing out some long forgotten horn fanfare from a browning Appalachian forest. All of this coalesces together within the lines of the Anthelion recording discipline - to take full advantage of FX processing, multitrack recording, lossy recording formats and generative systems, in order to generate sound that is melodic from atonal provenance, and to transfigure any melodious sound sources into considered texture and tone. Both Umber and Violet Anthelion live up to this ethos beautifully, and could be just the thing you need to put you in the right seasonal mindset, aware of the present moment, and artificially suspending it before the weather turns once more... These recordings in particular would be recommended to fans of albums such as Silver Horns Heard Over Green Hills and the Naked Sound series. Umber was particularly inspired by the GAS recordings Konigsforst and Oktember, and Violet was inspired by both Irv Teibel's Tintinnabulation (in three speeds) and Richard Chartier's work. released November 28, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Processed and generated at White Pillar Workshop, October-November 2019, using hardware and software including (but not limited to) a Boss RC-20 & RV-3, Moog MF-101, the external signal processor of a Korg MS-20, a Korg KP-2 & ES-1, Akai S2800, Roberts 450A, BBE Two Timer, Danelectro Reel Echo, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer SR202W, Vesta Fire MR-10B, Mackie ProFX8, Tascam DP-008EX, Optimus SSM-1750, Gemini PDT-6000, Synthrotek PT2399, Digitech WH-4 and a Zoom 506, with field recordings captured in Columbia, SC and Dayton, OH using various digital and piezoelectric microphones. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML142A ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Violet Anthelion (1:01:08) "...the sunburned hands I used to hold..." With the weather once again turning, new Anthelion recordings have been underway, rumbling the walls of the basement Workshop, surrounded by cold wet dirt and dead leaves. For Autumn's captivating months, I opted to assemble a number of different aspects of the season for inclusion here, as if I were designing a perfume or blending a paint. Composting together several different recordings of leaves, wind, early afternoon days of muted sunshine and chilly hints of Winter approaching, and calm purple nights under skeletal valley trees as we stand next to a metal windchime on the back porch, remembering Spring. Buried beneath all of these things is a heavily processed recording of an old standard that always comes to mind during this time, reduced to a ghost of a vibration, echoing out some long forgotten horn fanfare from a browning Appalachian forest. All of this coalesces together within the lines of the Anthelion recording discipline - to take full advantage of FX processing, multitrack recording, lossy recording formats and generative systems, in order to generate sound that is melodic from atonal provenance, and to transfigure any melodious sound sources into considered texture and tone. Both Umber and Violet Anthelion live up to this ethos beautifully, and could be just the thing you need to put you in the right seasonal mindset, aware of the present moment, and artificially suspending it before the weather turns once more... These recordings in particular would be recommended to fans of albums such as Silver Horns Heard Over Green Hills and the Naked Sound series. Umber was particularly inspired by the GAS recordings Konigsforst and Oktember, and Violet was inspired by both Irv Teibel's Tintinnabulation (in three speeds) and Richard Chartier's work. released November 28, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Processed and generated at White Pillar Workshop, October-November 2019, using hardware and software including (but not limited to) a Boss RC-20 & RV-3, Moog MF-101, the external signal processor of a Korg MS-20, a Korg KP-2 & ES-1, Akai S2800, Roberts 450A, BBE Two Timer, Danelectro Reel Echo, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer SR202W, Vesta Fire MR-10B, Mackie ProFX8, Tascam DP-008EX, Optimus SSM-1750, Gemini PDT-6000, Synthrotek PT2399, Digitech WH-4 and a Zoom 506, with field recordings captured in Columbia, SC and Dayton, OH using various digital and piezoelectric microphones. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML142B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - [WD25] Sections Of A Large Beast's Skeleton Protrude From The Leafy Floor Of The Ravine (1:17:18) 02. Brian Grainger - [WD26] Voyeuristic Pillow (1:10:15) 03. Brian Grainger - [WD27] We Find Truth In The Bliss Of Sleep (1:17:00) 04. Brian Grainger - [WD28] Hypnosis Via Glowing Thurible (1:10:25) 05. Brian Grainger - [WD29] Feast Of The Libertines (1:12:30) 06. Brian Grainger - [WD30] Orange Lamplight On A Blue Wall (1:17:47) 07. Brian Grainger - [WD31] Glassrain Haloprism Claustrophobia (1:16:41) 08. Brian Grainger - [WD32] The Cosmic Stone Evades My Grasp And I Am Left Powerless (56:03) 09. Brian Grainger - [WD33] Slow Eons Of Sun Bleached Pillars (59:23) 10. Brian Grainger - [WD34] A Wolf Impaled On The Hands Of A Clock (1:11:37) 11. Brian Grainger - [WD35] Burnt Crest Of Fall's Coronation (1:14:14) 12. Brian Grainger - [WD36] An Open Palm Allows Us Passage Through Dim Catacombs (1:16:39) 13. Brian Grainger - [WDY3B] The Inescapable Gravity Of Collapsing Suns (54:20) 14. Brian Grainger - [WDY3C] Broadcast Reprocess (1:14:05) 15. Brian Grainger - [WDY3D] Distillation Isolate (1:16:15) Workingman's Drone is a series I began in 2010, and these fifteen recordings represent the accumulation of the third year of this series. Unlike the first two years, wherein I would record and release a 20-minute EP every month, Year Three grew (much like the evergreen trees pictured as the series' logo) into album-length pieces for each month. The series has always been intended as a home for my tastes in instrument-based drone and improvisational music (as opposed to making this type of music using computers), and this third leg of it is set apart from the prior ones even more, owing to a self-imposed restriction of using only ONE synthesizer for each month's session. This approach both broadened the scope of the series and narrowed the focus of the work, forcing me to truly study each instrument in order to produce these immersive and varied pieces, many of which are reflective of seasonal weather or elemental changes throughout the year. Musically, this change was necessitated by the continuous expansion and reconfiguration of my studio - having relocated from South Carolina's loft space Botany Bay to the basement bunker White Pillar nestled in an Ohio valley - and I relished the idea of really digging deep and exploring the differences in voice and color and workflow/interface between the many unique machines I now possess. Some are analog, some are digital. Some monophonic, some polyphonic. Some are not even synthesizers by definition, but rather, repurposed medical equipment or even drum machines that have particularly deep processing and synthesis capabilities. Workingman's Drone casts no preferences - it is a discipline that embraces the process and the performance, rather than the provenance or the brand. The drone deifies machines both classic and castaway, and sings in all voices, across all octaves and all frequencies. Year Three collects an immense amount of audio - nearly 18 hours - and solidifies it into a monument that is both a towering tribute to my influences held dear, and a sprawling scenic path through my creative continent. SYNTHESIZER VOICES: WD25 / Korg Volca Keys WD26 / Dave Smith Instruments MoPho WD27 / Boss Dr. Synth DS-330 WD28 / Korg MS-20 WD29 / Arturia Microbrute WD30 / Korg Monologue WD31 / Korg Minilogue WD32 / Grass CTCM WD33 / Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-880 WD34 / Korg Volca Kick WD35 / Roland SH-32 WD36 / Korg Volca Bass WDY3B / Korg Minilogue WDY3C / Korg Volca Kick WDY3D / Arturia Microbrute released December 9, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live in the White Pillar Workshop, various dates between September 2018 and December 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Stickers printed in Atlanta, GA by David Tagg. This is Milieu Music number WDY3. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Silver Anthelion (1:03:08) Winter is nearly over, and as the calendar once again brings us into a new Spring, it's always fruitful to look slightly over your shoulder to see where you've been. With the comfort of basement walls fortifying the White Pillar Workshop against the bitter cold of the season, I've delved deeply once again into extensive synaesthetic wandering/wondering to fashion two Winter installments in the Anthelion series. Silver and Gold, in this instance, represent a summation of many different aspects and ideas, culminating in Anthelion recordings: advancement of age, metals buried deep beneath the Earth's crust, Winter holiday traditionalism, cool tones gradually giving way to warm tones, a frozen lake slowly melted in a golden bath of sunrise. Silver Anthelion is a deification of the bleak and isolated core of Winter - snowfall, snowstorms, blasts of freezing wind through crackling dead branches in Ohio woods, ice crusted on every open surface and far below the surface, an alchemical transfiguration of Vivaldi's "Winter" reduced to nothing more than a vibration that sleeps beneath the layers and layers of cold, echoing a land frozen in submission until the senile and brazen Old Man releases his clutches like a vampire burning up in the sunlight. Golden Anthelion brings back a wall of warmth in spite of the inhospitalities of the outdoors. Gusts of cold air are heard distantly from the vantage point of a chimney, filled with the defiant glow of a log fire. Space heaters of all kinds hum and buzz in the unison of a drone that deifies comfort and calm. Distantly, the overtones of a happy Christmas morning are woven into the fabric of the collage like a blanket. Sunshine begins the slow melt of icicles hanging above windows, as metallic heat dissolves Winter in a pleasant haze. With the completion of Silver and Golden Anthelion, the four-cycle year of recordings is now over. Following these two recordings will be the associated Silver and Golden Compost reconstitutions by Coppice Halifax, and respective multi-disc sets collecting all eight Anthelion/Compost recordings from Spring 2019-Winter 2020. released February 27, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, January-February 2020, using various hard/software samplers, equalizers, multitrack tape machines, filters and other transfigurative processes. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML143A. © + (P) Milieu Music 2020. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Golden Anthelion (1:02:31) Winter is nearly over, and as the calendar once again brings us into a new Spring, it's always fruitful to look slightly over your shoulder to see where you've been. With the comfort of basement walls fortifying the White Pillar Workshop against the bitter cold of the season, I've delved deeply once again into extensive synaesthetic wandering/wondering to fashion two Winter installments in the Anthelion series. Silver and Gold, in this instance, represent a summation of many different aspects and ideas, culminating in Anthelion recordings: advancement of age, metals buried deep beneath the Earth's crust, Winter holiday traditionalism, cool tones gradually giving way to warm tones, a frozen lake slowly melted in a golden bath of sunrise. Silver Anthelion is a deification of the bleak and isolated core of Winter - snowfall, snowstorms, blasts of freezing wind through crackling dead branches in Ohio woods, ice crusted on every open surface and far below the surface, an alchemical transfiguration of Vivaldi's "Winter" reduced to nothing more than a vibration that sleeps beneath the layers and layers of cold, echoing a land frozen in submission until the senile and brazen Old Man releases his clutches like a vampire burning up in the sunlight. Golden Anthelion brings back a wall of warmth in spite of the inhospitalities of the outdoors. Gusts of cold air are heard distantly from the vantage point of a chimney, filled with the defiant glow of a log fire. Space heaters of all kinds hum and buzz in the unison of a drone that deifies comfort and calm. Distantly, the overtones of a happy Christmas morning are woven into the fabric of the collage like a blanket. Sunshine begins the slow melt of icicles hanging above windows, as metallic heat dissolves Winter in a pleasant haze. With the completion of Silver and Golden Anthelion, the four-cycle year of recordings is now over. Following these two recordings will be the associated Silver and Golden Compost reconstitutions by Coppice Halifax, and respective multi-disc sets collecting all eight Anthelion/Compost recordings from Spring 2019-Winter 2020. released February 27, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, January-February 2020, using various hard/software samplers, equalizers, multitrack tape machines, filters and other transfigurative processes. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML143B. © + (P) Milieu Music 2020. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Blue Anthelion (1:17:22) 02. Brian Grainger - Green Anthelion (1:02:39) 03. Brian Grainger - Yellow Anthelion (1:07:10) 04. Brian Grainger - Orange Anthelion (1:12:00) 05. Brian Grainger - Umber Anthelion (1:05:22) 06. Brian Grainger - Violet Anthelion (1:01:08) 07. Brian Grainger - Silver Anthelion (1:03:08) 08. Brian Grainger - Golden Anthelion (1:02:31) After a decade-plus pause, I resumed work within the ANTHELION concept in Spring of 2019, intent on producing two full-length recordings for each of the four seasons as they came to pass - two perspectives on and interpretations of the environmental changes during these elemental quarters. The ethos of ANTHELION has always been driven by a sound-design and synthesis-minded approach of processing non-musical content into something stimulating on musical terms, and vice versa. Transfiguring layer upon layer of field recordings into a swirling wall of texture and mass, where individual places and times washed together to produce an entirely new time and space to explore. Reducing musical instruments or even pre-recorded compositions down to their molecular abstracts, distilling strains of temperature and color-coded DNA out of them to plant like seeds inside the new atmosphere I was mapping out. ANTHELION not only studies the sounds and reference points that we associate with seasonal changes, but also recalls other associations to these specific calendar months, like holidays or color palettes or religious/familial traditions. It coagulates all of what a word like "Summer" conjures in the mind and alchemically redrafts it into the shape of a repeatable listening experience. So, as the Spring equinox once again approaches, I have compiled all eight recording sessions that were undertaken within the ANTHELION methodology. Totaling almost nine hours of immersive audio, this collection offers something like a weather-indexed library of works, that you may pull recordings from in the same way you might pick out a coat from a coat closet. Conversely, it also proposes a method of escapism - the sound of a snow-coated Winter in the hateful heat of Summer, the green pastures and birdsong of Spring when Autumn has laid all such things to rot and memory - ANTHELION is therapeutic meditation for the seasonally affected. From this moment forward, recordings drafted under the ANTHELION banner will continue, but this time they will be exploring specific elements, natural phenomena and proposing designs for specific events and locations, whether they are truly within human reach or not. Until these recordings come to pass, these nine hours of material will no doubt continue to yield rich dividends for those willing to invest some time and patience into their deep tangents... released May 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2019-2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD52, and 52nd in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Poured Out [Full Session] (1:15:53) POURED OUT was originally commissioned by Txt in the UK (the same label that issued the first edition of Statuettes Part One and Metraliminaloxone) for inclusion on their expansive Nagual 5 quintuple-disc box set compilation. The Nagual 5 version was edited down to under 20 minutes and mastered by Txt's resident engineer, Blackparticle. Until now, the full and unabridged session recording has not been made public. Sonically, POURED OUT resembles the twelve single-voice drone sessions from 2018-2019's third leg of the Workingman's Drone series, and it follows the WD series' ethos almost to a fault. A single analog polyphonic synthesizer, sculpted and laid bare for almost eighty minutes, left to resonate and vibrate the air through the veins of a Roberts 450A reel to reel and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk, with several analog and digital outboard effects devices employed strategically. released September 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, October 2018 using a Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer in conjunction with a Roberts 450A reel to reel machine and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk, with outboard FX. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML151. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - You Can't Hide Sadness From Stone (1:59:53) YOU CAN'T HIDE SADNESS FROM STONE was a deep session undertaken in the Summer of 2018 using a Korg MS-20 and an Arturia Microbrute (both monophonic analog synthesizers) in conjunction with several small Moog FX units that were also sending/receiving control voltage modulation. The idea was approached after a friend planted the idea for an ambient music live event somewhere in the rural midwest, and the session was a sporadic proof of concept for what such a live performance from me might take the form of. The recording ended up running a full two hours, a precursor to some of the Workingman's Drone sessions that would follow by the end of that year, and the focal point of the session was tuning the oscillator voices alongside three resonant low-pass filters and routing slow modulation envelopes to all of them to allow for a continually shifting sea of voices. Additionally, the pitch of each voice was designated in the lower octaves, making the mass of the piece only fully perceived through larger speaker systems with a greater constitution for low frequency output. Since that time, the piece has lain dormant on a hard drive, as the decision was made to wait on issuing it until after the Workingman's Drone series was no longer active, lest it become overlooked and underappreciated in the process. It arrives here and now, at the end of a long, long Summer - perhaps the longest Summer in many years, for a lot of us. The irony of this piece being drafted with live performance in mind is also bittersweet, and it is my sincere hope that we can all be together again soon to explore experiences like this one in the same space. Until then, be safe and be well. NOTE: Designed for either very quiet or very loud playback - headphones or subwoofers are recommended. Due to the length of the original piece far surpassing the runtime limits of compact discs, a special composite mix has been created for the CD-R edition, which is slightly louder than the full version and can be utilized in more discrete listening environments because of this. released September 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, July 2018, using a Korg MS-20, Arturia Microbrute and three Moogerfooger units, in addition to several outboard FX devices and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to A.F. for providing the impetus to capture this session. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML152 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - A Yawning Wind (3:27) 02. Brian Grainger - Highschool Guitar (4:07) 03. Brian Grainger - Pale Meadow (4:53) 04. Brian Grainger - Rural Sparks (3:49) 05. Brian Grainger - Pine Valley (5:12) 06. Brian Grainger - Saccharine (4:49) 07. Brian Grainger - Golden Hours (3:06) 08. Brian Grainger - Deerfield (4:06) 09. Brian Grainger - Happy to Be Going Home Again (2:28) 10. Brian Grainger - Bear Mountain (7:05) 11. Brian Grainger - Weeping Willow (3:48) 12. Brian Grainger - We Walked Home (5:24) Summer's Parting Ways was written and recorded following Brian's Eight Thousander release in 2007, and over those 11 years it has hung on the vine, a fabled sun-cast apple in a subtropical orchard. Crafted with possibly more care and deliberation than just about anything else in his prolific catalog, Summer's Parting Ways consists of detuned acoustic and electric guitars, played late into the nights and even later into the mornings of a humid Carolinian bedroom. Backed by a lethargic assembly of drum machines, organ pedal bass and a fair share of guest appearances from friends, and laid to honest warm cassette tape, it is the culmination of recalled memories, hazy summers and lonesome drives through rural backroads, to the bittersweetness of vacant beach parties, teenage boredoms and wistful solitary introspection. It's a long wave goodbye to those times when summer's sunny days seemed endless and orange, before highschool naivete has all faded away and rendered the time down to just another month on the calendar. Summer's Parting Ways remembers all of those things, and all of the other places you always wondered about, roads you wished you had biked down, green woods you'd have certainly explored. It bottles up the sunshine, saccharine and soda pop into a psychedelic perfume that settles across the empty fields of your mind, planting seeds of sad magic. Blue skies, saltwater seas, forests of wonderment - all under its spell, missing the past, sleeping beneath weeping willows and the star blasted nights behind them. A golden hour etched into a circular mirror, echoing an infinity of melancholic Sundays for you to comfortably recall via the cracked diamond of nostalgia. released October 2, 2020 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Empyrean Crown (12:00) 02. Brian Grainger - Open Jaws Lined With Jagged Glass Teeth (7:52) 03. Brian Grainger - Diamond Tears On Slate (18:33) 04. Brian Grainger - Roman Emerald Orgies (13:20) 05. Brian Grainger - Pagan Horn (22:10) 06. Brian Grainger - Empyrean Crown [Original Tape Session] (20:40) 07. Brian Grainger - Diamond Tears On Slate [Original Tape Session] (23:09) 08. Brian Grainger - Pagan Horn [Harvester's Dub] (30:03) With the arrival of Autumn, and especially this Autumn, signaling the end of a long and arduous Summer, it has not yet felt more appropriate to reinstate the brother-sister albums Diamond Tears On Slate and White Kingdoms, two monoliths of opposing textures and tonalities, intended as gatekeepers flanking the left and right sides of some great abyssal threshold. Diamond Tears On Slate, as the name implies, was the darker of the two, but not maudlin or depressive darkness, but shadowy, overgrown and dense darkness, forestial and feral darkness, primordial and mammoth. Originally recorded in the Summer of 2009, then released in October 2010 at the now-defunct UK label Dead Pilot, DTOS was laid to four-track using electric guitars, Lowrey organ and, to some extent, the processing of the tape itself as voice. I'd been absorbing things like Birchville Cat Motel, Omit, Sunn O))) and Ophibre for some time by then, and my INSTALL imprint with David Tagg was still in full-swing, so DTOS very much feels emblematic of that moment in time, when noisy bedroom droning and guitar experimentalism were still the laws of the land, and there was still some kind of a circuit that albums like this could run, between the bloggers and bootleggers circulating and discussing it, the distributors and record stores stocking it and the labels that could eke out an existence publishing it. Many of those things are absent now, moved on from in one way or another, but Diamond Tears remains, solid and resolute as ever, like a pyramid blasted for years by desert sand and sunburnt wind - it looks on, silent in a landscape, sometimes buried, sometimes unearthed, forever waiting for another traveler to discover it. For this occasion, which is actually the 10th anniversary of the album's original pressing, almost down to the day, I have reassembled the original five tracks, plus a second disc collecting the two original tape sessions of the title track and "Empyrean Crown" (both of which were issued as one of two different bonus 3" CD-Rs with certain faux-obi-stripped copies of DTOS, later reissued digitally as EC/DT), augmented by a new Coppice Halifax dub of LP-closer "Pagan Horn", which transmutes the source material through the veins of a few old samplers and projects it into the hot air floating above Lake Busbee and the old Dolphus M. Grainger generator station, themselves now just a distant memory, vanished and vaporized. Some confusion may also be possible, as the original Dead Pilot edition of DTOS associated track titles and audio incorrectly, while the pieces presented here, with their current names and sequencing, are correct. NOTE: For those who wish to purchase only the CH excavation, you may do so digitally at the CH Bandcamp page: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/harvesters-dub released November 6, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2009, using electric guitar, Lowrey organ and a Tascam 414 multitrack tape machine, except "Harvester's Dub" remixed and produced at White Pillar, Summer 2020, using an Akai S2800, Korg ES-1 + Volca Sample + KP-2, Boss RC-20, Alesis Quadraverb and other outboard/DSP FX devices in conjunction with Mackie ProFX8 and Peavey FX2 mixing desks and the R-EW Audioholistics modular processing path. Photography by Brian, shot on Polaroid film in Columbia, SC, 2008. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Cover sticker printed in Atlanta, GA by David Tagg. Special thanks to Daniel Gregory and Dead Pilot for publishing DTOS the very first time. This is Milieu Music number AD54, issue #54 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. © + (p) Brian Grainger 2020. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Diffusion XVII (1:08:18) 02. Brian Grainger - Diffusion XVIII (1:09:08) 03. Brian Grainger - Diffusion XIX (1:06:11) 04. Brian Grainger - Diffusion XX (1:12:13) During the course of the 2019 year, the third leg of the Workingman's Drone series was unfolding across twelve different sessions of deep listening and minimalist synthesis. Each session was devoted to exploring the voice of a singular machine, some of which were not even technically "synthesizers", but rather, drum machines with sound sculpting capabilities, hospital lab equipment repurposed as tone generators, anything that could be exploited into producing a tone. It follows that once these pieces had been laid to tape, the temptation to manipulate and further process them was too great to resist, and so a few branches of expanded recording work grew from these sessions. The first were the Pharmlands recordings by Coppice Halifax - repurposing the WD material into sonic mulch over drum machines and bass, totally recontextualizing it as ambient and dub techno music. The second expedition manifested as these pieces, the Microdot Transmissions - a macro-lens reduction/expansion via generative processing. The Microdot Diffusions are every one of the original Workingman's Drone sessions (#1-24) routed through a complex but incredibly distinct set of analog and digital effects equipment, multitrack tape overdubs and finally a topical layer of DAW processing, effectively rendering new ambient galaxies out of the overtones and distant echoes of the original sessions. Despite all of those details, these four pieces live and breathe with their own unique physicalities, proof positive that anything I record is itself a part of a larger macroverse, and contains untold numbers of microverses as well - all vibrations, channeled through an unfathomable invisible body, on currents both electrical and elemental. released November 6, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Remixed & regenerated at White Pillar Workshop, November 2019-May 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MTD005. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - 3000 Menhirs (3:05) 02. Brian Grainger - The Analog Botanist (25:48) 03. Brian Grainger - Golden Morning Vapors (14:48) 04. Brian Grainger - Soft Water Alchemy (20:35) 05. Brian Grainger - North White Pond (14:24) 06. Brian Grainger - Sequoian (10:22) 07. Brian Grainger - Fragrant Powder Bed (19:55) 08. Brian Grainger - Ether Wall (46:24) 09. Brian Grainger - 2CB Fantasy (2:25) 10. Brian Grainger - Antediluvian (1:16:48) 11. Brian Grainger - Sequoian [Coppice Halifax Transfiguration] (1:07:10) Recorded in 2008, POROUS VARIATIONS represented a graduated approach to drone music that was informed by almost two years of working on similar improvisations and instrument-applications with David Tagg at Second Sun Recordings and INSTALL. It marked a fork in the path in many ways, the first of what would eventually be numerous recording sessions focused on sustained tones, bright timbres, bass subharmonics and rich chordal structures that resonated in an almost electrical sense. The feel and pacing of POROUS VARIATIONS is still today, twelve years later, representative of my deep interests in sustained-tone recordings, meditative harmonics and drone music that is both a raga-like meditation and a physical experience of vibration and shimmering electricities. At the time, POROUS VARIATIONS was notable for the excessive length of some pieces, and the third-disc centerpiece "Antediluvian" was the then-longest single piece of music I'd ever recorded. The music was equally inspired by Eastern music for sitar and vocals, sub-tectonic chords on early Sunn O))) recordings and the guitar experimentalism of the New Zealand underground, as well as concurrent influences from David Tagg, Ophibre and Acre. In line with these approaches, the music was recorded live, each piece in a single improvised take, using only a Westone Concorde I electric guitar, a Lowrey "Magic Genie" organ, a slew of FX devices and multitrack cassette tape. By the time the more extended pieces manifested, I was modifying my own physical presence in the sessions by deliberately depriving myself of sleep for up to a full week at a time, which resulted in much more vivid and intense psychedelic experiences as I navigated my way through the sound by vibration alone, senses heightened and overly aware of changes in temperature and low frequencies alike. It was in such a state that I conceived of the titles for the album, which representatively illustrated phosphene-like images that seemed to bloom in my mind, as the soundwaves buzzed warmly out of the studio amps. The title of the album itself seems to indicate a duality, the sensation of being composed of a material that is both itself and absorbed elements of its surroundings, a blending of will and the absence of it. Mirroring this notion, POROUS VARIATIONS was issued with two different sets of track titles, each set printed on half of the 3xCD-R pressing run. Canonically, these pieces favor the titles presented here, but in the interest of representing POROUS VARIATIONS accurately, the labeling on this reissue will reflect both track title sets. Interestingly, it was during these sessions that I arrived at "The Analog Botanist", which as many will know, went on to be utilized as my written credit for mastering and production roles, as well as the namesake of the first dub techno recordings by Coppice Halifax. In this original sense, "The Analog Botanist" referred less to fidelity and format, and more specifically to one who could be a gardener or cultivator of things that existed symmetrically and symbiotically, a maintenance person for liminal spaces and intimate relationships, an agent of balance and a refutation of the self as the center of the universe. Today, it feels appropriate to me that such a term would have originated on something that was a personal and inward exploration issued under my birthname. For the occasion of reissuing this album, I've taken great care in remastering it here in the White Pillar Workshop, during a year that could be described as Hell on Earth, at best, and I don't mind admitting that my own work's escapist offerings have been more necessary and vital than ever for my own mental health in 2020. This already large triptych has been augmented by the presence of a fourth disc, containing an expansive Coppice Halifax transfiguration of "Sequoian" from side two, which seeks to connect the forestial source material with the oceanic fantasism of the Halifaxian world. The album has also been given a photographic cover image, for the first time, where the original edition only ever used monochromatic pattern designs. This new photograph slightly recalls an extremely slow-motion video for "Sequoian" that was published in 2008: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Yf6gx7aho **NOTE: The CH remix has also been given a solo digital release, with more extensive notes written about the mix and a different variant on the cover photograph, so that listeners who are only interested in the new material do not need to buy this reissue set to obtain it: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/sea-leveler released December 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger, except #11: Written by Brian Grainger / Remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax. #1-10 recorded at Rolling Knoll, 2008. #11 recorded at White Pillar, Autumn 2020. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar, Autumn 2020. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD33, issue #33 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - MMQ-002 [July Modular Session 1] (20:02) 02. Brian Grainger - MMQ-002 [July Modular Session 2] (30:51) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - MMQ-004 [6VCO Drone / 'The Vessel'] (59:56) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - 2020.09.13 [On The Slow Approach Of A Storm] (2:46) 02. Brian Grainger - 2020.09.20 [The End Of The Fire] (5:28) 03. Brian Grainger - 2020.10.03 [9.00 PM] (8:28) 04. Brian Grainger - 2020.10.05 [12.00 AM] (6:49) 05. Brian Grainger - 2020.10.06 [A Piece Of The Valley] (7:25) 06. Brian Grainger - 2020.10.07 [10.00 PM Evening Chorus] (7:14) 07. Brian Grainger - 2020.10.12 [9.00 PM Wet Pillar] (6:37) 08. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.05 [3.00 AM] (8:21) 09. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.09 [12.00 AM] (8:10) 10. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.11 [11.00 PM] (11:43) 11. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.14 [12.00 AM Leaf Walk] (10:20) 12. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.15 [12.00 AM] (11:42) 13. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.18 [10.00 PM] (8:55) 14. Brian Grainger - 2020.11.29 [11.00 PM] (12:24) 15. Brian Grainger - 2020.12.06 [Sembre Sunday] (7:33) 16. Brian Grainger - 2020.12.16 [16th Anniversary] (9:23) 17. Brian Grainger - 2020.12.23 [Cold Leaves] (4:31) 18. Brian Grainger - 2020.12.25 [Consideration] (5:31) 19. Brian Grainger - 2020.12.26 [Centerville Sirens, Snow Feet] (7:04) 20. Brian Grainger - 2020.12.31 [NYE, A View Of The Abyss, Don't Look Back] (8:22) 21. Brian Grainger - 2021.01.02 [Eavesdropper] (7:52) 22. Brian Grainger - 2021.01.04 [Hopefulness] (10:49) 23. Brian Grainger - 2021.01.05 [Woodpipe] (8:39) 24. Brian Grainger - 2021.01.06 [Pest Control] (20:08) 25. Brian Grainger - 2021.01.06 [Estimated Last Gasp] (11:22) 2020 was a strange year, and 2021 isn't shaping up to be much different. A worldwide pandemic, political unrest, suffering and death, systemic racism and continual climate change, among many other factors, added up to a lot of anxiety to live with each day, and that much more to unpack in bed each night as I tried to sleep. I don't mind admitting here that 2020 was also the year I returned to marijuana usage on a near-nightly basis. Those who know me personally can attest to the fact that from 2003-2020, I'd used the stuff less than five times total, all of them social in context (including when I was in Augsburg, Germany having an intense panic attack after my Milieu set was cut short from power supply problems, in front of so many other musicians I'd been influenced by - a perennial thanks to Gerald and Henry for helping me deal with all that). Additionally, no more than a single Coppice Halifax track was made while under the influence (a prize to anyone who can figure out which one), as I've always preferred to work sober, and still do. Prior to 2003, when I sold off my stash to a co-worker and "cleaned up", I'd been dependent on a number of substances and rituals in order to remain a functional member of adult society, which is a whole other book of stories and I don't want to get into that here. Suffice to say that I had a lot of reasons for relying on drugs, and a lot more for giving them all up, chiefly among them being my desire to move forward with my creative work, which I felt was being hindered by my dependencies. So, the notion of bringing such things back into my life was not a decision I'd make lightly or in haste, but rather, I'd discuss it at great length beforehand with my family, my therapist and multiple MDs, arriving at the logical conclusion that a prescription for it was in my best interest, especially given my highly fluctuating self-employment situation and need for a non-chemical solution to alleviate stress, flexible enough to use as needed without hangovers, addictive properties or (like some pharmaceuticals) have to maintain a strict level of it within my system at all times for it to work. In this way, marijuana became more of an answer than a question, and unlike all those years prior, this time would be different. I'd be at liberty to use it in a non-toxic and fearless way, safely monitored by professionals, not hiding it from family and friends, not worried about "getting busted" or losing my job, and really able to get the most out of a plant that had been grown within my own state, to exacting specifications, unlike the "who knows what it was" stuff I'd grown up smoking. Gone also were the health risks with carcinogens, instead replaced by a portable convection vaporizer - easier on the lungs, and less wasteful of the actual herb too. Indeed, with all of these things now carefully considered, paid for and plotted out, it was hard not to be excited about the prospect of having a new and efficient way of alleviating my anxieties and worries, while also providing myself a "hard reset" on days when I just couldn't turn my brain off. Beyond this, I felt like a kid in an amusement park, being able to finally experience my large body of recordings as a passenger, with the THC acting as a crowbar of detached perspective, allowing me to hear many of my albums and songs as many of you do, apart from my own associations and memories that they are built from. It's probably been the one great thing about 2020, all told, and so it felt apt to document it in the same way I've always tried to, with recordings. That is what you will find here, quite literally an audio logbook of my many evenings outside, slowly drawing vaporous euphoria through a pipe, feeling less and less consumed by the world around me as it seeped into my bloodstream, and more and more simply a part of it. I'd pick up my cellphone and turn on a digital recorder app, in this case a very strangely-behaving Dolby recorder (more on this later), and set it down beside me on either my front porch (under the titular White Pillars on the front of my home) or my back porch (a cozy wooden deck overlooking a steep overgrown ravine) and often times let the microphone pick up almost nothing at all. By the end of each recording, I'd have traded tension for time-travel, while the wind and the distant traffic became long breathing patterns, the night itself being a grand body inhabited by all the little lights and orange house windows like cells and organs and veins. I have always appreciated listening to sounds from the outdoors, no matter how mundane - you may even recall a few of the Naked Sound releases that deified things like lawnmowers, air conditioners, windchimes and even an empty garage - and so Porch Hash Logbook follows in that tradition, in perfect step with my interests in elevating mere passing moments to some level of artistic worth, if only for my own safe keeping and remembering. Imagine my delight then, when I brought these accumulated recordings into the studio for mastering and prepping for this release, and discovered that the Dolby software had applied some very strange processing to the sounds - some kind of special proprietary noise-cancelling and stereo-field-analyzing DSP stuff, with what appears to be some selective compression and EQ notch work as well - which manifests in the form of odd reverberations evoking room-like spaces (despite being outdoors) and smearing the sound of passing cars or planes into alien drones, that almost even sound like a vocoder. These mutations only add to the uniqueness of the recordings, for me, and even give me more ideas about what else I might be able to use them for in other studio work. In the end, I've written a whole lot about something that isn't very detailed or substantial. It feels much more personal and intimate in many ways, perhaps even a little voyeuristic. Due to the onset of the Ohio Winter, I was forced to take my nightly ritual back indoors, but as of my writing this now, the weather is becoming more amenable and so a new round of porch recordings are likely to come. Given the Dolby processing "happy accident", I have some newer ideas about how to subtly affect the forthcoming recordings in other ways, and I'm looking forward to experimenting. I think the biggest reason for my doing all of this is simply that I am eager to prove to myself, tangibly, that my life is not nearly as hard or bad as it could be, especially with everything else happening in the world, and these recordings serve as reminders of this observation. Hopefully, at the end of all of this hysteria and pain, and seemingly endless wondering and waiting, you and I can meet up for some porch excursions of our own, share a few puffs over some coffee, and we can leave the microphone off, contentedly knowing that things are better than they were before. released April 2, 2021 Produced & edited by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, September 2020-January 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD049. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Benthic Ice Barrows (1:11:51) Workingman's Drone returns with Year Four, twelve more monthly installments of carefully crafted drone music to be issued from January to December of 2021. For the twelfth and final volume, catalog entry WD48, the series terminates with an immensely layered chordal wall generated by a no-input configuration of a Yamaha KM-802 eight-channel analog mixer from 1986. The internal equalizer of the mixer was used to tune different lines of independently routed feedback, two at a time, and subsequently layered and individually filtered through a Moog MF-101 low-pass filter and a Tascam DP-008EX digital eight-track recorder. In post, subtle use of additional filtering, reverberation and modulated delay was employed within a DAW using mostly Arturia virtual processors, as well as copious shaping with multiple parametric equalizers. The resultant recording is an exercise that illustrates many of the core concepts of the Workingman's Drone series, format and ethos - designed stillness achieved through sustained tone minimalism, self-oscillation and no-input asceticism providing a pure and distinct method of synthesis to explore, the study of singular sound sources for each individual piece and, hopefully, a reusable and accessible psychedelic state obtained via immersive, hypnotic and operatively endless listening that can be utilized for sleep, focused work or meditation. The fourth year of Workingman's Drone has charted an observable path through these notions, and in so doing, has generated a considerable body of work that feels distinct from prior years of the series, and hopefully the wider landscape of drone music itself. In a world defined by chaos and unpredictability, filled with suffering and inhospitable situations, it is my sincere hope that these sessions can provide a reliable escape from the often claustrophobic overwhelming nature of our times. released December 3, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, November 2021 using a Yamaha KM-802 analog mixer in tandem with a Moog MF-101 low-pass filter, a Tascam DP-008EX eight-track digital recorder and a Peavey FX2 mixing console. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Physical edition decals printed by DT Editions in beautiful Atlanta, GA. This is Milieu Music number WD48, 48th in Year Four of the Workingman's Drone series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Litho (493.883-B¹) (19:06) 02. Brian Grainger - Litho (493.883-B²) (15:19) 03. Brian Grainger - Litho (493.883-B³) (21:50) released December 3, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and layout by ABM&D. Prose by Brian. This is Milieu Music number LITHO-B, one of three disclosed sections. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Nereus (22:49) 02. Brian Grainger - Lowered (22:30) 03. Brian Grainger - This Empty Body (20:31) 04. Brian Grainger - Paring (18:54) 05. Brian Grainger - Vial Of Urth (20:00) 06. Brian Grainger - Telepaths (32:40) 07. Brian Grainger - Evaporated (22:37) 08. Brian Grainger - Olivine (24:55) 09. Brian Grainger - Achiral Void (31:06) 10. Brian Grainger - Reliquary (24:33) 11. Brian Grainger - Sun Mine (23:40) 12. Brian Grainger - Radiance (20:49) Another year of Workingman's Drone sessions produced twelve longform recordings that, much like many of my beatless sound explorations, were developed as much for their utility in subsequent creative tangents as their approachability as music. With this in mind, the MICRODOT TRANSMISSIONS are the resultant recordings generated by re-processing and transfiguring much longer drone pieces into (relatively) shorter runtimes between fifteen and thirty minutes. When working to elongate sound, certain decisions are inevitably made in order to facilitate something that can sustain itself aesthetically across a longer period of time, and the same caveats exist for the inverse, although this seems to be a direction rarely explored, except when musicians wish to edit their compositions for existing time constraints, such as vinyl or tape sides, performance limitations or broadcast schedules. In order to compress and reduce a very long piece of tonal sound into sound-matter that does not simply feel "sped up", other processes are used to essentially "fold" the sound in onto itself in soft and seamless patterns, and drone music in particular is perfectly suited to the digital tools used in this scenario. MICRODOT TRANSMISSIONS feel like echoes of their former selves - lone plinths abandoned in an otherwise empty landscape, once a majestic city, and even a majestic ruin, now merely a single column weathering itself down into sand. As with the first volume, the second addresses the bleakness of its inherent design with a sense of resignation, succumbing to the abyss, feeling absorbed by the totality of what must only be described as the end of all things. MICRODOT zeroes in on this cosmic dread with a laser precise focus, and presents it pointillistically, a blotter sheet of monochrome doom, saturated with lust and secrets, a hidden paean to the sweet downslope of entropy. Tune in, turn off, give up. released December 3, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MT002. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Mascara Crash (3:06) 02. Brian Grainger - From A To B (0:51) 03. Brian Grainger - Eleven Eleven (1:43) 04. Brian Grainger - Puttin' & Takin' (4:00) 05. Brian Grainger - Mistranslation (2:53) This is a small collection of unrelated and deliberately unfinished pieces of music, a smoke signal to mark the arrival of a new year, already pregnant with many new ideas and hopeful plans, everything without distinct shape, a movement forward into uncertain lands. It is a marked attempt to be less than precious about what may be published in the public forum, as far as material commodity is concerned - an exercise in informality and spontaneity. Other similar projects have been drafted with this will in mind, and will soon surface, but for now, here is a milemarker in the rainsoaked Urth, witness to only an arbitrary section of time passing, the before just like the after...or will it be different? released January 1, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger, except #4 (and the reproduced lyrics) written by Gene DePaul and Roy Jacobs, produced and performed by Brian. Recorded various dates 2019-2021 at White Pillar. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph taken by Brian at White Pillar, 2021 with zero post processing. This is Milieu Music number MML154. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Carrier (40:52) "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" Pulled ever downward, carried upon the shoulders of infernal stone, wracked with guilt, stained with the acrid tears of a sagging grey nimbus, we sink. A post inscribed with the name of a king, or a metal edict left spare in the sand - it doesn't matter, and still we sink. Spitting and coughing, cursing the men who sent us here, their animosities still writ large upon the fractured landscape, smoke collapsing lungs, forced to imbibe from this doomed goblet, as we drift further down into the black. There is simply nothing left, only a lurching stream of limbs and jaws, sloth and helpless, sucked below the crust of the burnt Urth, grasping at sodded walls smoothed over by the endless tide of the damned. released March 4, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live in the early morning hours of February 24, 2022 using only a Buchla Model 258t dual-oscillator in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, March 2022. Design by ABM&D using Plate 8 from Gustave Doré's illustrations for Dante Alighieri's Inferno, 1857. This is Milieu Music number MMD065. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All blights deserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - [WD37] A Radiant Line Traced Through Continuous Darkness (1:00:08) 02. Brian Grainger - [WD38] Stellar Metals (1:02:59) 03. Brian Grainger - [WD39] Royal Ash Scattered Across The Black Mountains (1:32:57) 04. Brian Grainger - [WD40] Evidence Of Holes In Parallel Realities (1:17:24) 05. Brian Grainger - [WD41] Green Again (1:06:24) 06. Brian Grainger - [WD42] Visions In A Mirage (1:26:24) 07. Brian Grainger - [WD43] Ombilical Brainwave Tether (1:15:05) 08. Brian Grainger - [WD44] Alluvial Impulses (1:07:47) 09. Brian Grainger - [WD45] Pareidoliad (1:23:20) 10. Brian Grainger - [WD46] To Wash A Body In Black Sleep (56:59) 11. Brian Grainger - [WD47] Auguries In Infernal Smoke (1:20:49) 12. Brian Grainger - [WD48] Benthic Ice Barrows (1:11:51) 13. Brian Grainger - [WDY4B] The Silver Pioneer Crossing The Threshold Of Neptune (1:03:38) Year Four of the Workingman's Drone series continued where Year Three left off - single-voice or single-machine studies of sustained-tone drone music, released one session per month, for a year. Unlike Year Three, however, much of Year Four's source sound was shaped by a theme of absence, with many of the sessions focusing upon input-less scenarios of self-oscillating filters, feedback routing and low-frequency oscillators driven well into audible range - informed by a sense of being surrounded by possible musics that remained invisible and peripheral until and unless I tuned the correct instruments and pointed them in these directions. That said, more "traditionalist" sessions materialized as well, such as WD43's 'Ombilical Brainwave Tether' being one of my first sessions with the Roland Juno 106 polyphonic synthesizer, or WD45's 'Pareidoliad' being my first session with a Moog Werkstatt synthesizer (all my prior Moog sessions were in fact generated by self-oscillating a Moogerfooger MF-101 lowpass filter, or using the carrier output wave from a Moogerfooger MF-102 ring modulator - both are indeed Moog synthesizers in a technical sense, but neither were designed to played as instruments necessarily). These sessions felt significant in their own ways, given their usage of machines that I quite literally never imagined I'd have the opportunity to design with. So Year Four is a combinatorial work that measures the emptiness of the abyss against more Earthen and human aspects, but presents them all in a uniform sense according to the ethos of the project. Taken all together, Year Four is another monolith of drone music, within a landscape that is itself filled with many other such structures, and if I didn't enjoy using sessions such as these to the degree that I do, for meditating and sleeping and generally just disconnecting from the stress of everyday life, I would question why I even recorded them to begin with. Aren't drones by any other name going to sound just as sweet (as the Bard might ask)? To answer this, I feel it must be noted that the disparate sound sources that I have gone out of my way to have dedicated sessions with are in fact the discipline itself - an exercise in material and spiritual asceticism, a challenge given to myself to prove (???) just what may be accomplished using a minimum of tools. For something that is ultimately a proof of concept work, the act of proving is immediately redundant upon listening - reasoning, justification, expectation, all of those things melt away beneath the wall that I've laid down before. The drone becomes everything - it looks backward to a primordial time when the plates were shifting and microbial life first began, it looks forward into the void, to the end of time, space, sound itself (see my essay 'The Last Music' published at Difficult Art & Music, 2022: difficultartandmusic.bandcamp.com/album/everything-lasts-forever-and-nothing-ever-dies-a-compendium-of-drone-in-all-its-guises ) and as such, it is the very definition of totality, all-encompassing in every direction. In doing these sessions, I feel I have attuned myself to things that feel elemental, timeless, vibrations that (for all I know) exist somewhere else in the universe, on some deserted planet, where the shape of rocks and the velocity and direction of wind patterns combine to produce this sonorous annunciation of nothing at all. So, here they are collected in one long, deep breath of sound, another monument to deify the vibration at the center of everything that exists, and whether your cranium or eardrums allow you to resonate where my body resonates, feeling what I am feeling, as these masses of sound wash over us both, is simply a matter of biology. If you know, you know, and if you don't, then pass this by as you might any other nondescript building or unexplored path. Perhaps your destination is still yet to come. N.B. There is a bonus 13th session with the Behringer TD-3 included, previously unreleased, recorded on June 13 2021. This session has also been issued separately (digitally) for those who do not wish to buy the full collection in order to obtain it. released July 20, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, January-December 2021, using twelve different but singular sound sources in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WDY4. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All flights deferred. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Dissolving in a Body (Blue Session) (42:08) 02. Brian Grainger - Dissolving in a Body (Yellow Session) (42:43) Recorded live without edits or overdubs on the evening of July 26, 2020, using the R-EW Audioholistics system in conjunction with Mackie ProFX8 & Peavey FX2 mixing consoles, and Squier & Park amplifiers. The O-Card complemented with stained wood is in a small cloth bag. The credits were embedded in the wood via a paper roll. released September 22, 2022 Written, played, recorded & mixed by Brian Grainger / Mastered by The Analog Botanist ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Transitions in Feedback for SSM-1750 (1:25:37) A session utilizing outdated pitch processors (such as a Digitech Whammy 4) and a Tascam DP-008EX multitrack recorder to combine several layers of no-input feedback tones conveyed from an SSM-1750 analog mixing board (produced by Radio Shack in the 1990s) alongside a Pioneer SR-202W spring reverb box and an Alesis Quadraverb. released September 24, 2022 All material by Brian Grainger ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - A Cypress Raft (1:12:07) 02. Brian Grainger - Venusian Canals (1:13:17) Venusian Canals was recorded at White Pillar, three days after my 38th birthday in 2021, and stashed away like a secret until now. It consists of two disc-length sessions, both exploring sustained electric guitar fog alongside sub-bass lines, in a way that recalls my method of working around 2007-2009, where I would often sit down with a Boss RC-20 looper and RV-3 reverb, my Westone Concorde I electric guitar and my Lowrey Magic Genie organ's pedal bass, and roll the tape on my Tascam 414 four-track tape machine. In those days, the bass work was designed as a rhythmic anchor and a tonal center for the improvisations I'd bend out of my guitar, and the effect of combining those two elements always seemed to feel like more than the sum of its parts to my ears. There was some kind of coalescing in between them, where either the guitar's overtones or the bass vibrations pushed everything into a beautiful shimmering stasis. Here, on Venusian Canals, I sought to revisit that sound and feeling, though the bass for the sessions was sequenced on an Arturia Microbrute, rather than my Lowrey, which had to be left behind on a street corner in Columbia, when I moved to Ohio in 2016. Why I stashed these sessions away, I don't quite know. They may have been intended for someone else, or some other subsequent studio plan, or simply saved for a rainy day. With the somewhat quick onset of Autumn this year, they came calling back to me again, warm blankets of hazy dram to wrap myself up within, a counterpoint that allows me to enjoy the cool air rather than avoid it, and so I offer them to you for this purpose, or any other. They belong to both of us now, carrying us wherever their winding canals may reach in the surrealistic and ever-expanding landscape of my creative work. released October 7, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, May 20, 2021, using a Westone Concorde I electric guitar, a Moog LPF, a Boss RC-20, a Danelectro Reel Echo, a BBE Two-Timer delay, an Alesis Quadraverb, a Digitech Whammy 4, an Arturia Microbrute and a Vesta Fire MR-10B four track tape machine. Mastered Summer 2022 by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML177. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Linear Reproduction I (24:09) 02. Brian Grainger - Linear Reproduction II (13:38) 03. Brian Grainger - Linear Reproduction III (37:36) "Tempo pulsos malfokusita" Ten years ago, in April of 2012, my wife and I welcomed our daughter into the world, and her arrival also meant the departure of much of my energy for several months. Having the vocation I've chosen meant that, despite my being drained to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, I still set aside time to go to work, and almost immediately, it was evident that my recording process would never be the same again. Train Line Triads was the first published release I completed after I became a father, and as such, it has held a special regard in my memories. After my daughter officially entered her first year of double digits this year, it came to mind that I ought to revisit the album, and so the recordings you see before you are the result of just such a process. Train Line Triads functioned primarily on a very classically inspired electronic music premise - sampling field recordings of trains passing by our home, very early in the morning, when the world was still otherwise asleep, and building very layered collage works out of the material - and the sessions were further informed by a notable amount of sleep deprivation, which in my experience has always brought into focus certain frequencies, textures and contours in whatever music I'm working on. Temperature sensitivities are heightened considerably, and the speed of my thoughts becomes illustrated in the sloth-like pacing of my arrangements. There's something very synaesthetic that happens in that state, and I've never really known a better way to describe it, but Triads was recorded entirely within that mode. So, revisiting it now, ten years later, in a different state, with a different studio filled with different tools, arguably as a different person, was a careful bit of work to approach - hence my not issuing this release until the last possible moment of the 2022 year. I knew that I did not wish to remaster or alter the original album in any way, it deserves its place as the document that it is, so instead I decided to transfigure the recordings themselves and reapply many of the same processes and ideas that I was employing a decade ago, but with my current workflow and methodology guiding my hand. This meant that I distilled down the original pieces into new tonal constructs, by way of granular resampling, fixed filter banks and Fast-Fourier Transforms, and then decorated those sounds with three different field recordings (from April, the week of my 39th birthday in May, and July of this year), working with many different numerical inputs on modulators, delay rates and any other manner of automated processing that reflected the anniversary being observed. I haven't really made an album like this in a very long time, and this did not really become evident to me until I was nearly finished with the work I set out to do. It feels faithful to the original Train Line Triads, but also distinctly Daytonian, perhaps offering an alternative possibility of what Train Line Triads may have been if it were conceived now, and not then. In the spirit of celebrating the 10th anniversary, I've also decided to offer a very limited edition of 2xCD-R sets, containing both the original Train Line Triads album and this Revisited album, back to back. Whether or not these two are further augmented by a third volume in 2032 remains to be seen, but for now (and now is all we ever really have) this accumulation of the past, reshaped forever into the present moment, is offered to you in the hopes that you find something profound within its pages just as I have. released December 2, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML179. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - We Walked Home (5:24) 02. Brian Grainger - The Arrow (0:37) 03. Brian Grainger - Pagan Wedding Song (A Blue Reprise) (3:01) 04. Brian Grainger - Midwinter Jubilee (3:17) 05. Brian Grainger - Water (4:09) 06. Brian Grainger - Abh Amh (Take 96) (2:19) 07. Brian Grainger - Tygers (3:59) "We Walked Home" is the third single from Summer's Parting Ways, Brian Grainger's bedroom tape-deck idyll. Unlike the previous two singles, it originally appeared on the Clover Farm EP, which was an extremely limited edition of 25 CD-Rs that were shipped out with the first orders for Eight Thousander in 2007. It made enough of an impression at that time to facilitate the subsequent recording of Summer's Parting Ways in the years that followed, and so issuing it as a single is a kind of ouroboros for this sixteen-year old seed, now flourishing as a blue wheatfield all its own. Backed by no less than six b-sides, all predominantly acoustic compositions from more recent years, "We Walked Home" continues to track a melancholic path through Grainger's creative continent with fingerpicked near-blues on bent bronze. The songs here are minimally augmented by electric guitar leads, analog synthesizer and even a violin improvisation played by MB Ions (who also appeared on Summer's Parting Ways), and some moments even offer a small glimpse into what is yet to come from Brian's guitar work. released February 3, 2023 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Six Held Tones for the Antikythera Shipwreck (55:55) Following immediately on the heels of Year Five, Workingman's Drone returns with Year Six, carrying twelve more monthly volumes of sustained tone music. Adhering to the same format as Year Five, with a dedicated focus on unchanging 'held tones' for the duration of each session, 2023's recordings consist of six different sound sources - oscillators, feedback, granular synthesizers, etc - all tuned and panned by ear for each piece. Due to the temperamental nature of analog tools, oscillators will sometimes drift slowly across the piece's runtime, allowing factors such as temperature and electrical current fluctuations to affect the music in real time, and these drifts have been left intact on Workingman's Drone releases in order to capitalize on the unique sensations that become possible with glacial pitch deviations in a dense stereo field. The resultant recordings are minimally equalized and compressed for mastering and final release, and offer a view of the endless in their hypnotic shimmering walls of polyphony. Workingman's Drone has always paired well with psychedelics, meditation, sleep deprivation and other forms of deep listening, and listener experimentation is always encouraged. Differences in stereo systems, volume levels, bass output and closed ear/open air playback will yield many new sonic experiences, highlighting my interest in producing music that is as much a utility as it is composition. Adjacent recordings to Workingman's sessions are often captured and issued as Limestone Ziggurat/LSZ releases, and may also appeal to listeners seeking to explore more sound material in this vein: weltlandschaft.bandcamp.com As with Year Five, Year Six's titles refer topically to various locations, events and other esoteric subjects that exist only as a possible writing prompt for each session. These subjects are in no way shape or form meant to be endorsed or advertised by the recordings, and should be considered in pure aesthetic terms only. Additionally, each session is published with one or more dedications to artists, writers, scientists and other creative minds that share a date of birth with the month of the recording. These people have all, in one or several ways, influenced my own endeavors and so it is my desire to thank them here, where and when I can. ------ PATCH NOTES (2023/04/22) May's six held tones are: 1. Wildfire Laboratories Yanqui (Non-controllable CMOS oscillator) 2. Wildfire Laboratories Sovereign (DTMF oscillator) 3. Behringer 1004 (Triangle wave) 4. Behringer 1006 Filtamp (Self-oscillating sinewave) 5. 2HP LPF (Self-oscillating sinewave) 6. Doepfer A-121-3 LPF (Self-oscillating sinewave) Oscillators 1/2/4 were routed through a Noise Engineering Xerest Pola mixer, with the 1006 being first processed via Beep Boop Kontact gain, then sent into a Noise Engineering Versio (running Multi Versio / Lo-Fi mode). Oscillators 3/5/6 were routed through a Doepfer A-135-2 mixer, then sent into Mutable Inst. Clouds. Minimal parametric equalization and volume leveling were applied in post. This was the second session undertaken with the Yanqui oscillator, a unique ascetic approach to synthesis, which is a single output with no variable options or controls, in a randomly selected tuning that can only be changed by soldering. As such, all five of the other oscillators used for this session were tuned according to the base pitch of the Yanqui. released May 5, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, April 22nd 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WD65, #65 in the Workingman's Drone series, dedicated to Albrecht Dürer and Salvador Dali. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - [WD49] Five Held Tones for the Foundation Stone (55:55) 02. Brian Grainger - [WD50] Five Held Tones for Etemenanki (55:55) 03. Brian Grainger - [WD51] Five Held Tones for the Bering Land Bridge (55:55) 04. Brian Grainger - [WD52] Five Held Tones for Monks Mound (55:55) 05. Brian Grainger - [WD53] Five Held Tones for the Nekoma Pyramid (55:55) 06. Brian Grainger - [WD54] Five Held Tones for the Sikhote-Alin Meteorite (55:55) 07. Brian Grainger - [WD55] Five Held Tones for the Runit Dome (55:55) 08. Brian Grainger - [WD56] Five Held Tones for Rama Setu (55:55) 09. Brian Grainger - [WD57] Five Held Tones for the Barringer Crater (55:55) 10. Brian Grainger - [WD58] Five Held Tones for the Roanoke Colony (55:55) 11. Brian Grainger - [WD59] Five Held Tones for the Draupner Wave (55:56) 12. Brian Grainger - [WD60] Five Held Tones for Elugelab (55:55) Each month in 2022, the Workingman's Drone series issued a fifty-five minute and fifty-five second long recording illustrating a moment held in the air, a view of a precipice frozen in four dimensions. It continues the linear but forever mutable path of the previous four years of the series, focusing in this iteration on five distinct oscillators tuned, mixed and panned by ear, and left to be still, or drift apart, or coalesce back into the same harmony, or become a new harmony, for an hour. Analog machines can be directed, as any instrument can, but unlike many other instruments, they can hide their movements in glacially slow gradations, and when these changes happen within runtime is decided only by each oscillator itself, manifesting like a ripple in the still water that is almost imperceptible. The resultant sound that emanates from these five oscillators is often gently pulsing or wavering, pulling ever so slightly out of focus before returning to placid clarity. Each chord has been formed out of the ether using a location or an event as a kind of imagistic writing prompt, although how the chordal shape itself relates to these prompts is a matter of apparent synaesthesia that even I am not able to fully understand. These sessions have been predominantly defined by the usage of my expanding R-EW Audioholistics modular system throughout the 2022 year, although some sessions were instead informed by non-modular hardware with multiple-oscillator capabilities, such as the Korg opsix (a digital six-operator FM synthesizer) and Behringer's reiteration of the "Blue Marvin" ARP 2600 monophonic analog synthesizer. Regardless of the tools used to arrive at a predetermined conclusion - five held tones, of any sound provenance, in any arrangement so long as it remains unchanged for the duration of the piece - the methodology and axioms involved in the process remain the same. Over the last three years, I have written and recorded a prolific amount of material that supports my interests in exploring drone music in a more ascetic fashion than many other musicians seem willing to, with much of the music put forth under the definition of "drone" instead being some form of ambient music or another. To my ears, drone music must remain as compositionally static and unchanged as possible - a task much easier described than executed, given the aforementioned nature of analog oscillators and their associated designs. These twelve sessions perhaps only imply stillness, as nothing in the observable universe can ever remain completely still, although the act of sculpting such focused minimalistic work remains invigorating to me, not only for the meditative benefits of immersing oneself in a vibrational isolation tank, but for the philosophical considerations that inevitably come to light in the empty spaces left open, where the music no longer has anything else to say. released August 3, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, January-December 2022 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system in conjunction with various outboard devices. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Copy, design and manufacture by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WDY5. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Seven PM Indoors [2006/09/06] (9:30) 02. Brian Grainger - Urban Lightworks [2005/07/04] (25:34) 03. Brian Grainger - Thunderstorm Off Highway Seventeen [2004/08/29] (34:55) Opening Brian's ongoing series of non-musical works - Naked Sound - is Naked Sound One, a collection of three field recordings from three different years and locations. Originally from cassette tapes, these recordings offer a cozy picture of Brian's home life between 2004 and 2006. released November 5, 2006 Recorded and produced by Brian Grainger. Photography by Brian. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-01. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Empty Kitchen, Loris 2002 (20:59) 02. Brian Grainger - Empty Hallway, Columbia 2006 (9:08) 03. Brian Grainger - Empty Garage, Conway 2001 (13:45) The second Naked Sound installment contains three extensive recordings of empty rooms, processed and treated to bring out texture and non-human tonalities. Going further back than most of Brian's Naked Sound releases, Naked Sound Two reaches as deep as 2001, 2002 and 2006 for its provenance, showcasing Brian's interest in experimental audio even as a teenager. released January 7, 2007 Recorded, processed and produced by Brian Grainger. Photography by Brian. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-03. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - White (3:33) 02. Brian Grainger - Beta (3:33) 03. Brian Grainger - Thread (3:33) 04. Brian Grainger - Library (3:33) 05. Brian Grainger - Film (3:33) 06. Brian Grainger - Testcard (3:33) 07. Brian Grainger - Air (3:33) 08. Brian Grainger - Ground (3:33) 09. Brian Grainger - Field (3:33) 10. Brian Grainger - Girders (3:33) 11. Brian Grainger - Sepia (3:33) 12. Brian Grainger - Cleaner (3:33) 13. Brian Grainger - Water (3:33) 14. Brian Grainger - Grain (3:33) 15. Brian Grainger - Bottle (3:33) For Brian's third foray into the Naked Sound series concept, a release that is completely obsessed with threes emerges. Fifteen tracks, each 3 minutes and 33 seconds in length, comprised solely of the processed sound of empty cassette tape hiss. Minimalism as a joke and as an experiment, all at once. Emptiness as music, so-called silence mutated into sound. A varied and colorful collection of audio that is somewhere between music and...nothing. released February 15, 2007 Recorded and produced by Brian Grainger. Photography by Brian. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-05. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Country Woodside Afternoon On Broken Tape (49:36) 02. Brian Grainger - Sun Setting Over A Backyard Garden (49:10) "The second new addition to the catalog is Brian Grainger's newest installment of the Naked Sound series: Naked Sound Four. This time it comes in the form of a double-album that logs Brian's trip back down to Loris, South Carolina, where he used to live, in the deep open countryside that he still takes influence from today. One half recorded in the sunny daytime, and the other half recorded as the sun set. Lonesome, colorful and full of longing, this is the sound of the Southern country, and one of the special places Brian calls home." -From the SSR website, 2007 released May 12, 2007 Recorded and produced by Brian Grainger. Photography by Brian. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-07. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Night Suite For Wind And Chimes (58:25) The fifth installment of Brian's ongoing Naked Sound series is a single recording of a stormy night at his home. Taped on his front porch where several wooden and metal chimes hang, the sound of the storm's winds and rain are translated into a musical suite, absent of performers or instruments, completely improvised by the storm. released July 30, 2007 Recorded and mastered by Brian Grainger at 114RKD, 2007. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-09, and fifth in the ongoing Naked Sound catalog set. Photograph by Brian, taken at Foxhill, 2007. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - For Static & Percussion (8:48) 02. Brian Grainger - For Static & Ground (8:00) 03. Brian Grainger - For Exponential Static (6:24) 04. Brian Grainger - For Ring Modulator & Feedback (6:24) 05. Brian Grainger - For Ringmod, Tremolo & Feedback (7:36) 06. Brian Grainger - For Percussion & Vocals (8:24) Brian Grainger's latest weird-out, Naked Sound Six. A recording of an experiment with various types of feedback and room acoustics, with a little help from David's equipment. A very awkward and engaging listen, and remarkably similar in sound to our good friend Ophibre, who has influenced Brian's experimental tendencies greatly. released November 30, 2007 Constructed, recorded, produced and mastered by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, Summer 2007. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-11, and sixth in the Naked Sound catalog set. Photograph taken by Brian, Foxhill, 2007. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - 33 / 66 / 96 / 66 (10:00) 02. Brian Grainger - 40 / 80 / 160 / 80 (10:00) 03. Brian Grainger - 64 / 128 / 32 / 64 (10:00) 04. Brian Grainger - 45 / 90 / 90 / 180 (10:00) Brian's "Naked Sound Seven" is the seventh volume of his ongoing Naked Sound series of found sound, field recordings and musique-concrete experiments. Four 10-minute pieces creating using only numerical frequencies of sine tones to create mathematically-harmonic chord drones. Very warm and bassy, but incredibly monochromatic, and probably better suited to a "room listening" presentation where the sound is allowed to merely color the physical environment rather than surround it. This is incredibly minimal, dissonance-free ambience that would be best enjoyed in the evening as the listener relaxes with other activities such as reading a book or taking a warm bath. released May 3, 2009 Constructed, produced, recorded and mastered by Brian Grainger at 114RKD, 2009. This is Second Sun Recordings number SSRO-13, and seventh in the Naked Sound catalog set. Photograph taken by Brian, Dayton, Ohio, 2007. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Artifacts On Tape [857 West Harrelson Road, Summer 2000, Night] (31:45) This is a raw, unedited and unaltered recording of a 13 year old cassette tape side. In 2000, I was in a band with three other friends, and we used to regularly rehearse in my father's house, which was in the actual middle of nowhere. He lived over a mile away from a single neighbor, in the deep country, right next to acres of overgrown swamps, on a plot of land that has remained in my family since sometime around the Civil War. Living there with him was hard sometimes, especially at night - you'd walk outside and swear someone was watching. Additionally, every time my friends or my sister's friends would visit, they would inevitably experience some kind of sound oddity (disembodied voices from outside or elsewhere in the house, strange noises from within the swamp like a heartbeat) that left them never wanting to come back again. Occasionally, this activity would also include failing lights, spots of unusual cold or even glimpses of figures in your peripheral vision - although the latter could always be attributed to the mind making things up in a stressful situation. On the night this tape was recorded, my band had just finished rehearsing and we were in prime prankster mode. Our drummer wanted to sleep on the couch, as he had to clock into work early the next day, and we were determined to mess with him. Me being the perpetual documentarian that I am, I decided it would be *extra* fun if we recorded it, so I set up a mic discreetly next to the sofa where he wouldn't see, and rolled tape. After a few minutes, we relented and went into my room on the other side of the house to let him sleep. A few minutes later, he bursts into my room scared out of his mind, telling us he felt cold for no reason, and that there were things tapping at the windows and he heard things moving the shades, even though the windows were shut and there was no one else in the house. We immediately assumed he was trying to get even with us, and then I realized we had taped the entire thing. We got the tape, brought it back and decided if anything actually happened, it would have been recorded. Sure enough, after you hear us leave the room, things start to bump the microphone and even stranger rhythmic pulses start to take the audio over. We were shocked. Even today, I have no explanation for what this really is. People might think I threw this together in a program, but rest assured every single person who was with me that night can verify that this tape is real. One of them even refused to ever come back to my father's place after this happened. It remains one of the weirdest experiences I've had in my lifetime of recording, and I thought the tape rip, along with the story of how it came to be, would make interesting night time discussion. As Ed Wood wrote in Plan 9 From Outer Space: "Can you prove that it didn't happen?" released November 11, 2013 Originally released digitally as "Artifacts On Tape" at Milieu Music. Recorded by Brian Grainger, 2000 in Loris, South Carolina. Photograph taken by Brian in Loris, SC. This is CO_RD Tapes number NS#8, and eighth in the Naked Sound catalog series. Thanks to my sister Katie for locating this tape after I thought it was lost for years. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Water On Glass [December 2014] (NS#9.1) (1:05:42) 02. Brian Grainger - Water On Glass [December 2014] (NS#9.2) (1:06:45) 03. Brian Grainger - Water On Glass [December 2014] (NS#9.3) (1:03:58) A three-plus hour binaural recording of late-night Carolinian rainfall in the Botany Bay backyard. Some sections of this recording appeared in altered/processed form as a backdrop for the soon to be released Coppice Halifax album Rurals, while Water On Glass is the complete and unedited recording. In the last three months, I've used this recording as a superb sleep aid, as it provides the perfect amount of pitter-patter from the amplified sound of the raindrops on glass, as opposed to an outdoor recording. It eloquently captures the warm happiness I feel on rainy or inclement nights, when just knowing you're inside and comfortably protected from the elements is enough to reassure you in some profound way. Editor's Note: The full recording had to be divided up into three separate parts in accordance with Bandcamp's file upload restrictions. As such, these three files are designed to run seamlessly on playback, provided the listener uses playback devices that do not add gaps between tracks. There is also a limited CD-R version with a composite 80-minute mix of Water On Glass, carefully assembled to fit on a single disc. released January 11, 2015 Recorded and produced by Brian Grainger at Botany Bay, December 2014. Photograph taken by Brian at Foxhill, 2006. This is CO_RD Tapes number NS#9, and ninth in the Naked Sound series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Tuesday (3:10) 02. Brian Grainger - Wednesday (2:35) 03. Brian Grainger - Thursday (2:29) 04. Brian Grainger - Friday (2:12) 05. Brian Grainger - Saturday (2:32) 06. Brian Grainger - Sunday (2:53) 07. Brian Grainger - Monday (2:10) 08. Brian Grainger - Tuesday II (2:55) 09. Brian Grainger - Wednesday II (1:38) 10. Brian Grainger - Thursday II (2:43) 11. Brian Grainger - Friday II (2:01) 12. Brian Grainger - Saturday II (2:06) 13. Brian Grainger - Sunday II (2:42) 14. Brian Grainger - Monday II (2:55) 15. Brian Grainger - Tuesday III (1:58) 16. Brian Grainger - Wednesday III (2:01) 17. Brian Grainger - Thursday III (2:30) 18. Brian Grainger - Friday III (3:08) 19. Brian Grainger - Saturday III (1:31) 20. Brian Grainger - Sunday III (1:58) 21. Brian Grainger - Monday III (2:06) 22. Brian Grainger - Tuesday IV (0:56) 23. Brian Grainger - Wednesday IV (1:50) 24. Brian Grainger - Thursday IV (0:46) 25. Brian Grainger - Friday IV (2:03) 26. Brian Grainger - Saturday IV (3:19) 27. Brian Grainger - Sunday IV (3:28) 28. Brian Grainger - Monday IV (4:52) 29. Brian Grainger - Tuesday V (2:41) 30. Brian Grainger - Wednesday V (2:33) 31. Brian Grainger - Thursday V (3:11) A one to two-hour field recording of my home was made every day during the month of May in 2007, with the intention of exponentially pitch shifting the audio so much that each day's recording would be presented as a 1-3 minute piece, therefore allowing an entire month of field recordings to be experienced in the runtime of a single album. Naked Sound Ten plays with the idea of time as a processing element, showcasing different sonic ephemera that only becomes obvious after the length of a file has been compressed beyond any recognizable point. These thirty-one recordings were also recently utilized in more elongated processing steps to create the Coppice Halifax album M31, wherein all thirty-one field recordings are layered together in a single 2 hour piece. Naked Sound Ten is the sound of an environment heard at a macroscopic level, and a possible example of how the world might sound if humans were to experience it at 10% of their normal pace. released March 19, 2015 Recorded by Brian Grainger at 114RKD, May 1-31, 2007. Processed at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2008-2015. Cover photograph taken at 114RKD by Brian, 2009. This is CO_RD Tapes number NS#10, and 10th in the Naked Sound catalog set. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Martius, Fifteenth Humid Torch Of Brutality (1:02:05) Naked Sound Eleven is a recent assemblage of several hours of recorded sound from beneath three different window AC units in my current home. A monolithic drone radiates from these machines that is both soothing and powerful, and Martius (as I have so named it) is a testament to the brutal South Carolinian heat and humidity that comes with life in a sub-tropical zone. For those who don't know, we don't really get a Spring season like most others do - we tend to go straight from Winter cold to Summer heat levels as early as February. To compound on top of that, my current home is on top of a spring, meaning everything always contains some level of moisture, and never truly dries up. I have grown to hate this kind of weather, the older I get, and so with my sticky arms and sweating fists pointed at the sky, I submit Martius as a report of protest against this yearly green Hell we must endure. "For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee." -H. Melville, 1851 released April 21, 2015 Recorded and constructed by Brian Grainger at Botany Bay, March 2015. Cover photo taken in Loris, SC by Brian, 2010. This is CO_RD Tapes number NS#11, and 11th in the Naked Sound catalog set. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Sleet Farming [1/2] (1:00:00) 02. Brian Grainger - Sleet Farming [2/2] (1:05:01) A two-hour recording of a sleet storm from behind the Botany Bay studio window, treated and processed to bring out the sound of the sleet and cancel out other elements of the recording, such as the room sound itself. A minimal hiss of white noise and the texture of the sleet tapping at the glass occasionally makes Naked Sound Twelve a perfect candidate for bedtime listening, reminding you of the comforts of your bed, blanket and pillow while your room protects you like a shield from the elements. The CD-R version of Naked Sound Twelve contains a special "composite" mix of Sleet Farming, optimized to fit onto an 80-minute disc. released June 19, 2015 Recorded and processed by Brian Grainger at Botany Bay, February 2015. This is CO_RD Tapes number NS#12, and twelfth in the ongoing Naked Sound catalog. Cover photo taken by Brian at Birch Park, 4 AM, 2008. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Arihagne (7:14) 02. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Night Shards (8:37) 03. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Lethe (8:50) 04. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Smoke (8:14) 05. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Red Sun (5:46) 06. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Hanging Garden (7:38) 07. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Sirenes (7:42) 08. Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Sleeping Village (6:20) Credits Guitar, Bass, Organ – Brian Grainger Guitar, Piano, Tape [Reel To Reel] – Shinobu Nemoto Producer [Uncredited] – Brian Grainger, Shinobu Nemoto Written-By – Brian Grainger, Shinobu Nemoto ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer - 2008.08.26 (24:20) 02. Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer - 2008.08.27 (29:10) 03. Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer - 2008.08.28.1 (27:47) 04. Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer - 2008.08.28.2 (27:20) 05. Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer - White Version By Brian Grainger (1:19:06) 06. Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer - Black Version By John-Paul Kramer (1:06:17) A compilation of both 2-CD collaborative releases by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer, including all four pieces from the self-titled 2-CD set (originally issued in a limited edition as MML039) and both pieces from the Reconstructions 2-CD set (MMDL01). Over four hours of dense ambient/drone improvisation! released March 1, 2011 All music written by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer. Tracks 1-5 produced by Brian Grainger, track 6 produced by John-Paul Kramer. This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR039. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Didn't Sleep At All (5:03) 02. Brian Grainger - Endless Orange Daydream (0:45) 03. Brian Grainger - Summer Camp (3:11) 04. Orick - Southern Son (7:22) 05. Orick - Chatsworth Evening Glow (4:03) 06. Brian Grainger - Didn't Sleep At All (Pacific Version) (4:05) 07. Orick - Southern Son (Overhills Version) (7:27) A dual 7" Split Release from Brian Grainger (Milieu) and Orick (longtime friends and musical collaborators, Nick Huntington of Freescha and John Borucki) released June 6, 2013 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Grainger - Mudd's Boots (4:50) 02. Brian Grainger - Creedence Swampwater Revenge (1:59) 03. Biathalon - Goomy (1:54) (24Bit) 04. Biathalon - Moss (3:13) 05. Brian Grainger - Mudd's Boots [Night Sequels Mix] (4:36) 06. Biathalon - Moss [Coppice Halifax Expansion] (6:32) Expanded digital version of Brian Grainger and Biathalon's Backwater Fumes split 7" EP, featuring two bonus remixes by Night Sequels and Coppice Halifax. released August 12, 2011 Written and Produced by Brian Grainger, Eric Adrian Lee and Nick Huntington. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - At Dusk (2:45) 02. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Porchlight (6:02) 03. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Forest (4:09) 04. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Cascade (3:20) 05. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Dusty (4:35) 06. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Cedars (3:00) 07. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Marble Moonbeam (5:25) 08. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Cabin Slide (2:52) 09. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Treesmoke (4:30) 10. Brian Ellis & Brian Grainger - Night Beach (4:22) Rarely has the feeling of late summer twilight been captured as well on record as on this collaborative effort by Southern California native Brian Ellis and South Carolina ambient producer Brian Grainger. This is the sound of two offbeat musicians zoning out with acoustic guitars, hand drums, flutes and an array of vintage synthesizers and tape machines, brewing a mysterious, mellow kind of acid folk, like it’s never quite been brewed before. Though psychedelic in nature this isn’t yet another materialization of a 1970s commune-folk vision - rather it feels like a work of ghostly solitude, strangely absent from human activity, slowly, aimlessly moving forward like a lonely breeze travelling down the coastline as the day fades away. Brian Ellis has been perfecting his raga-influenced guitar playing for years in the outskirts of San Diego County, absorbing the Takoma catalogue as well as British folk from the 1960s and 1970s, before deciding to merge his unique style of playing with the hazy sounds of East Coast synth-wizard Brian Grainger - an expert in sculpturing electronics in such a way that they sound like organic entities rather than electronic circuits. The result is a hushed, pastoral piece of music, evoking the rural American surroundings of its creators and its warm southern air. This lengthy collaboration took place over several years - on one hand everything floats in a seemingly unordered manner, but on the other hand everything follows a crystal clear overall path. Ellis’ open-tuned guitar playing merges naturally with Brian Grainger’s faded synth lines and sound treatments, sometimes alluding to several styles and musical eras simultaneously, creating an atmosphere of ambiguity and timelessness throughout the album. Ultimately a serene, rare and kaleidoscopic work. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Arjen Schat - Mantra (59:05) 02. Brian Grainger - Obviation (59:12) Having worked together on many different occasions in the past, Arjen Schat and I have once again collaborated for this massive P / Psi / P release. Essentially a four-part album of two original pieces and two reinterpretations, Shapes Perceived In Blackness consists first of "Mantra", a nearly hour-long piece from Arjen's studio of a few years ago now. It would not feel out of place next to works like Primal or Oppidium Arnoldi Villa, both records I've spent literal years inside, exploring. Arjen's work was paramount for my mental health when my daughter Penelope was born and came home from the hospital. When I could only take small breaks for rest, Arjen's music was constant at my bedside, effectively deflating the stress from my mind and body and letting me get the most out of the downtime I had. Backing Arjen's stellar piece is an equally long atmosphere titled "Obviation", which was also recorded years ago now, and for one reason or another, left to quietly age in a box in the studio. Intended as a tape-worn, humid companion piece to Arjen's crystalline monolith, "Obviation" recalls the sticky Summer nights so frequently present in my old studio in the subtropics. Hovering, almost-chords waft between slow gusts of air, analog fuzz and hiss-crusted phaser waves. I was recently honored with the invitation to pen the liner notes inside Arjen's forthcoming vinyl LP Spectrum (check it out here: arjenschat.nl/album/spectrum ) but I feel it is pertinent to note that this release should also serve as evidence for just how much love and respect I hold for Arjen's work. That we can continue forward with our ideas in any kind of unison is a pleasure and a career highlight for me. NOTE: The physical version of this release comes with two more extended pieces, each of us reinterpreting and recontextualizing each other's piece, making it a four-disc affair. The additional 2-disc release is titled Colors Perceived In Silence, and is exclusive to the physical format. released October 10, 2017 Mantra: W/P by Arjen Schat. Mastered at Infraklang. Obviation: W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦII. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Peter Wright & Brian Grainger - A More Modern Nightmare (22:12) 02. Peter Wright & Brian Grainger - A Tightrope Between (11:50) 03. Peter Wright & Brian Grainger - Grappling With A Cosmic Crisis (36:15) 24Bit Initially recorded between Summer and Autumn of 2009, then stashed away in the shade for almost nine years, my collaborative full-length album with Peter Wright is now finally issued forth into the universe. A mammoth album of drones, feedback, sub-bass harmonics and psychedelic textures, set across three different pieces, Peint Arbre is a dense and enveloping trip through the tangential and exploratory minds of two men, working almost 8,000 miles apart. Peter Wright, if you are unaware, is an outright legend of drone music, guitar improvisation and spectacularly filmic textures, having been active in the New Zealand experimental music culture since 1992. I've long been influenced by his recordings, and in 2009 I was lucky enough to host his epic Snow Blind double-album at INSTALL, the now-defunct label I co-operated with David Tagg. We followed Snow Blind with a vinyl release of Wright's transcendent Orbit, and he also guested on my One Bleak Try album, lending many additional layers of sonic seasoning to the track "Black Rust Caress." Since INSTALL closed its doors years ago, I've wanted to give this unreleased album we did a proper release. Since so much time had passed, Peter decided to revisit the recordings and add/subtract some things to bring it into its present form (so for those few out there who heard this album in its previous iteration, this is a different beast). Peint Arbre is an interesting cross-pollination of my distorted bass monolith drones, generated using guitar and organ in the Rolling Knoll studio, and Peter's contributions of guitars, vocals, percussion and all sorts of other instruments. Indeed, it feels very alive, and that is almost all Peter's doing - I merely provided the initiative steps. So it follows that hopefully another collaboration is due between us, and the door is of course always open for Peter to issue something of his own here at Psøma Psi Phi. released December 3, 2018 W/P by Peter Wright & Brian Grainger. Principal recording done in South Carolina at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2009. Subsequent and final pass recording done in New Zealand, 2009 and 2018. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦVII. ![]() foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Duenn & Brian Grainger - Presence (Version IIB) (1:16:09) Working with Duenn's source material, Brian Grainger has crafted a beautifully resigned collaborative piece which compliments deep listening and low level playback. Subtle pitch correction creates a softly glowing orb of drone who's muted harmonics wrap themselves into luminous filigree. Its elegant stasis is reminiscent of works by John Hudak, Bernard Gunter and Richard Chartier. Duenn is based in Fukuoka, Japan. His work has been released on Entr’acte, LINE and Slowdown Records amongst others. Using minimal equipment his work explores minimalism within sound art, ambient and contemporary electronic music. In 2017 he formed the experimental unit "3RENSA" with Masami Akita (Merzbow) and Nyantora. Brian Grainger lives and works in Ohio, producing impressionistic audio work through his White Pillar Workshop. Since 2004 he has maintained his own boutique imprint Milieu Music, for releasing his work directly via mail-order. released March 29, 2019 NONUMBER002 Digital only. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Slo Plasticc (6:51) 02. Milieu - Clock (5:59) 03. Bike - Phi-Lips (5:20) 04. Brian Grainger - Green Heat Sluice (3:16) 05. Coppice Halifax - Exalt The Sunbeam Clarion (7:03) 06. Milieu - Silk Fur Marcine (12:34) 07. Milieu - Soda Can Acid [Bluebubbles Mix] (9:11) 08. Coppice Halifax - White Pillar Viii [Excerpt] (14:23) 09. Coppice Halifax - Glissandic [B / Excerpt] (5:21) 10. Milieu - Burnt Dusk [Excerpt] (6:19) 11. Coppice Halifax - Wind Hues [Excerpt] (7:15) 12. Bike - Lure [Dub] (7:20) 13. Milieu - Gate [Cardfeedback Modulus] (5:30) 14. Coppice Halifax - Biorhexistasis [B/B / Excerpt] (8:57) 15. Coppice Halifax - Transiro 2.3 (13:10) 16. Coppice Halifax - Growth Marker Øø1 (5:32) 17. Milieu - A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions [Part One] (3:38) 18. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mastodon [Passage Iv / Excerpt] (6:40) 19. Milieu - Ambitropic Bedroom Carnival [Night / Excerpt] (12:20) 20. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Ph. 8 / Image 32Mx6.2 / Excerpt] (13:53) 21. Brian Grainger - Pyanepsion [Side B / Excerpt] (6:02) 22. Coppice Halifax - Argentine Confiture [Halides] (6:06) 23. Brian Grainger - Marble Column Covered In Ash (6:17) 24. Milieu - Snowradius, Part Two [Excerpt] (6:02) 25. Brian Grainger - Gardensoil [Excerpt] (9:49) 26. Brian Grainger - Location [Excerpt] (10:51) 27. Milieu - Accumulation State 3 [Excerpt] (8:22) 28. Brian Grainger - Ameliorator [Excerpt] (13:40) 2017 has been a tumultuous year, to say the least. It has gone by fast and also, somehow, excruciatingly slowly. It was filled with higher highs and lower lows than I think I've personally felt in a long time. Through it all, I've survived, and if you're reading this: so have you. Congratulations to us! We all need to think of ourselves from time to time, and especially during these colder and more stressful months of the year. It is my sincere hope that these recordings, which were all issued in the past 12 months, bring you warmth, happiness, contentment and a little curiosity, as all gifts are supposed to do. A handshake to everyone, with a special hug for my steadfast and constant supporters in the DEEP EARTH series and the recently-launched MILIEU MUSIC FAN CLUB. Without every single one of you, this music might not exist - thank you. Happy holidays, and here's to an even happier new year in 2018. Join my sprawling DEEP EARTH subscription series (now in its third consecutive year!) here: malfokusita.bandcamp.com Join the OFFICIAL MILIEU MUSIC FAN CLUB (for exclusive music, discounts and more surprises!) here: www.patreon.com/analogbotany released December 16, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay & White Pillar Workshop, various dates. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMLP23. Photograph taken at White Pillar Workshop, 2017. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Rainy Windows (5:30) 02. Milieu - Nurse Mask 2 (5:32) 03. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam 2 (7:30) 04. Milieu - Cinder & Blush (5:46) 05. Coppice Halifax - Visual Phase 3 [Excerpt] (7:55) 06. Coppice Halifax - Floodlights [Excerpt] (7:51) 07. Bike - Occlipse [Excerpt] (4:20) 08. Milieu - King's Cathedral (3:40) 09. Milieu - Rainpatch 2 [Excerpt] (7:02) 10. Milieu - White Pillar IX [Excerpt] (9:23) 11. Milieu - Bloody Knuckles 5 (9:33) 12. Coppice Halifax - Continent [Excerpt] (10:27) 13. Brian Grainger - An Empty Sea [Excerpt] (6:40) 14. Milieu - Tropical Swamp (7:25) 15. Milieu - Valley Green (5:55) 16. Milieu - Sine Wand 3 (4:44) 17. Coppice Halifax - Raindrop [Bow Splash] (7:07) 18. Milieu - Nightlazer 5 (7:52) 19. Bike - Vliss Ø3 (7:08) 20. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram 3 (11:09) 21. Milieu - Quadra 3 (7:09) 22. Coppice Halifax - Kolizii 1.1 (7:07) 23. Milieu - Bismuth Cosmolog [Excerpt] (4:28) 24. Coppice Halifax - Clover Pharm [Excerpt] (6:09) 25. Milieu - Sunday Meadow Blush [Excerpt] (8:45) 26. Milieu - Wind Over Hill [Excerpt] (6:38) 27. Coppice Halifax - Greenspace [Excerpt] (5:05) 28. Brian Grainger - Sembre III [Excerpt] (5:24) 29. Coppice Halifax - Navigant Void [Excerpt] (5:34) 30. Coppice Halifax - Earth Dub [Excerpt] (8:54) 31. Brian Grainger - Cursive Bell [Iteration #0013 / Excerpt] (10:45) 31 tracks for 31 days! The 2018 edition of the Milieu Music Yearbook has arrived! A look back at 31 different releases the label issued in the past year (and this isn't even close to all of them!) that will certainly keep your ears tickled throughout this most stressful of months. As before, the Yearbook is almost four hours of music, bargain priced at $3.33 only until the New Year! This set is a great way to check out things in the catalog you may have missed, or just have a set of roadtrip-ready cuts on hand when you've had it with the holidays and just need to get away. A handshake to everyone, with a special hug for my steadfast and constant supporters in the DEEP EARTH series and the recently-launched MILIEU MUSIC FAN CLUB. Without every single one of you, this music might not exist - thank you. Happy holidays, and here's to an even happier new year in 2019. Join my sprawling DEEP EARTH subscription series (now in its third consecutive year!) here: malfokusita.bandcamp.com Join the OFFICIAL MILIEU MUSIC FAN CLUB (for exclusive music, discounts and more surprises!) here: www.patreon.com/analogbotany released December 8, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, various dates throughout 2017-2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, design & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMLP24. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 - ![]() ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Lake Busbee (12:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Electric Plant (8:27) 03. Coppice Halifax - Bronze (18:42) 04. Coppice Halifax - Flower Field (6:25) 05. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (8:50) 06. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 07. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 08. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 09. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 10. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 11. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 12. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 13. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 14. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 15. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 16. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (0:04) 17. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (10:56) Notes A limited edition of 75 copies, included with the first 75 orders of Milieu's Our Blue Rainbow album. The disc counts through short silent tracks to play unlisted songs on tracks 5 and 17. Three different versions of the art on the discs themselves exist. Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Nettles [Edit] (4:33) 02. Coppice Halifax - Blue Nettles (7:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Purple Nettles (5:54) 04. Coppice Halifax - White Nettles (5:55) 05. Coppice Halifax - Honey (4:14) 06. Coppice Halifax - Cedarmill Dub (3:49) 07. Coppice Halifax - Quartnie (5:34) 08. Coppice Halifax - Soil [Live] (19:36) Singles is, as the name probably implies, a collection of material previously issued on three different Coppice Halifax singles that are now out of print. The opening four cuts were previously released as the Nettles EP, while "Honey" and the lengthy experimental live version of "Soil" were originally released as the Honeysoil EP. "Cedarmill Dub" is an alternate version of "Cedar Mill" from the self-titled Coppice Halifax album, previously only available on a promotional 3" CD-R of the same name, and "Quartnie" was an outtake from the Bedroom Carpet sessions that previously appeared on a Metanoia Media compilation album. Altogether, Singles treads both techno, dub and drone terrain with relative ease, making this collection a vibrant showcase of what the early days of the evolving Coppice Halifax sound were like. released July 24, 2008 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded various dates at 114RKD, 2005-2008. This is Milieu Music number MML029. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dayglo Daze [Original Version] (5:59) 02. Casio Commander - Skipping Stones Along The Northeast Coastline [Coppice Halifax Cmx] (8:20) 03. Gabriel - Sunrise Reef [Coppice Halifax Cmx] (6:55) 04. Dissolved - Slektramine [Coppice Halifax Cmx] (6:08) 05. Lithium Enchantment - Magic Step [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (6:52) 06. Milieu - Alvin Sparks [1983 Rebuild By Coppice Halifax] (6:12) 07. Loafeye - Rest, You Are Home [Coppice Halifax Rebuild] (10:18) 08. Eleven Steps - Horizon [Coppice Halifax Night Smoke Dub] (9:40) 09. Humeka - Maison Beat Vodka [Coppice Halifax Cmx] (8:55) 10. Coppice Halifax - Canal [Original Version] (5:28) The first retrospective compilation of Coppice Halifax remix works, bookended by two original works that were taken from the Coppice Halifax vaults especially for this occasion. Originally issued in 2008 at Milieu Music, in a blue CD-R edition of 100 copies, which went out of print shortly thereafter. Now available digitally for the first time, collecting varied mixes from a broad spectrum of electronic musicians while maintaining a cool cohesion as its own album of music. released August 24, 2008 This is Milieu Music number MML035. Written by the credited artists. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Reproduced with permission. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled 1 (10:51) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled 2 (9:46) A companion EP to the first Ocean Lion album (MMD002), featuring two pieces from the same recording session that were left off the album. These two pieces reflect more what was to come with the second Ocean Lion album (MMD007) with more arrangements present in the composition, rather than improvisation. Using samples of orchestral vinyl and electric guitar, these songs carry a melancholic mood that echoes the feeling of being at sea. released September 22, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, Summer 2008. Electric guitar on track 2 by David Tagg. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 1.1 (16:31) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 1.2 (7:28) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 1.3 (10:39) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 1.4 (25:39) REISSUED! In celebration of the long-delayed and much-awaited OCEAN LION III, both OCEAN LION and OCEAN LION II are being given reissues in matching packaging, with updated album cover photography to make the whole set glow on your record shelf. Possibly THE tropical CH album, for many listeners out there - a landmark in the ever-expanding Halifaxian universe! Remember, it's not a lake - it's an ocean! "Ocean Lion is the first of four planned albums to bear the title, wherein deep seascapes of dripping tropical atmosphere and droning ambient bliss coalesce with mid-fi drum work that could be a distant buoy, and dub-influenced basslines that wouldn't be out of place on a Casino Versus Japan record. This is music designed from the ground up to be endless, continually shifting in subtle variants while keeping things anchored to a minimal recording approach. Elegant, yet restrained, Ocean Lion builds psychedelic castles out of Henry Mancini tape loops (among other orchestral sound sources) and presents the listener with a sensual experience that brings the beach and the low tide right into your living room." -Milieu Music, 2008 released September 22, 2008 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD002. Photograph by Brian, Cleveland 2014. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ganymede (6:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps (7:45) 03. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps II (6:31) This is the first EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released February 24, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, January 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB1. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Porcelain (6:06) 02. Coppice Halifax - Surfaces (6:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Surfaces II (6:26) This is the second EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released February 24, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, February 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB2. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Red (6:45) 02. Coppice Halifax - Valerian (13:53) This is the third EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released March 14, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, March 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB3 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Peachtree (5:43) 02. Coppice Halifax - Bunkbeds (5:06) 03. Coppice Halifax - Summer Park (4:55) 04. Coppice Halifax - My Psychedelic Ceiling (5:32) 05. Coppice Halifax - Braid II (5:13) 06. Coppice Halifax - Quartz (2:02) 07. Coppice Halifax - Everything Chimes (5:32) 08. Coppice Halifax - Toybox (2:19) 09. Coppice Halifax - Sleeping Neighborhood (8:40) 10. Coppice Halifax - 1988 Loop (1:45) The first Coppice Halifax full-length recording since 2008′s tropical-overdose Ocean Lion, Bedroom Carpet brings a much different vibe to the table. Largely ambient but not without some very beat-based tracks, Bedroom Carpet is very warm and humid with lots of sleepy-eyed melodies blipping across a thin line of tape hiss. Written and recorded using only two drum machines, an old Casio keyboard and a four-track tape deck, this is some of my most cozy, playful and analogue music ever made. Very heavily influenced by records like Cylob’s Cylobian Sunset, Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II and the Melodies From Mars album, as well as things like Kinesthesia, Bochum Welt and even friends of mine Thisket and EOD. released March 14, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008-2009. This is Milieu Music number MMD004. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Radere - The Sunrise Ruby [Botanical Cmx] (12:02) 02. Radere - The Sunrise Ruby [Bronze Cmx] (13:18) 03. Coppice Halifax - Inlets [Loop Structure Mix] (10:40) 04. Coppice Halifax - Inlets [A Full Rounding Dub] (17:17) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-By – Coppice Halifax (tracks: 3-4), Radere (tracks: 1-2) Notes © Coppice Halifax & Radere 2009 Limited edition of 50 copies. Artwork consists of a colored paper sleeve with ink stamping and a colored paper insert (either orange or yellow) X Lossless Decoder version 20121222 (142.2) TITLE "ABX2" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Falling (6:14) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ovals (7:00) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ovals II (7:34) This is the fourth EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released April 12, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, April 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB4. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Southland (6:25) 02. Coppice Halifax - Mirror (Side A) (5:37) 03. Coppice Halifax - Mirror (Side B) (8:56) The fifth EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released May 5, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, May 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB5. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cinnamon (6:44) 02. Coppice Halifax - Smoke (6:39) 03. Coppice Halifax - Smoke II (7:36) released June 1, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, June 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB6. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pine (8:54) 02. Coppice Halifax - Yellow (9:14) 03. Coppice Halifax - Yellow (Loop) (2:00) This is the seventh EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released June 1, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, July 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB7. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Sub (7:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - Marine (4:56) 03. Coppice Halifax - Green (8:19) The eighth EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released July 1, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, August 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB8 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Black (8:35) 02. Coppice Halifax - Forest (7:50) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dirt (4:17) The ninth EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released September 3, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, September 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB9. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Beach (9:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Glass (7:39) 03. Coppice Halifax - Glass (Repeat) (3:53) released October 21, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, October 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB10. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dry (8:24) 02. Coppice Halifax - Seasons (10:40) The eleventh EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released December 15, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, November 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB11. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Endless (6:45) 02. Coppice Halifax - Dusk (2:56) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dusk II (11:20) The twelfth and final EP in the 12-part Analog Botany series. released December 15, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, December 2009. This is Milieu Music number AB12. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Autumn Rebuild (8:47) 02. Coppice Halifax - Halifaxian I (5:56) 03. Coppice Halifax - Lux Overgrowth (7:00) 04. Coppice Halifax - Sun Version (5:31) 05. Coppice Halifax - Halifaxian II (7:29) 06. Coppice Halifax - Endless Rebuild (6:43) 07. Coppice Halifax - White Forest (4:31) 08. Coppice Halifax - Seventh Dub (8:53) Milk & Quaaludes could be considered a satellite orbiting Planet Analog Botany. It contains eight tracks from the numerous AB sessions in 2009, collecting outtakes with alternate versions to make a cohesive Analog Botany album. Long out of print, but recently made available again as part of the six-disc Analog Botany Collection set, which collects all twelve AB EPs, Milk & Quaaludes and an additional disc of EP and split tracks from the era. released December 15, 2009 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, various dates 2009. This is Milieu Music number ABX3. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [Untitled 1] (7:34) 02. Coppice Halifax - [Untitled 2] (11:20) This is a companion EP to the second Ocean Lion album (MMD007), featuring two ambient pieces from the same sessions. Buoyant and meandering oceanic melodies under a glistening tropical sun. released February 1, 2010 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2009. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 2.1 (8:34) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 2.2 (9:39) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 2.3 (13:36) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 2.4 (9:52) 05. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 2.5 (13:37) 06. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 2.6 (7:36) REISSUED! In celebration of the long-delayed and much-awaited OCEAN LION III, both OCEAN LION and OCEAN LION II are being given reissues in matching packaging, with updated album cover photography to make the whole set glow on your record shelf. A dripping wet fantasy vacation for your mind, and a precursor to PAWLEYS ISLAND in more ways than three. "The second of four planned albums bearing the name Ocean Lion, Ocean Lion II (as it has been semi-officially named) takes the psychedelic tropical atmospheres of the previous OL album to even greater heights. OL II is a far more composed and deliberately assembled work, relying less on pure improvisation and more on well placed brushstrokes of chord and color. Dubby techno rhythm work and the trademark warm organ pedalbass flows beneath the waves of orchestral tape loops, shimmering chords and padlike ribbons of sadness, trailing off on the salty wind. Ocean Lion II is a blissful album of electronic detachment, perfect for sending your mind on a private island vacation, or a fantasy dream beneath blue waters." -Milieu Music, 2010 released February 1, 2010 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at 114RKD, 2009-2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD007. Photograph by Brian, Cleveland 2014 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Velour Acre (12:50) 02. Axs - Nothingness Landscape (12:39) 03. Axs - Tesseract Redux (9:17) 04. Coppice Halifax - Swamp Acre (11:48) 05. Axs - Hyakladon (Coppice Halifax Rebuild) (14:20) 06. Coppice Halifax - Dusk II (Axs Silent Night Breathing) (12:29) Credits Artwork, Photography By [Photos] – Axs Mastered By [Mastering] – The Analog Botanist Photography By [Limited Photos] – Lars Sobeck Photography By [Photos] – Coppice Halifax Written-By [W], Producer [P] – Coppice Halifax (tracks: 1, 4, 6), Axs (tracks: 2, 3, 5) Notes Words of Gratitude from Other Heights to: Brian Grainger, Alexandre Gouard, Lars Sobeck (limited photos). Other Heights - OH#Three / 2010 Limited to 100 hand-numbered copies. The first 25 copies contain a numbered photo by Lars Sobeck. Released in cardboard sleeve with stickered artwork and inlay card. 100% of the label profit for this release goes to the IFAW, International Fund for Animal Welfare. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Dub Techno" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dayglo Daze (5:54) 02. Foamek - Spectrum Cloud [Coppice Halifax Mix] (5:34) 03. Casio Commander - Neon Nites [Crystal Sunshine Cmx] (6:27) 04. Electricwest - Scarlet [Cmx] (13:25) 05. Dorosoto - Amber Dub [Coppice Halifax Rebuild] (6:06) 06. The Qualia - Should Be Home [Coppice Halifax Dub] (5:41) 07. CN - CH [Coppice Halifax Mix] (6:15) 08. Rx Gibbs - Jumproom To Mars [Powdered Construct Cmx] (22:25) 09. Coppice Halifax - Juniper (5:52) The second retrospective compilation of Coppice Halifax remix works, bookended by two original works taken from the Neon Nites & Dayglo Daze split with Casio Commander and the EED's Summer Vacation '08 compilation. Originally issued in 2010 at Milieu Music, in a CD-R edition of 50 copies, which went out of print shortly thereafter. Now available digitally for the first time, collecting varied mixes from a broad spectrum of electronic musicians while maintaining a cool cohesion as its own album of music. released June 19, 2010 This is Milieu Music number MML071. Written by the credited artists. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. The Qualia appears courtesy of WTII Records. All tracks reproduced with permission. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. The House In The Woods - Upon Descending (8:22) 02. The House In The Woods - Diving Bell (10:42) 03. The House In The Woods - Wake Up We're Here (7:49) 04. The House In The Woods - Cut Adrift (7:57) 05. Coppice Halifax - ZC (13:14) 06. Coppice Halifax - Water Column (12:34) 07. Coppice Halifax - 8000 MBSF (15:25) released August 11, 2010 This is Milieu Music number MML072. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Sno Dreem [Pillowtonal] (3:00) 02. Coppice Halifax - Tyclo2 (1:03) 03. Coppice Halifax - Milkjam (4:29) 04. Coppice Halifax - White Plastic (2:17) 05. Coppice Halifax - Unit 88 [Betasoft] (4:56) 06. Coppice Halifax - Outrunning (1:59) 07. Coppice Halifax - Carpet Tape (5:05) 08. Coppice Halifax - White Plastic [Thisket's Mix] (4:38) 09. Coppice Halifax - Blankit [Amb] (8:22) 10. Coppice Halifax - Fur [Lux Loop] (1:34) 11. Coppice Halifax - Sno Dreem [Icevent] (3:44) A precursory album of alternate versions and non-album tracks from the sessions for the forthcoming album Milkwhite Plastic Galaxy Maker. Also features a fresh new remix by Thisket! released March 1, 2011 W/P by Coppice Halifax, except #8 remixed and produced by Thisket. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010-2011. This is Milieu Music number MML075. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Vapor Acre (6:35) 02. Coppice Halifax - Mint Acre (6:42) 03. Coppice Halifax - Royal Acre (7:07) 04. Coppice Halifax - NCC Acre (3:50) 05. Coppice Halifax - Orange Acre (7:10) 06. Coppice Halifax - Humid Acre (8:50) 07. Coppice Halifax - Orange Acre [Ndru Remix] (19:52) 08. Coppice Halifax - Humid Acre [Radere Reduction] (17:12) 09. Coppice Halifax - VSS Acre (11:28) Producer – Brian Grainger (tracks: 1 to 6) Written-By – Brian Grainger Coppice Halifax's Vapor Acre features nearly 80 minutes of dense hypnotic dub-techno bathed in warm synth washes and cool field recordings. A sound-scape ideal for spaced out extended relaxation. Also featuring two massive remixes by Ndru and Radere. released April 8, 2011 Written & produced by Brian Grainger. Recorded At 114RKD 2010-2011. Track 7: Written by Brian Grainger, produced by Andre Gansebohm. Track 8: Written by Brian Grainger, produced by Carl Ritger. Mastered by the Analog Botanist. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Smoky Acre (4:11) 02. Coppice Halifax - Sleepy Acre (7:48) 03. Coppice Halifax - Gaseous Acre (12:00) 04. Coppice Halifax - Blue Acre (8:39) 05. Ohrwert - Killasan (4:47) 06. Ohrwert - Liberate (7:30) 07. Ohrwert - K-3756S (7:07) 08. Ohrwert - Shiloh (6:42) Credits Artwork – Coppice Halifax, Ohrwert Mastered By – Ohrwert Notes Limited to 125 hand-numbered copies. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Dub Techno" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack (9:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Pine 2A] (6:22) 03. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Carbonated] (7:53) 04. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Milkwhite] (9:50) 05. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Pine 2B] (8:28) Now something for those of you who prefer to stay at home, tend your gardens and enjoy nice safe terra-firma. Five botanically-enhanced organic teapots of dub techno and braindance to use as a mood stabilizer and a refreshing balm. Dancefloor friendly tracks you can enjoy in your recliner, preferably with some cookies and milk. Limited to 16 special copies with colorful neighborhood prints and another 34 copies with inkstamped cardstock inserts. released June 15, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Recorded at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2010-2011. This is Milieu Music number ABX7. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ganymede (6:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps (7:45) 03. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps II (6:31) 04. Coppice Halifax - Porcelain (6:06) 05. Coppice Halifax - Surfaces (6:33) 06. Coppice Halifax - Surfaces II (6:26) 07. Coppice Halifax - Red (6:45) 08. Coppice Halifax - Valerian (13:53) 09. Coppice Halifax - Falling (6:14) 10. Coppice Halifax - Ovals (7:00) 11. Coppice Halifax - Ovals II (7:34) 12. Coppice Halifax - Southland (6:25) 13. Coppice Halifax - Mirror [Side A] (5:37) 14. Coppice Halifax - Mirror [Side B] (8:56) 15. Coppice Halifax - Cinnamon (6:44) 16. Coppice Halifax - Smoke (6:39) 17. Coppice Halifax - Smoke II (7:36) 18. Coppice Halifax - Pine (8:54) 19. Coppice Halifax - Yellow (9:14) 20. Coppice Halifax - Yellow [Loop] (2:00) 21. Coppice Halifax - Sub (7:40) 22. Coppice Halifax - Marine (4:56) 23. Coppice Halifax - Green (8:19) 24. Coppice Halifax - Black (8:35) 25. Coppice Halifax - Forest (7:50) 26. Coppice Halifax - Dirt (4:17) 27. Coppice Halifax - Beach (9:29) 28. Coppice Halifax - Glass (7:39) 29. Coppice Halifax - Glass [Repeat] (3:53) 30. Coppice Halifax - Dry (8:24) 31. Coppice Halifax - Seasons (10:40) 32. Coppice Halifax - Endless (6:45) 33. Coppice Halifax - Dusk (2:56) 34. Coppice Halifax - Dusk II (11:20) A comprehensive collection of all twelve EPs from the 2009 Analog Botany series. Over four hours of melodic, organic ambient and dub techno, inspired by pioneers such as Basic Channel, DeepChord, Monolake, Wolfgang Voigt and Plastikman, among others. This series was the first step outside of the "traditional" CH sound, which was established in 2006 as a Milieu side-project for ambient techno with an emphasis on textural experimentation and spacious, analog atmospherics. While the earlier works sounded more degraded, covered in tape hiss and compressors, the AB series presented a cleaner, glossier CH, focusing still on textures and analog sounds, but bringing a tight low end and rhythmic element that wouldn't be out of place on a dancefloor. Since the completion of this series, Coppice Halifax has gone on to release several EPs in the "Botanical" vein, as well as appearing on splits with Radere, CN, The House In The Woods, Axs and Ohrwert. released July 3, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, January-December 2009. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number AB BOX ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Monoaxial - Neglected (6:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - Helial Phases (7:12) 03. Monoaxial - 1000 Vacuum Tubes [Outer Space Version] (6:50) 04. Coppice Halifax - Valminor (7:05) 05. Monoaxial - Debarkation [Original] (8:30) 06. Coppice Halifax - Gauss Dub (9:57) 07. Coppice Halifax - Pine [Monoaxial Remix] (10:25) 08. Monoaxial - Pale [Cmx] (15:25) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Producer – Brian Grainger (tracks: 2, 4, 5, 8), Sven Schienhammer (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 7) Written-By – Brian Grainger (tracks: 2, 4, 6, 7), Sven Schienhammer (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 8) Notes Limited edition of 100 copies packaged in a grey paper sleeve with brown cardstock inserts, featuring a hand-stamped image of a couch on the cover and the Milieu Music post office box address on the flipside. A split-album between Monoaxial (aka Quantec/Sven Schienhammer) and Coppice Halifax (aka Milieu/Brian Grainger). A deep 72 minute trip, featuring three original tracks by each artist and a remix from each artist. Filled to the brim with low-end grooves, sheets of soft white noise and warm analog chords. Available in a limited edition of 100 copies on CD-R, packaged in slate grey paper sleeves with hand-stamped brown cardstock inserts. released July 20, 2011 This is Milieu Music number ABX10. Tracks 1/3/5 W/P by Sven. Tracks 2/4/6 W/P by Brian. Track 7 written by Brian, remixed by Sven. Track 8 written by Sven, remixed by Brian. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 2 from 29. April 2011 REM DATE 2011 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Miniature Island Fantasy (6:46) 02. Coppice Halifax - Equatorial Haze (14:13) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dancehall (Original) (8:26) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled 1A (1:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Luxury (6:36) 06. Coppice Halifax - Royal Purple Pageant (17:48) 07. Coppice Halifax - Sunken Dancehall (5:58) 08. Coppice Halifax - Amstar Paradise (9:02) 09. Coppice Halifax - Untitled 2B (1:29) Credits Producer – Brian Grainger Written By – Brian Grainger Notes The expanded digital version of the Coppice Halifax LP High Hawaiian Fog, including the original uncut versions of the tracks, two additional tracks from the sessions and two "locked-groove" loop patches. Over 70 dense minutes of ambient techno. Available at Itunes. The expanded digital version of the Coppice Halifax LP High Hawaiian Fog, including the original uncut versions of the tracks, two additional tracks from the sessions and two "locked-groove" loop patches. Over 70 dense minutes of ambient techno. released August 12, 2011 Written and Produced by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114 RKD, Summertime, 2008 on cassette tape. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - UT1 [A²] (16:41) 02. Coppice Halifax - UT2 [K²] (18:09) 03. Coppice Halifax - UT3 [M²] (19:46) 04. Coppice Halifax - UT4 [Y²] (18:36) Credits Composed By, Mastered By, Producer – Brian Grainger Design Concept [Package Concept] – David Ya Notes Limited edition to 100 copies. Packaging: Metal Tin Box. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Electronic, Ambient" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pacific (18:16) 02. Coppice Halifax - Opal (22:55) 03. Coppice Halifax - Hex (19:10) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Painting [Cover Paintings], Design – Eric Adrian Lee Written-By, Producer – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 100 copies in clear DVD case. Also comes with an 11"x17" fold-out poster, and a digital download of the release with alternate artwork and a desktop wallpaper image. Following in the wake of the oceanic surreal fantasy LP High Hawaiian Fog, Coppice Halifax has returned with an encore, of sorts, to HHF: Pacific Opal Hex. Taking its name from the vinyl-only track on High Hawaiian Fog, this album continues where HHF's closing piece "Amstar Paradise" leaves off. Starting with sparse washes of low-tide textures, glittering white noise and pillowy chords that swell and subside like silvery waves wiping the shore. Delay trails begin to accumulate and the textures become more humidified, covered in glistening tropical precipitation. A fullness of harmony emerges, and just when it feels as if the crescendo has finally hit its apex, a slow, warm bassline enters like a sun-bleached cruise liner sailing across a tranquil purple horizon line. A pulsing, erotic rhythm subtly forms and suddenly that far-off woodblock sound you thought was a rope tapping on a mast turns into a simple, stately beat. Five minutes turn into ten, and ten to twenty, as this endless orgasmic cloud continues to surf along in slo-mo on a psychedelic plateau of blue water and breeze. If seawater, nostalgia and endorphins could be distilled into a drug, it would bear the name Pacific Opal Hex, and be served in a snifter with a balloon of nitrous oxide on the side. released October 7, 2011 Written and produced by Brian Grainger. Mastered by the Analog Botanist. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tropical Depression (7:33) 02. Coppice Halifax - Palisades (5:58) 03. Coppice Halifax - Hurricane Party (5:29) 04. Coppice Halifax - Flooded Summer (2:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Barefoot Stargazer (6:07) 06. Coppice Halifax - Surfside Beach (7:00) 07. Coppice Halifax - Rolling Smoke On Pier Four (6:17) 08. Coppice Halifax - A Sandbar In Your Mind (7:02) 09. Coppice Halifax - Greensea (5:31) 10. Coppice Halifax - Birthday (2:23) 11. Coppice Halifax - Inlets (6:08) 12. Coppice Halifax - Now It's Dark (5:56) 13. Coppice Halifax - Sleeper Botany (5:01) 14. Coppice Halifax - Little River (4:30) 15. Coppice Halifax - Sunken Tape (6:39) 16. Coppice Halifax - Ovals III (8:06) 17. Coppice Halifax - WD40 (4:28) 18. Coppice Halifax - The Gray Man (5:58) 19. Coppice Halifax - Inland By Night (5:52) 20. Coppice Halifax - Duster Balloon (6:31) Over two years in the making, Pawleys Island could be considered the quintessential Coppice Halifax album. Started in 2008, and built via a year-long sifting process which was the Analog Botany series in 2009, Pawleys is a potent double-album that collects everything about a specific time and place and bottles it up in stylish colorful glass jars. Conceptualized as a representation of Brian's experiences in and around the actual Pawleys Island, a marshy coastal location just outside of Myrtle Beach, where Brian grew up, these recordings are a wistful kind of sad nostalgia for good times and bad times too. Building sandcastles as a child, going on school field trips to learn about marsh wildlife, partying with friends as a teen. Poolhopping, playing shows, pancake houses, warped cassettes in the car stereo, romance, hurricanes, shitty jobs, driving 40 minutes one-way to get back home, alone, at 3 AM, doing 60 through lampless country roads, mildly stoned, deep inside SAW 85-92, Cosmic Thing and "Kid For Today", zooming from the coastline to the country. Pawleys Island is the summation of all of these things, and more...musically it could be considered an apex of Brian's work within the dub techno template, but with lots of additional influences and flavors mixed in as well. Pawleys Island is an album about the bliss you find in missing things, and the comfort in being sad. released October 31, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008-2010. This is Milieu Music number MMD019. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dusk (11:48) 02. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Night Window] (9:03) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3A (8:54) 04. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3B (8:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3 [Rebuild] (11:56) 06. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Departure] (7:54) Credits Mastered By [Uncredited] – The Analog Botanist Written-by, Producer, Photography By [Photos], Design – Brian Grainger Notes Limited edition of 119 copies. Recorded in 2009-2010. © 2011, Recycled Plastics & Coppice Halifax As a final sendoff for the 2011 year, the appropriately titled Dusk Versions appears as RP2 at Recycled Plastics. Recorded during the same time as the material for both Outward Residence and Parallel Harbors (at Other Heights, Belgium), but much softer and more catered to night time listening. Quiet, restrained rhythms bounce and sway in the background of a dark sonic ether, fogged by the repetitive layers of smoky chords and short melodic stabs punctuating the groove. Variations and refractions of delays twinkle and bubble like living sparks that decorate corners of the room too dark to see. Minimal notes of bass anchor the tracks with submarine propulsion, and sheets of translucent tape warmth and analog reverb are laid gently over the whole structure. This album is an exercise in finality, in closure. The end of another year, and the last appearance of the oft revisited track Dusk, with the minor exception of a remix album due out in 2012 at Other Heights, featuring Quantec, Grad_U, Ohrwert, Axs, Zzzzra and Textural Being. released December 16, 2011 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Recorded at 114RKD, Spring-Summer 2010. This is Recycled Plastics number RP2. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Submersion - Erode I (13:42) 02. Submersion - Erode II (16:18) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dilate (28:50) 04. Submersion - Erode (Coppice Halifax Dilation) (10:03) 05. Coppice Halifax - Dilate (Submersion Erosion) (10:56) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Notes © Milieu Music & Submersion 2012 Along with several other current and forthcoming Coppice Halifax releases, this split project with Submersion ushers in a fresh and unique approach to techno as a genre. Combining elements of heavy drones, field recordings and excessive analog processing with throbbing kick-drum rhythms, dense compression and dubby chord punctuations, Dilate/Erode is a massive exercise in deep sonic exploration and experimentation. Sometimes, as atonal as it is musical, meandering chords drift around icy textures and windy hums as a bass pulses metronomically like a heartbeat heard inside the womb. The two artists' contributions intertwine so seamlessly and naturally that one might be hard pressed to tell the difference without a tracklist, and special attention has been given to creating an immersive atmosphere over and under the songs using mutated field recordings by both artists. Presented in a very limited edition of just 50 copies, with the first 25 containing an exclusive second CD-R of the field recordings and atmospheres minus the music. released January 24, 2012 1/2 written & produced by Submersion. 3 written and produced by Coppice Halifax. 4 written by Submersion, produced/remixed by Coppice Halifax. 5 written by Coppice Halifax, produced/remixed by Submersion. Mastered and assembled by The Analog Botanist. Photographs by Sam F. Photo processing by Brian Grainger. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Electronic, Dub Techno" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Hallex (10:14) 02. Coppice Halifax - Hallex (Saturated) (11:48) Credits Mastered By, Artwork – Contemporary Vision Written-By, Producer – Coppice Halifax ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mill / Braid / Treader (20:12) 02. Coppice Halifax - Soil / Sea Smoke (20:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Nettles / Canal / Slope (15:50) 04. Coppice Halifax - Second Lake / Beach Glass (9:12) Appropriately timed alongside the announcement of the Verdant Acre series is a long-awaited remastered reissue of the eponymous Coppice Halifax album. Although 1983 was released first as the debut album under the Coppice Halifax moniker, the majority of Coppice Halifax was actually recorded earlier than the 1983 sessions. When compared to what Milieu sounded like in 2006, it becomes quite obvious just how different Coppice Halifax as a project was to become. Much of the trademark CH sound started here, assembled by hand with all forms of aural artifacts, detritus, tape decay, compressor abuse and field recordings. Texture and grit were the tonal language chosen as a vehicle for these organic mutations that resemble psychedelic live jams rather than composed songs (although, make no mistake, this music was all very composed). Originally this material was given a very limited (60 copies) issue at Expanding Electronic Diversity in February, 2008 - nearly four years ago now to the day - which sold out nearly overnight. Since then, EED has closed, and the material has sunk into obscurity, never being made available digitally or reissued in any form until now. The 2012 remaster sounds much more crisp and clean, while still remaining true to the project's roots in lo-fi atmospherics, and also contains "Beach Glass", the second half of the fourth track, which was left off of the original release in a pressing error. Issued in an edition of 100 copies worldwide, with the first 25 containing a very special bonus 3" CD-R. Additionally, this reissue is the first of several to appear in a new catalog subset called Arboreal Digest. This is #5 in the set, with other out of print/scarce Milieu and Coppice Halifax reissues following suit. released February 15, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD in 2005/2006. Remastered at Botany Bay by The Analog Botanist, February 2012. This is Milieu Music number AD5. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Red Sand (9:54) 02. Coppice Halifax - Red Sand [Buried] (13:17) Credits Mastered By, Artwork – Contemporary Vision Written-By, Producer – Coppice Halifax ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - R-Taks (6:42) 02. Coppice Halifax - Fur (5:39) 03. Coppice Halifax - Driveways (7:05) 04. Coppice Halifax - Tyclo (4:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Unit 88 (7:54) 06. Coppice Halifax - Fantasy Harbor (5:30) 07. Coppice Halifax - Toyn-B (5:18) 08. Coppice Halifax - Arbour (6:53) 09. Coppice Halifax - Sno Dreem (6:05) 10. Coppice Halifax - Greenyards (5:43) 11. Coppice Halifax - Blankit (9:45) When Coppice Halifax was first established as a peripheral project of Milieu in 2006, I never would've thought that the two different concepts would connect and overlap in the ways that they have since then. Albums like High Hawaiian Fog, Bedroom Carpet and now this one - they have all walked a very thin line between the CH sound and the Milieu sound. Milkwhite is in some ways a Halifaxian answer to a Milieu album like H Is For Hologram - all the same elements are present: classic drum machines, analog tape recording and an emphasis on a kind of "pure" bedroom electronic music. Where Hologram is more science-fiction, Milkwhite is fantasy, if that analogy makes any sense at all. I began work on this album years ago (sometime in 2010 I think) as nothing more than music for me to play at night while I passed out in bed reading a paperback. Hopefully, that aesthetic of intimate home-space music is still present in the final tracks (which themselves have been retooled and tightened up in spots, as reflected on the precursor release Sno Dreem). In short, Milkwhite is a playful set of feel-good bedroom braindance, sure to please appreciators of both the Milieu and Coppice Halifax varieties. -Brian Grainger released April 28, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010. This is Recycled Plastics number RP3. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() Cide One 01. Coppice Halifax - Rotary (8:38) 02. Photophob - The Sound Of Neon [Coppice Halifax Dub Construct] (7:56) 03. Skytree - Hearth [Coppice Halifax Milkwhite Rebuild] (6:38) 04. Biathalon - Moss [Coppice Halifax Expansion] (6:32) 05. Other Heights - As We Are [Bubbling Swamp Cmx] (8:26) 06. Johnny Jitters - Closure [Dissipation Cmx] (8:54) 07. Arbee - Couvert [Coppice Halifax Rebuild] (8:15) 08. Mikrokristal - Ta-Ta [Disphenoid Cmx] (9:33) 09. Axs - Hyakladon [Coppice Halifax Rebuild] (14:18) Cide Two 01. Coppice Halifax - CN (8:56) 02. Radere - The Sunrise Ruby [Botanical Cmx] (12:02) 03. Submersion - Erode [Coppice Halifax Dilation] (9:57) 04. Radere - The Sunrise Ruby [Bronze Cmx] (13:18) 05. Monoaxial - Pale [Cmx] (15:25) 06. Alpha Aesar - Synthetic Sun [Coppice Halifax Sun Dub] (17:05) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Remix – Coppice Halifax (tracks: 1-2 to 1-9, 2-2 to 2-6) Notes Limited edition of 50 copies in a stamped and stickered gatefold RePlay wallet with paper inserts. Recorded various dates and locations 2008-2012. The third massive volume of Coppice Halifax remix works, collecting 13 remixes, commissioned between the years of 2008 and 2012, and 2 original tracks. Considering the lengthy span of time covering the creation of these pieces, the music spans from wild, overgrown entanglements of organic techno to more melodic and vibrant electronic pastures. Painstakingly arranged and remastered with intimate listening environments in mind, Cmx III is a fresh and varied summation of where Coppice Halifax has been in the last five years. Released in a recycled cardboard digipak with stickers and patterned cardstock inserts, on an edition of 50 copies. Additionally, the first two (out of print) volumes of the Cmx series have been added to Bandcamp with new cover art to match this volume, available for the first time ever digitally. A digital version of Cmx III is forthcoming. released June 20, 2012 Written by the credited artists, produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, Summer 2012. This is Milieu Music number MML086. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Rotary (8:38) 02. Photophob - The Sound Of Neon [Coppice Halifax Dub Construct] (7:55) 03. Skytree - Hearth [Coppice Halifax Milkwhite Rebuild] (6:38) 04. Biathalon - Moss [Coppice Halifax Expansion] (6:32) 05. Other Heights - As We Are [Bubbling Swamp Cmx] (8:26) 06. Johnny Jitters - Closure [Dissipation Cmx] (8:54) 07. Arbee - Couvert [Coppice Halifax Rebuild] (8:15) 08. Mikrokristal - Ta-Ta [Disphenoid Cmx] (9:33) 09. Axs - Hyakladon [Coppice Halifax Rebuild] (14:18) 10. Coppice Halifax - CN (8:56) 11. Radere - The Sunrise Ruby [Botanical Cmx] (12:02) 12. Submersion - Erode [Coppice Halifax Dilation] (9:57) 13. Radere - The Sunrise Ruby [Bronze Cmx] (13:18) 14. Monoaxial - Pale [Cmx] (15:25) 15. Alpha Aesar - Synthetic Sun [Coppice Halifax Sun Dub] (17:05) The third massive volume of Coppice Halifax remix works, collecting 13 remixes, commissioned between the years of 2008 and 2012, and 2 original tracks. Considering the lengthy span of time covering the creation of these pieces, the music spans from wild, overgrown entanglements of organic techno to more melodic and vibrant electronic pastures. Painstakingly arranged and remastered with intimate listening environments in mind, Cmx III is a fresh and varied summation of where Coppice Halifax has been in the last five years. Released in a recycled cardboard digipak with stickers and patterned cardstock inserts, on an edition of 50 copies. Additionally, the first two (out of print) volumes of the Cmx series have been added to Bandcamp with new cover art to match this volume, available for the first time ever digitally. released June 20, 2012 Written by the credited artists, produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, Summer 2012. This is Milieu Music number MML086. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - F3DC1B (10:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - 2E5B13 (9:43) 03. Coppice Halifax - 172A7B (20:04) 04. Coppice Halifax - EDE3DD (5:18) 05. Coppice Halifax - 9E9090 (16:29) 06. Coppice Halifax - DCB9FD (12:50) 07. Coppice Halifax - BA6716 (5:06) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-By, Producer – Coppice Halifax Notes 2nd edition on a single CDr with two new tracks. Limited to 50 copies in plastic sleeve with optical illusion line-print inserts and custom ink stamping. Recorded 2010-2012. Track titles refer only to their intended color in the HTML color-code spectrum. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Fog (5:12) 02. Coppice Halifax - Velvet (4:08) 03. Coppice Halifax - Coast (1:51) 04. Coppice Halifax - Swamp (5:27) 05. Coppice Halifax - Forty (4:24) 06. Coppice Halifax - River (4:25) 07. Coppice Halifax - Gray (6:03) 08. Coppice Halifax - Tropic (6:59) 09. Coppice Halifax - Hurricane (3:06) 10. Coppice Halifax - Pier (6:18) 11. Coppice Halifax - Barefoot (3:00) 12. Coppice Halifax - Sleep (5:00) 13. Coppice Halifax - Sandbar (8:06) In October of 2011, the massive concept double-album Pawleys Island was issued first on an intimate edition of 20 copies on 2x cassette tape. During the creation and recording of the Pawleys songs, I realized just how much love and expression I funneled into the melodies and composition, despite the album largely being carried in a very rhythmic techno-inspired vehicle. Taking these thoughts into consideration along with the fact that the nostalgic territories Pawleys mined were just as connected to records like Selected Ambient Works II, Walter Carlos' Sonic Seasonings and early orchestral influences like Satie and Debussy, it became clear to me that there was a beautiful ambient album hiding beneath the waves of Pawleys Island. Dedicating myself to the pursuit of such a notion, I began recording this album of ambient versions of Pawleys pieces somewhere near the last 1/4 of the recording sessions for the album proper. I think it is important to note that the songs on Inland By Night are not merely beatless counterparts of PI material, rather they are entirely their own identities, memories and locations. The movements from PI will no doubt be recognizable, although they are considerably altered in pace, processing, tone and color, and both sides have been backed by an assemblage of field recordings: the exact length of a car drive from the beach in Surfside to my father's home in rural Loris, complete with the subtle sounds of tire traction on pavement, layered carefully alongside recordings of the sun rising at dawn over a humid marsh. Inland By Night is an approximated reimagining of those same Pawleys Island memories. Stoned, worn out from a long night of work or partying (or both) and driving home in the early morning hours to sleep and dream of the blissful shores I would one day tread in my creative travels. So here we are, years later, together in longing for that same happy sleep. -BCG, 7/28/2012 **Includes bonus Postscript cassette exclusive to this package only. ***UPDATE: As of August 12th, 2012, the double-cassette version is completely sold out. A 50-copy reissue on a standard CD-R is now available. released July 25, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2008-2012. This is Milieu Music number MMD022. Original version of A1 appears on High Hawaiian Fog. Original version of A3 appears on Amber Castles. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast I (7:55) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast II (7:15) 03. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast III (7:02) 04. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast IV (4:50) 05. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast V (12:07) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-By [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in paper sleeve with hand-stamped cardstock insert. Paper sleeves may also come in purple. Recorded Summer 2012. All sounds other than drum machines created by sampling boot-up and menu sounds from the Sega Dreamcast game system. Cedar Mast = anagram of "Dreamcast" Cedar Mast is the result of an experiment undertaken during the Summer of 2012 at Botany Bay. Having a longtime fondness for video games, and by association, video gaming consoles of years past, it occurred to me how much I always loved the bootup/menu sounds made by the Sega Dreamcast system. My wife bought me a brand new system for my 29th birthday, since our old unit had long since died, and I took the opportunity to sample all of the native sounds the machine makes when there isn't a boot disc inside. As many of you familiar with the Dreamcast will know, these sounds consist of wet, chorus-laden bleeps and chord stabs, which seemed like the perfect ingredients for making techno tracks...and so Cedar Mast was conceived and subsequently created. Everything you hear in these five tracks that is not a drum machine (which is to say, all of the melodies, pads, basslines and even bits of percussion) has been created using only those original sounds from the Sega Dreamcast. The concept of these recordings ended up proving quite accessible and interesting to a lot of other producers I know, so as I write this, a massive remix effort is already underway, and will be released within the year if all goes well. released August 31, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer 2012. Cover design by Brian Grainger, mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX12. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Axs Version I] (8:22) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Axs Version II] (6:02) 03. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Axs Version III] (6:36) 04. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Axs Version IV] (8:24) 05. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Axs Version V] (6:09) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Producer – Axs (tracks: 1-5) Remix – Axs (tracks: 1-5) Written By – Coppice Halifax Notes Limited edition of 50 copies, packaged in a windowed black paperstock sleeve with a hand-stamped red cardstock insert. When I approached Axs to ask him to produce a remix for the Cedar Mast remix effort, I didn't expect him to enjoy mixing the source material to such a degree that he'd generate remixed versions of every song on the original album. Like me, Axs is a very prolific creator when he becomes fascinated with a sound or an idea, and so it only felt appropriate to section off these five remixes for a proper release. The interesting thing is that, when considered as a whole, Axs' five remixes present the source material in such a newly configured and colorful way that what we're hearing is essentially a new album, conceived in both the Coppice Halifax and Axs universes. It is not surprising, then, that Axs and I went on to work more closely on several other projects, all of which will hopefully be released in the coming months. For now, listeners can enjoy the stimulating sounds of Cedar Mast, re-tooled by Axs into a fantastic techno album with both dub and dancefloor influences. released October 11, 2012 Written by Brian Grainger, remixed and produced by Alexandre Gouard. Mastered by Brian Grainger at Botany Bay, October 2012. This is Milieu Music number ABX15. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - R1 (0:58) 02. Coppice Halifax - R2 (3:42) 03. Coppice Halifax - R3 (3:17) 04. Coppice Halifax - R4 (3:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - R5 (8:40) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-By [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies packaged in black paper sleeves with hand-stamped cream cardstock inserts. Mutated from the original tapes Summer 2012. As the title would indicate, Cedar Mast Reduced is an EP containing five ambient reductions of the Cedar Mast source material. Created through a series of heavily processed steps, using lossy analog and digital degredation techniques in tandem with liberal use of filters and FX, Cedar Mast Reduced is a stately miniaturized version of its parent recording, and works well with night time listening, preferably with a soft bed and a light book you can fall asleep reading. released October 11, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Revised, reprocessed and recorded at Botany Bay, Autumn 2012. This is Milieu Music number ABX16. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Verdant Overgrowth (1:19:33) A massive conceptual undertaking, Verdant Overgrowth is one of several planned epilogue works for the Verdant Acre six-volume series. After recording sessions for the VA series had finished, I returned to the source tapes and isolated every rhythm track from the original recordings, and adjusted the tempos to match up. Additionally, I isolated the musical elements of the tapes, themselves raw and mutated patches of decayed vinyl detritus and orchestral minor keys, and carefully combined elements from all six volumes to construct an aching eighty-minute ambient atmosphere**. Returning to the rhythm tracks, I assembled a seamless stereo mix containing every rhythm from every track in the six volumes, constantly fading in and out of one another and panning in a circular fashion that is both hypnotic and ever-evolving. Thus, Verdant Overgrowth is an appropriate title for a musical piece that at once sums up around seven hours of recordings and also stands alone as a deep psychedelic ambient techno landscape. **This atmosphere will be released in a beatless form at Wil Ru Recordings, bearing the title Verdant Dusk, in the near future. released October 11, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring-Summer 2012. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number VAØ. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Rebuild] (6:28) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Lamont Kohner] (9:18) 03. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Textual Being] (5:19) 04. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Arbee] (4:37) 05. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Federsen] (6:48) 06. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Dissolved] (5:52) 07. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Tawdry Otter] (6:06) 08. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Mental Health Consumer] (3:31) 09. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Arbee] (3:38) 10. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Optic_] (5:41) 11. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Customer] (4:31) 12. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Zzzzra] (5:35) 13. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Tawdry Otter] (5:58) 14. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast [Ocralab] (6:07) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-By – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in paper sleeve with hand-stamped cardstock insert. Paper sleeves may also come in green. Pulling from the provenance of the Sega Dreamcast's boot screen and menu sounds once again, eleven talented producers have contributed thirteen lovingly crafted remix works for the Cedar Mast remix album. To introduce and unveil the album, I've created a rebuild of my own, using the same source material samples that all eleven artists were tasked to use exclusively in creating these remixes. Musically, these tracks come in from all sides of the globe and contain very drastically different interpretations of the same source materials. Lamont Kohner, a new pseudonym for Patrick Benolkin (aka Electricwest and Eluder), rinses out a plodding dark and slow techno atmosphere with ominous bass, which transitions beautifully to the contrasting dub techno sunshine of Textural Being's redo. Arbee and Tawdry Otter (aka Adrien75) both turned in two remixes, with Arbee's bearing his signature mutated bedroom electronic sound and Tawdry Otter opting for two flavors of swanky dub and dancefloor. Federsen hails from California with his completely analog-delay and vintage gear-constructed remake, and Dissolved transports a glowing irradiated lab specimen with perky beat programming from Vancouver. Mental Health Consumer keeps things short and sweet with one of the more modestly lengthed mixes of the collection, all bubbly and quaint. Optic_ drops in from the Netherlands with a blistering housey techno romper, giving way to Customer's disassemblage/reassemblage that brings to mind the loopy psychedelia of early Pub. Zzzzra imports his own special brand of French dub techno groove, and hands off the album's closer to Ocralab, who turns in the most minimal and alien remixes of the set. Altogether, the Cedar Mixes assemble to create a whole larger than the sum of their parts, and effectively a lovely mutation/meditation on the sounds of the Sega Dreamcast is brought to life. released October 12, 2012 Written by Brian Grainger, remixed and produced by the credited artists. Mastered by Brian Grainger at Botany Bay, September 2012. This is Milieu Music number ABX13. Cedar Mast = anagram of "Dreamcast" Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Velour Acre (12:48) 02. Coppice Halifax - Swamp Acre (11:46) 03. Coppice Halifax - Velour II (6:27) 04. Coppice Halifax - Smoky Acre (4:09) 05. Coppice Halifax - Sleepy Acre (7:46) 06. Coppice Halifax - Gaseous Acre (11:58) 07. Coppice Halifax - Blue Acre (8:37) 08. Coppice Halifax - VSS Acre (11:28) Notes Limited to 50 copies in black cardstock sleeves with text stickers and photo-stickered cardstock inserts. A compilation of like-minded tracks from various sources. Tracks 1 and 2 taken from Outward Residence. Track 3 taken from a Spontaneous Rhythm compilation. Tracks 4 to 7 taken from Parallel Harbors. Track 8 previously released only in digital form as a bonus download when purchasing the 2nd pressing of Vapor Acre. Reclaimed Acres collects 8 out of print/rare Coppice Halifax recordings that appeared on various releases from the last three years. Coincidentally, all of these songs originated from the same post-Analog Botany series session work, even though their destinations were all quite different. Velour and Swamp were given to the Outward Residence split CD-R with Axs at Other Heights, Belgium, with Velour II being an alternate version of Velour that ended up on a Spontaneous Rhythm compilation. Smoky, Sleepy, Gaseous and Blue were given to the Parallel Harbors split CD-R with Ohrwert, also at Other Heights, and VSS Acre was an alternate version of NCC Acre (from the Vapor Acre cassette, Wil Ru Recordings) that ended up as a digital-only bonus track for the cassette's second edition. Reclaimed brings all of these pieces back together to form an undeniably consistent whole, which was ironically never envisioned as a full-length album at the time of these works' creation. An essential set of longform organic techno works that would appeal to anyone who enjoys the current arc of the Coppice Halifax sound, and a worthy expansion to releases like Vapor Acre, Milk & Quaaludes and the soon to be released Radians. released November 25, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2009-2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to Jorn, Arjen, Alex, Eric and John for giving a home to these recordings, and allowing them to be made available once again. This is Milieu Music number AD7, seventh in the ongoing reissue series Arboreal Digest. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [13:10] (13:11) 02. Coppice Halifax - [06:37] (6:38) 03. Coppice Halifax - [07:34] (7:34) 04. Coppice Halifax - [14:30] (14:30) 05. Coppice Halifax - [17:10] (17:10) 06. Coppice Halifax - [06:20] (6:21) 07. Coppice Halifax - [10:08] (10:09) 08. Coppice Halifax - [09:01] (9:02) 09. Coppice Halifax - [15:12] (15:12) 10. Coppice Halifax - [09:02] (9:03) 11. Coppice Halifax - [18:02] (18:02) 12. Coppice Halifax - [12:00] (12:00) 13. Coppice Halifax - [11:03] (11:03) 14. Coppice Halifax - [21:04] (21:05) 15. Coppice Halifax - [16:24] (16:24) 16. Coppice Halifax - [11:24] (11:24) 17. Coppice Halifax - [07:29] (7:29) 18. Coppice Halifax - [08:54] (8:55) 19. Coppice Halifax - [06:20] (6:21) 20. Coppice Halifax - [15:00] (15:00) 21. Coppice Halifax - [10:30] (10:31) 22. Coppice Halifax - [17:49] (17:49) 23. Coppice Halifax - [12:43] (12:44) 24. Coppice Halifax - [11:51] (11:51) 25. Coppice Halifax - [08:38] (8:39) 26. Coppice Halifax - [10:23] (10:23) 27. Coppice Halifax - [14:29] (14:29) 28. Coppice Halifax - [09:05] (9:06) 29. Coppice Halifax - [19:34] (19:34) 30. Coppice Halifax - [16:23] (16:23) 31. Coppice Halifax - [23:02] (23:02) 32. Coppice Halifax - 1/1 (7:25) 33. Coppice Halifax - 2/3 (12:16) 34. Coppice Halifax - 3/4 (9:20) 35. Coppice Halifax - 4/6 (14:00) 36. Coppice Halifax - 5/1 (12:44) 37. Coppice Halifax - 6/3 (13:54) 38. Coppice Halifax - Verdant Overgrowth (1:19:33) Verdant Acre's mass is equaled only by it's depth. Recorded throughout Autumn and Winter of 2011 and early Spring 2012, and released one volume per month over six months, with Verdant Versions and Verdant Overgrowth following as appendices. The music contained herein is the closest CH has probably ever come to creating music that is a realistic analog of nature - beauty and color buried beneath texture and noise, moments of blissful harmony that sink and waver beneath dissonant winds. The sound of time passing and seasons changing. At once, Verdant Acre is incredibly specific and totally universal. Taking (perhaps obvious) cues from influences like Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project, early Vladislav Delay, The Caretaker, Andrew Deutsch, Pole and Variant, this series continues to stand tall like the proverbial forest it is, even as the Halifaxian acres expand and run wild around it. This box set attempts to collect all six volumes, as well as Verdant Versions - a dancefloor-friendlier set of edits of one track from each of the six volumes - and Verdant Overgrowth, an 80-minute winding excursion of overlapping loops and rhythms blended together in a seamless pulse of hypnotic repetitions. This is the first time these eight volumes have been collected together in one place, and also the first time the Verdant Acre material has been on a physical format since going out of print sometime in 2013. released December 10, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2012. Photography and design by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music number VA-CB. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Box set was released in two versions: Empty, which contained only "Verdant Versions" and leaves room for prior "Verdant Acre" purchases, or Filled, which comes with all six volumes of the Verdant Acre series plus "Verdant Versions." Release is limited to 50 copies total, either Filled or Empty. Comes in a stickered/hand-stamped box with photo inserts. CD comes in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. The artist's original intent was for the Empty Version to contain "Verdant Versions" on a black CDr, which would match the first pressings of the rest of the series. However after a number of VA6's discs were defective as well as an entire batch of subsequent replacement discs, the black CDr format was abandoned for this release. Track titles on "Verdant Versions" refer to which album and track from the Verdant Acre series the tracks have been reworked from (album #/track #). Seven volumes, thirty-seven tracks, seven hours, forty minutes and thirty seconds. Verdant Acre's mass is equaled only by it's depth. Recorded throughout Autumn and Winter of 2011 and early Spring 2012, and released one volume per month over seven months. All physical versions are now out of print, and the scavengers have taken to distributing facsimiles of their pilfered goods amongst themselves in the wake. What you see here is the only official version of Verdant Acre currently available, sourced directly from the master recordings with zero loss, and lovingly compiled, labeled and annotated with the original promotional texts written for the project, as well as all of the original and alternate photographs from the set. released December 10, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2012. This is Milieu Music number VA-BOX. ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (13:11) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (6:38) 03. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (7:34) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (14:30) 05. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (17:10) 06. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (6:21) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. Pressed on a black CDr. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (10:09) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (9:02) 03. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (15:12) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (9:03) 05. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (18:02) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. Pressed on a black CDr. Recorded 2011-2012. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (12:00) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (11:03) 03. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (21:04) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (16:24) 05. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (11:24) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. Pressed on a black CDr. Recorded 2011-2012. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (7:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (8:55) 03. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (6:21) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (15:00) 05. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (10:31) 06. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (17:50) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. Pressed on a black CDr. Recorded 2011-2012. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (12:44) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (11:51) 03. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (8:39) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (10:23) 05. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (14:30) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. Pressed on a black CDr. Recorded 2011-2012. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (9:06) 02. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (19:34) 03. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (16:23) 04. Coppice Halifax - Untitled (23:03) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. Pressed on a black CDr. Recorded 2011-2012. All original discs were pressed on black CDrs, however a handful were defective and didn't play properly. After an entire batch of subsequent replacement discs were also defective, the black CDr format was abandoned for replacements, and subsequent releases in this series. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - 1/1 (7:25) 02. Coppice Halifax - 2/3 (12:16) 03. Coppice Halifax - 3/4 (9:20) 04. Coppice Halifax - 4/6 (14:00) 05. Coppice Halifax - 5/1 (12:44) 06. Coppice Halifax - 6/3 (13:54) Credits Photography By, Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-by [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Box set was released in two versions: Empty, which contained only "Verdant Versions" and leaves room for prior "Verdant Acre" purchases, or Filled, which comes with all six volumes of the Verdant Acre series plus "Verdant Versions." Release is limited to 50 copies total, either Filled or Empty. Comes in a stickered/hand-stamped box with photo inserts. CD comes in die-cut, stamped cardsleeve with photo insert. The artist's original intent was for the Empty Version to contain "Verdant Versions" on a black CDr, which would match the first pressings of the rest of the series. However after a number of VA6's discs were defective as well as an entire batch of subsequent replacement discs, the black CDr format was abandoned for this release. Track titles on "Verdant Versions" refer to which album and track from the Verdant Acre series the tracks have been reworked from (album #/track #). Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Winter Blurring (41:11) As with all the seasons, none are complete without an atmospherically affected album at Milieu Music. Winter Blurring is exactly what the title indicates, and more - it is a longform construct of distilled cold and chilly dampness, melted down and rendered inert via warmth-generating rhythms and bass. Soft tints of orange and red crackles play at a screen of frozen chords and glassy drones, and the fuzz of fuzzy blankets gently covers up the drums, removing all corners and hard angles in favor of round eroded edges. Winter Blurring is also a literal crossover piece, taking a significant amount of its source sound from the final EP of this year's Workingman's Drone series, Ten Thousand Winters. As that series ends, and the new Static Pharming series begins, it only felt natural and appropriate to create a single bookend piece for both of them, making Winter Blurring just as much a drone piece as a dub techno one. released December 21, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, December 2012. This is Milieu Music number ABX17 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Winter Blurring (41:11) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written-By, Producer – Coppice Halifax Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut card sleeve with photo insert. Recorded Winter 2012, built with source material from WD24: Ten Thousand Winters. As with all the seasons, none are complete without an atmospherically affected album at Milieu Music. Winter Blurring is exactly what the title indicates, and more - it is a longform construct of distilled cold and chilly dampness, melted down and rendered inert via warmth-generating rhythms and bass. Soft tints of orange and red crackles play at a screen of frozen chords and glassy drones, and the fuzz of fuzzy blankets gently covers up the drums, removing all corners and hard angles in favor of round eroded edges. Winter Blurring is also a literal crossover piece, taking a significant amount of its source sound from the final EP of this year's Workingman's Drone series, Ten Thousand Winters. As that series ends, and the new Static Pharming series begins, it only felt natural and appropriate to create a single bookend piece for both of them, making Winter Blurring just as much a drone piece as a dub techno one. released December 21, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, December 2012. This is Milieu Music number ABX17. X Lossless Decoder version 20130127 (142.3) TITLE "Winter Blurring" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Antu (7:30) 02. Coppice Halifax - Keuyen (11:04) 03. Coppice Halifax - Melipal (14:08) 04. Coppice Halifax - Yepun (9:13) 05. Coppice Halifax - Yepun [Contemporary Vision Remix] (9:54) 06. Coppice Halifax - Melipal [Coppice Halifax Redsand Remix] (14:32) 07. Coppice Halifax - Keuyen [Ohrwert Radiant Alter] (6:26) 08. Coppice Halifax - Antu [Emi Ono Remix] (5:33) Radians is an album by Coppice Halifax that has undergone many iterations and transformations since its original recording sessions were completed in 2011. Somewhat ironically, these transformed versions of Radians (Reflector on Entropy Records, Hallex and Red Sand at Contemporary Vision) have all been released before Radians itself - this was partially due to the nature of the project (differences in label release schedules, waiting on remixes to be completed, and so on) but in some way it has worked in the album's favor by way of referencing something that does not yet exist, creating a sort of mythology about it. Musically, Radians is four original pieces of organic Halifaxian techno, mutated and overgrown in the usual fashion. Meticulously decorated with textures, noises and all manner of analog depth, while still sporting vibrant rhythmic structures, dubby basslines, paint-spatter chords and tape-saturated drones, these four works fit well alongside other CH albums such as Narcotic Months and Dusk Versions. Complementing the originals are four remixes - presented in an inverted sequence so that the album unfolds itself in a reverse motion - by Ohrwert, Contemporary Vision, Emi Ono and a particularly deep rework of Melipal by Coppice Halifax. So the symmetry of Radians is complete, with a full eighty-minute album packed tightly onto a CD-R, and packaged minimally in a black cardboard jacket with stickers. released December 21, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger, except: #5 written by Brian / produced & remixed by Contemporary Vision, #7 written by Brian / produced & remixed by Ohrwert and #8 written by Brian / produced & remixed by Emi Ono. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number RP4. X Lossless Decoder version 20121222 (142.2) TITLE "Radians" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Process (8:01) 02. Coppice Halifax - Process² (10:51) 03. Contemporary Vision - Detail (7:08) 04. Contemporary Vision - Detail [Dub] (6:32) For the fourteenth installment of the Bedroom Compost series, we have a very special split release between Coppice Halifax and Contemporary Vision. Taking cues from minimal and dub techno and contributing two tracks each, Process / Detail is a striking and danceable set of loud club-ready grooves. Both CH tracks have been constructed completely live on hardware in the Botany Bay studio, while the CV tracks were selected from the deeper realms of Contemporary Vision's unreleased archives. A limited edition CD-R is also available, containing two bonus tracks: a CH remix of Detail and a CV remix of Process. More information about CV (and some of the best techno you've never heard) is available at www.contemporaryvision.com released March 29, 2013 Tracks 1/2 W/P by Coppice Halifax, recorded at Botany Bay, 2011. Tracks 3/4 W/P by Contemporary Vision. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC14, and number 14 in the Bedroom Compost series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() Written-By, Producer – The Analog Botanist Notes Limited edition of 50 copies in black paper sleeves with inkstamped kraft stock inserts. Contains all twelve EPs from the original Analog Botany series in 2009, plus an expanded version of the satellite work Milk & Quaaludes, collecting all the peripheral session recordings that were released outside of the EP series (the Dusk Overgrowth EP, the Amber Castles EP and three tracks from the ABX10 split with Monoaxial). Tracks 1-1 to 5-8 recorded at 114RKD January-December 2009. Tracks 6-1, and 6-3 to 6-9 recorded at 114RKD 2009-2010. Track 6-2 recorded at Foxhill. ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ganymede (6:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps (7:45) 03. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps II (6:31) 04. Coppice Halifax - Porcelain (6:06) 05. Coppice Halifax - Surfaces (6:33) 06. Coppice Halifax - Surfaces II (6:26) 07. Coppice Halifax - Red (6:45) 08. Coppice Halifax - Valerian (13:54) Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Falling (6:14) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ovals (7:00) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ovals II (7:34) 04. Coppice Halifax - Southland (6:25) 05. Coppice Halifax - Mirror [Side A] (5:37) 06. Coppice Halifax - Mirror [Side B] (8:56) 07. Coppice Halifax - Cinnamon (6:44) 08. Coppice Halifax - Smoke (6:39) 09. Coppice Halifax - Smoke II (7:37) Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pine (8:54) 02. Coppice Halifax - Yellow (9:14) 03. Coppice Halifax - Yellow [Loop] (2:00) 04. Coppice Halifax - Sub (7:40) 05. Coppice Halifax - Marine (4:56) 06. Coppice Halifax - Green (8:19) 07. Coppice Halifax - Black (8:35) 08. Coppice Halifax - Forest (7:50) 09. Coppice Halifax - Dirt (4:17) Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2011 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Beach (9:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Glass (7:39) 03. Coppice Halifax - Glass [Repeat] (3:53) 04. Coppice Halifax - Dry (8:24) 05. Coppice Halifax - Seasons (10:40) 06. Coppice Halifax - Endless (6:45) 07. Coppice Halifax - Dusk (2:56) 08. Coppice Halifax - Dusk II (11:20) Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Autumn Rebuild (8:47) 02. Coppice Halifax - Halifaxian I (5:56) 03. Coppice Halifax - Lux Overgrowth (7:00) 04. Coppice Halifax - Sun Version (5:31) 05. Coppice Halifax - Halifaxian II (7:29) 06. Coppice Halifax - Endless Version (6:43) 07. Coppice Halifax - White Forest (4:31) 08. Coppice Halifax - Seventh Dub (8:53) Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Overgrowth] (7:04) 02. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Live, October 2010] (7:10) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Overgrowth II] (7:07) 04. Coppice Halifax - Amber Castles (6:13) 05. Coppice Halifax - Birthday [Version] (6:25) 06. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Coastline (6:21) 07. Coppice Halifax - Helial Phases (7:12) 08. Coppice Halifax - Valminor (7:05) 09. Coppice Halifax - Gauss Dub (9:57) Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Leaf Cloak (7:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Whisky Dub (9:17) 03. Coppice Halifax - Fissure (7:18) 04. Coppice Halifax - Night Grove (6:42) 05. Coppice Halifax - Smoker's Lux (8:56) 06. Coppice Halifax - Mintmorning (11:37) Leaf Cloak is the newest iteration of the melodic dub techno sound that I set out to refine in the Analog Botany series back in 2009. The sound has been reduced (Inland By Night), expanded (Reclaimed Acres) and diversified with elements of other genres (Pawleys Island), and now it sounds as if it is equal parts of all three possibilities. Buoyant helium-filled drums underline emotive chord stabs and subtly groovy bass progressions, while bluish-purple strains of sunset pads lower the tracks into even deeper depths, indicated by several analog and digital delays and reverbs. Lush really is the word here, as Leaf Cloak is intended to be the techno equivalent of a quiet backyard in the summertime, as night sets in. Accessible, ear-tickling and still clubby enough for a dancefloor. Three variants on this album are also scheduled, including a remix album with remixes by Lamont Kohner, aspect., Zander One, DeepWarmth and others, a split-release of ambient reductions/expansions with Zwei Kreise and a CH revisitation that sees the material submerged in all kinds of aural chemicals. released April 22, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2012-2013. This is Milieu Music number ABX20. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Leaf Cloak (7:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Whisky Dub (9:17) 03. Coppice Halifax - Fissure (7:18) 04. Coppice Halifax - Night Grove (6:42) 05. Coppice Halifax - Smoker's Lux (8:56) 06. Coppice Halifax - Mintmorning (11:37) Edition of 50 copies. Packaged in a recycled cardboard sleeve with green-on-white text stickers. Leaf Cloak is the newest iteration of the melodic dub techno sound that I set out to refine in the Analog Botany series back in 2009. The sound has been reduced (Inland By Night), expanded (Reclaimed Acres) and diversified with elements of other genres (Pawleys Island), and now it sounds as if it is equal parts of all three possibilities. Buoyant helium-filled drums underline emotive chord stabs and subtly groovy bass progressions, while bluish-purple strains of sunset pads lower the tracks into even deeper depths, indicated by several analog and digital delays and reverbs. Lush really is the word here, as Leaf Cloak is intended to be the techno equivalent of a quiet backyard in the summertime, as night sets in. Accessible, ear-tickling and still clubby enough for a dancefloor. Three variants on this album are also scheduled, including a remix album with remixes by Lamont Kohner, aspect., Zander One, DeepWarmth and others, a split-release of ambient reductions/expansions with Zwei Kreise and a CH revisitation that sees the material submerged in all kinds of aural chemicals. released April 22, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2012-2013. This is Milieu Music number ABX20. X Lossless Decoder version 20130602 (143.2) TITLE "Leaf Cloak" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [22:11] (22:11) 02. Coppice Halifax - [19:12] (19:12) Credits Written-By [W], Producer [P] – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 50 copies in die-cut cardboard sleeve with photo insert. Originally only available on cassette. Recorded Summer 2012. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2013 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - R³ (7:01) 02. Zander One - Iceberg [Coppice Halifax Blue Shape I] (6:59) 03. Arbee - Valeur De Détection [Coppice Halifax Hi-Gloss] (7:09) 04. Ndru - Tape [Coppice Halifax Restructural] (10:52) 05. Zander One - Iceberg [Coppice Halifax Blue Shape II] (7:56) 06. DeepWarmth - Carbon Warmth [Lilac Static Cmx] (9:57) 07. Zander One - Iceberg [Coppice Halifax Blue Shape III] (8:11) 08. Lamont Kohner - WD5 [Pollen Dream Cmx] (16:47) Credits Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Producer – Coppice Halifax Notes The much anticipated fourth volume of Coppice Halifax remix works is here. Cmx IV collects remixes commissioned for Zander One, Arbee, Ndru, Lamont Kohner and DeepWarmth, and pairs them with "R³", a track only previously issued on the digital compilation Futur[e]cho 2013 at Cold Fiction. Nearly 80 minutes of unmistakable Halifaxian groove work and textures, and an essential listen for anyone who enjoys tracing the lineage of various sounds through the CH repertoire. The trio of Zander One remixes (previously issued on the Blue Shape EP) and the Lamont Kohner remix are deep dub techno, while the Arbee remix wouldn't have been out of place on Narcotic Months. The DeepWarmth remix is pure Analog Botany dancefloor material, and the Ndru remix exhibits one of the rarer instances of totally minimalist CH. Varied, yet cohesive! released August 18, 2013 Written by the credited artists. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, Summer 2013. This is Milieu Music number MML092. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - R³ (7:01) 02. Zander One - Iceberg [Coppice Halifax Blue Shape I] (6:59) 03. Arbee - Valeur De Détection [Coppice Halifax Hi-Gloss] (7:09) 04. Ndru - Tape [Coppice Halifax Restructural] (10:52) 05. Zander One - Iceberg [Coppice Halifax Blue Shape II] (7:56) 06. DeepWarmth - Carbon Warmth [Lilac Static Cmx] (9:57) 07. Zander One - Iceberg [Coppice Halifax Blue Shape III] (8:11) 08. Lamont Kohner - WD5 [Pollen Dream Cmx] (16:47) The much anticipated fourth volume of Coppice Halifax remix works is here. Cmx IV collects remixes commissioned for Zander One, Arbee, Ndru, Lamont Kohner and DeepWarmth, and pairs them with "R³", a track only previously issued on the digital compilation Futur[e]cho 2013 at Cold Fiction. Nearly 80 minutes of unmistakable Halifaxian groove work and textures, and an essential listen for anyone who enjoys tracing the lineage of various sounds through the CH repertoire. The trio of Zander One remixes (previously issued on the Blue Shape EP) and the Lamont Kohner remix are deep dub techno, while the Arbee remix wouldn't have been out of place on Narcotic Months. The DeepWarmth remix is pure Analog Botany dancefloor material, and the Ndru remix exhibits one of the rarer instances of totally minimalist CH. Varied, yet cohesive! released August 18, 2013 Written by the credited artists. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, Summer 2013. This is Milieu Music number MML092. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Mintmorning [Channelwood Distillation] (26:41) 02. Coppice Halifax - Mintmorning [Stoneship Threshold] (49:36) Continuing the expansion and variation of the source material from the album Leaf Cloak, Coppice Halifax and Zwei Kreise (also known elsewhere as frequent collaborator Axs) each contribute massive drone structures assembled from "Mintmorning", Leaf Cloak's closing piece. Zwei Kreise's "Channelwood Distillation" is a near half-hour of beautiful chord formations that slither around in a swamplike haze, anchored by a pulsing dub bassline and lightly painted over with some of ZK's own chilly electric piano melodies. The "Stoneship Threshold", built by Coppice Halifax, is perhaps as large and heavy as the title might indicate - massive pillars of impenetrable drones slowly expand and contract to reveal a flickering center of spattered delays and dubby organ stabs. The entire affair is over 76 minutes in length, making for some seriously deep listening. If Leaf Cloak was meant for the sunset, Mistmorning is meant for that still and silent time right before sunrise, when everything is calm and the world hasn't awoken yet. released August 28, 2013 Written by Brian Grainger. #1 produced and remixed by Zwei Kreise. #2 produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded in France and the United States, Spring/Summer 2013. This is Milieu Music number ABX22. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - 114° (36:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - 124° (38:43) Upon the reconsideration of Milieu's album Brother, which was recorded almost ten years ago, it occurred to me that I no longer held sacred anything about the music. It was created at a time and from a vantage point that no longer exists. So, with the recent reissue of Brother, which would not have even happened if it were not for numerous fan requests, I felt the need to do something personal that would re-validate the project for me. Like diving to a land mass that was once above sea level, revisiting Brother was a very raw and blindly explored process. I located all of the original master tapes from the archives and set upon them as if they were eroded artifacts that I would mutate in the same fashion as the Verdant Acre sessions. Lots of noisy analog delays and reverbs were employed, as well as two generations of cassette tape and one generation of reel to reel tape, and a single DR550 drum machine was included to anchor the murky excursion to some type of rhythmic floor. The result is essentially a new album, with each half of the Brother source material reduced/expanded to a nearly forty-minute experience. A forest wall, petrified and sunken to the bottom of a black sea, found by accident and lit up only sections at a time by a silent submersible. A blurry white shape in the darkness. released August 28, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger. Expanded and contracted live at Botany Bay, July 2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML091. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Fisstech (8:08) 02. Textural Being - Tiefenwahrnehmung [Cmx 1a] (8:06) 03. Asymmetrical Head - Emulsion Side [Cmx] (10:59) 04. Contemporary Vision - Detail [Cmx] (6:40) 05. Phasen - Syy [Cmx] (7:13) 06. Textural Being - Tiefenwahrnehmung [Cmx 2b] (14:25) 07. Mr. Myoplast - Cosmic Forest [Coppice Halifax's Carolinian Forest] (8:09) 08. Nacht Plank - Field Piano Form [Coppice Halifax Restructural] (9:12) The fifth volume in the ever-expanding cosmos of Coppice Halifax remixes, Cmx V contains eight tracks that fill your ears with 73 minutes of organic technoid forms and dense ambient forestry. Opening with "Fisstech", an unreleased track from the Leaf Cloak sessions, the album is off to a bubbly Analog Botany bounce from the start. The remixes that follow vary in sound from the gritty dub of the Textural Being mixes, to the low-end worshipping minimal techno of the Asymmetrical Head and Contemporary Vision mixes. Another unreleased cut, a CH remix of Phasen's "Syy" from 2010, ascends from the watery depths of the Analog Botany vaults, and finally the whole album gives way to the ambient techno gliding of the Myoplast remix and the beatless Nacht Plank remix, which was an absolute honor to make, as Lee Norris has been one of my musical heroes for years now. released October 13, 2013 Track #1 W/P by Brian Grainger. #2-8 written by the credited artists, remixed and produced by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, Summer 2013. This is Milieu Music number MML093. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Fisstech (8:08) 02. Textural Being - Tiefenwahrnehmung [Cmx 1a] (8:06) 03. Asymmetrical Head - Emulsion Side [Cmx] (10:59) 04. Contemporary Vision - Detail [Cmx] (6:40) 05. Phasen - Syy [Cmx] (7:13) 06. Textural Being - Tiefenwahrnehmung [Cmx 2b] (14:25) 07. Mr. Myoplast - Cosmic Forest [Coppice Halifax's Carolinian Forest] (8:08) 08. Nacht Plank - Field Piano Form [Coppice Halifax Restructural] (9:12) The fifth volume in the ever-expanding cosmos of Coppice Halifax remixes, Cmx V contains eight tracks that fill your ears with 73 minutes of organic technoid forms and dense ambient forestry. Opening with "Fisstech", an unreleased track from the Leaf Cloak sessions, the album is off to a bubbly Analog Botany bounce from the start. The remixes that follow vary in sound from the gritty dub of the Textural Being mixes, to the low-end worshipping minimal techno of the Asymmetrical Head and Contemporary Vision mixes. Another unreleased cut, a CH remix of Phasen's "Syy" from 2010, ascends from the watery depths of the Analog Botany vaults, and finally the whole album gives way to the ambient techno gliding of the Myoplast remix and the beatless Nacht Plank remix, which was an absolute honor to make, as Lee Norris has been one of my musical heroes for years now. released October 13, 2013 Track #1 W/P by Brian Grainger. #2-8 written by the credited artists, remixed and produced by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, Summer 2013. This is Milieu Music number MML093. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil (8:16) 02. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Ratio] (8:34) 03. Coppice Halifax - Smoker's Lux [Debris] (7:13) 04. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Green Rain] (5:57) 05. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Curvature] (7:43) 06. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Fumes] (4:16) 07. Coppice Halifax - Smoker's Lux [Radiation] (7:18) 08. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Latent] (7:44) 09. Coppice Halifax - Leaf Cloak [Night Time] (6:12) 10. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Halved] (8:17) 11. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Field] (8:13) Night Soil is an unplanned and sporadically assembled album, consisting of tracks built from Leaf Cloak outtakes (principally alternate versions of "Night Grove") that have been melted down and transfigured into something entirely new, and a little alien. Augmenting these constructs are three new remixes of Leaf Cloak material, carefully produced by Axs, Zander One and DeepWarmth, in that order. A backdrop of vacant acoustics, geiger-counter textures and flanged analog noise is the perfect setting for the gritty and greasy reggae-dub influenced tracks to work through their paces. Oil slick covered machine parts sit in irradiated glowing puddles, clanging out their mindless rhythms from across a post-apocalyptic mutant landscape. Long abandoned sheet metal shacks whine when the wind hits their angle just right, and empty radio bands crackle hopelessly for no one. This is the sound of nightfall after the world has ended, jagged and destroyed and forever restless. released October 13, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger, except [Debris] written by Brian / remixed & produced by Axs, [Radiation] written by Brian / remixed & produced by Zander One and [Night Time] written by Brian / remixed & produced by DeepWarmth. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer 2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, September 2013. This is Milieu Music number ABX23. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Adrift Under Silver Rainfall (17:22) 02. Coppice Halifax - Triumphant Golden Ecstasies (39:54) When the holiday parties disperse, when your friends say their goodbyes and retreat, and all that's left is you and the cold black distances outside. When rain starts tapping on your roof, cold tears from Old Man Winter that are not yet snow, and you can hear the empty vocals of the wind blowing on your windows. When the sun seems like it might never come back up, and all you have to take comfort in is a warm blanket. Soft Shelter is holiday music for those chilly in-between moments, for the December and January nights that only serve to remind you how lucky you are to be inside. Constructed live over two such nights in the Botany Bay studio, using only a couple drum machines and reel to reel tapes of Chrismas music sourced from Edison wax cylinders. Coppice Halifax carves through the detritus of age and erosion, and composts audio from the early 1900s into feel-good movements in a wintery holiday fashion. A free digital gift to pass around, with a super-limited 31 copy run of limited edition CD-Rs with alternate cover art. Happy holidays from Coppice Halifax - stay warm and happy. released December 9, 2013 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded live December 7th and 8th, 2013 at Botany Bay. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMC005. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2013 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. DeepWarmth - Ratio (Of Silver) [Coppice Halifax Glacial Fortress] (32:23) 02. DeepWarmth - Ratio (Of Silver) [Coppice Halifax Evaporant] (10:56) Recycled Plastics has recently issued an expanded single for DeepWarmth's "Ratio (Of Silver)", containing several remixes of the track. This release is a special limited edition physical pressing of the two Coppice Halifax remix constructs for Ratio, a double fantasy of lush pads, airy open atmospheres, radiant drones and organic rhythms. Clocking in at a massive 32 minutes, Glacial Fortress is yet another example of just how deep the CH submersible is able to go these days, as it was created using ONLY source sound from DeepWarmth's original track (this remixing code has been the CH mantra for the last year or so). Dub techno drifting along at the rate of melting icecaps, blurry and spacious. The second mix, Evaporant, hearkens back to the first Ocean Lion album in 2008. Ratio's chords are reduced to smears of soft pastel color on a wintery skyline, and a warm bass pulse slowly rises from the fog to keep you nice and comfortable for 11 minutes. Limited to only 25 copies! released December 27, 2013 Written by DeepWarmth. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Constructed at Botany Bay, Autumn 2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX24. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - WB-SPV (25:30) 02. Coppice Halifax - MX-DV (24:53) 03. Coppice Halifax - NSF-EMX (19:33) 04. Coppice Halifax - M113-SSD (54:55) 05. Coppice Halifax - MD-DV (15:42) Built from extensive recording sessions happening concurrently with the creation of the Static Pharming material, Static Physics is a double album of deep drone techno works. The Halifaxian template in 2013 has become a wider and more exploratory one, and translating audio from thought to form is a more and more detailed language with each new recording session. Static Physics represents only the beginning of what is likely going to be a very lengthy mining operation into the cliffs and ruins of years past. Reappropriation of sound as an artifact, rather than a sentimental thought, is key. Only through extensive reduction, transfiguration and mutation can true aural composting - or "pharming", in this case - occur. released December 30, 2013 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Composted and cultivated at Botany Bay, Summer-Fall 2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX25. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [RX1] Empty (19:35) 02. Coppice Halifax - [RX2] Codeine (21:37) 03. Coppice Halifax - [RX3] Tigress (21:16) 04. Coppice Halifax - [RX4] Hot Guns & Pink Sugar (21:15) 05. Coppice Halifax - [RX5] Enhasa (22:28) 06. Coppice Halifax - [RX6] Glassed (22:00) 07. Coppice Halifax - [RX7] Suncarpet (21:48) 08. Coppice Halifax - [RX8] Natow (21:29) 09. Coppice Halifax - [RX9] German Metals (21:17) 10. Coppice Halifax - [RX10] D.Y.B. (21:56) 11. Coppice Halifax - [RX11] Discreete (20:50) 12. Coppice Halifax - [RX12] Melting (21:08) 13. Coppice Halifax - [RX+] Aeriformic Forests (1:18:22) Bookending a year very full with Halifaxian works is this five-disc volume of Static Pharming, containing all 12 EPs created throughout 2013, as well as a special new album - Aeriformic Forests - recorded during the Pharming sessions and given a rightful place here. Static Pharming was intended initially to be a single-year series, however the series is now continuing on for a second year in 2014, after I made the realization that things were just starting to become self-aware, conceptually and aurally. From the icy peaks of pieces like "Empty" and the rainslick metallics of "Natow" to the blue skies of "Enhasa" and the deep blue oceans of "D.Y.B.", Static Pharming has transmuted thought to function, function to form in an ever-mutating process of live improvisation, spur of the moment drum programming and rigorous FX saturation, yielding music that is equal parts drone, dub techno and textural ambient. All the hallmarks of the CH sound are clear and accounted for, and the thick woods of Verdant Acre can still be seen from the Static shore. The composting, excavation and Analog Botany alchemy will hereafter continue to expand and explore, but for now, this pillar marks a 12-month descent through nitrous oxide clouds and sedate waters, collected conveniently in one place for the adventurous listener. "He must go on - conquest beyond conquest. This little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time - still he will be beginning..." - O. Cabal, 2036 released December 30, 2013 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, January-December 2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number RX78. Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [1/4] (1:20:36) 02. Coppice Halifax - [2/4] (1:20:11) 03. Coppice Halifax - [3/4] (1:20:55) 04. Coppice Halifax - [4/4] (1:36:30) Like several longform Halifaxian pieces before it, Night's Moisture is an experiment in depth and immersion. Taking cues from Winter Blurring, Verdant Overgrowth and the recent wallpaper piece Aeriformic Forests, Night's Moisture clocks in at just under six hours long - a megalith in the Halifaxian woods. Designed to be a seamless non-repeating listening experience for sleeping to, it slowly but dutifully moves through different phases instead of being a static piece. Loops of different lengths overlap in new places every time they recur, much like Eno's original plans for certain types of ambient music, giving Moisture an organically growing and shifting feel, despite the repetitions. Processed field recordings of my backyard at night, as well as delicate layers of white noise and textural room sounds form the backdrop behind the orchestral compost that the elongated chords and tonalities emerge from. Womblike rhythms with nearly no treble, which resemble a human heartbeat at times, burble in and out of the stereo field, occasionally bumping into each other, and a stately but effective two-note bassline appears in places to anchor the piece from complete endless drift and to give some of the melodic parts resolution. Night's Moisture is a massive sonic sculpture, made for comfortable listening through either waking or sleeping mind states, and compatible with both headphones and larger scale stereo systems. Night's Moisture is available as a digital download, or packaged with a CD-R that contains a special composite 80-minute mix of the piece, exclusively for the physical format. Also, following sometime soon will be a separate release of more techno/less ambient versions/mixes of the material. **EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to Bandcamp's file size limit on uploads, the digital version is broken into four parts, which run together without gaps (although Bandcamp plays them this way), so be sure to play them back on a gap-free device (like an iPod or Winamp). released February 5, 2014 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, January 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX26. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Shape I (14:26) 02. Coppice Halifax - Shape II (18:54) 03. Coppice Halifax - Shape III (22:53) In February, South Carolina was very unexpectedly covered in ice and snow for over a week. Being a sub-tropical zone, this was highly irregular, and as such, I was effectively "snowed in", hoping that we wouldn't lose power. Thankfully, we didn't, and what followed was a sporadic recording session inspired by the blanketed white neighborhood outside. The reduction of my rural surroundings to nothing more than lines on empty whiteness, and the quiet that came along with that, was really something to meditate on. It was a nice change to have forced on us for a little while, though I will fully admit to getting pretty stir-crazy by the end. Snow Vessel is an iced white equivalent to the summer's Ocean Lion template. Organ pedal bass, drones made of equal parts orchestral sampling and synthesis and crumbly taped-up drum machines are what comprises the special hour long mixture of isolation and fascination. A deep and imagined exploration of wintery sonic sculptures and incidental forms obscured by the snow. released March 16, 2014 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded live to tape at Botany Bay, February 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian. This is Milieu Music number ABX27. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Varosha (1:01:52) Varosha is an hour-long piece constructed using the digital and analog source material from Milieu's Gunkajima album, originally recorded in 2004. It is intended to bridge the gap between the inception of Milieu as a project, a decade ago, and Coppice Halifax in 2014. As such, it resembles the source material just as much as something from the Static Pharming series, and hopefully illustrates that, once again, all the tributaries of my output flow from a single source. Varosha is available digitally by itself, or as part of a 2xCD set with the remastered Gunkajima album. released May 17, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number AD14B. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Rephrase I (15:04) 02. Coppice Halifax - Rephrase II (17:20) 03. Coppice Halifax - Rephrase III (22:00) Dream-state fog rolls over dew covered kick drums left to fill up with rain water in the bottom of a ravine. Everything is blurry, slow like syrup, but if you squint and close one eye you can make out movements and a few round shapes in the abyss. Bliss lights up your mind and skin like a new drug, you could feel like this forever and never go back. Endless endless endless. Goodnight. released August 13, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at Botany Bay, August 13th 2014. Laid to tape, mutated and mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX34. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [RX21] Marine Halide (21:20) September brings cooler air and shorter days, a welcome respite from the oppressive heat of each Carolinian sub-tropical summer. Appropriately, the ninth RX of the year is a cool, dusky sweep of burnt leaves and deep golden hues of setting sunlight, all carried fragrantly along on a light breeze that curves in the purple air like invisible poetry. A wondrous calm surrounds the listener with gently bubbling hi hats and AM radio fizzed chord stabs, while the last remnant of a house bassline repeats lazily in a lock-groove. "Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past?" -J.A. Hendrix, 1967 released September 14, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded September 2014 at Botany Bay. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number RX21, and 21st in the Static Pharming series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Mk. I [Resin Peel] (7:07) 02. Coppice Halifax - Mk. II [Blacksmoke] (7:12) 03. Coppice Halifax - Mk. III [Soot Imprint Layer] (9:44) 04. Coppice Halifax - Mk. IV [Artefacts] (11:14) 05. Coppice Halifax - Mk. V [Red Yellow Residue] (5:12) 06. Coppice Halifax - Mk. VI [Burnt Remains] (7:12) In 2012, while preparing for the Leaf Cloak album sessions, I recorded a tape of mostly live jams using a lot of the sound palette that would end up shaping Leaf Cloak. Almost immediately after recording these tracks, the cassette was misplaced, and wasn't found until earlier this summer in 2014. My memory led me to think there were only a couple good moments on the tape, but when I ripped the audio, I found almost 50 minutes of raw atmospheric techno that mirrored the Leaf Cloak album perfectly in some places, and went in the opposite direction from it in others. I named the tracks Chemist Cloak, as the music sounded as if it were dipped in corrosive chemicals and then altered in strange ways. A lot of the content on Chemist Cloak ended up minimized and restrained on the Leaf Cloak album, which makes this album an interesting "behind the curtain" look at how those tracks were made. Even in the shadow of Leaf Cloak, Chemist Cloak is able to stand on its own legs, with solidarity earned via pure impulse and brute force. It is dirty, misshapen in parts and even primal at times. A formidable counterpoint to the gentle backyard rural techno of Leaf Cloak. released September 14, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2012. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, 2014. This is Milieu Music number ABX29 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Alluvion (8:14) 02. Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens - Los Angeles Mescal Buttons [Psycho-Tropic Sex Cmx] (8:52) 03. Overcast Sound - Settle [Coppice Halifax Distillation] (6:31) 04. Cybertone - Selfmade Funk [Coppice Halifax's Asari Harem] (6:37) 05. Axs - Restored Picture [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (7:06) 06. Urenga - Mantha [Rainy Acre Cmx] (9:51) 07. Textural Being - The Sixth Gap [Opioid Cmx] (11:26) 08. Zander One - Memory Faded [Time Traveler's Headwound Cmx] (15:54) The sixth expansive volume of Coppice Halifax remixes, Cmx VI contains some of the deepest and dubbiest CH remixes yet. Kicking off with the pastoral "Alluvion", originally released on a compilation album at Grounded In Humanity, the collection moves seamlessly through the wall-of-sound psychedelics of the "Psycho-Tropic Sex Cmx" and the smoky downtuned dub of "Settle". The "Asari Harem" mix for Cybertone freshens things up with a smooth ambient house vibe, then "Restored Picture" puts the music in gritty techno mode. The final three tracks are almost a suite of deeply immersive dub techno with warm-bath drones peppered in, finishing out the set on a starry eyed dreamlike note. released September 15, 2014 Written by the credited artists, remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax, except "Alluvion", W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, various dates 2013-2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. All tracks used with permission. This is Milieu Music number MML094. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Whitehope (1:02:54) Several years ago, I imagined a place named Whitehope. It formed in my mind as naturally as any logic or observation might - it almost seemed to already exist. I had to look it up to make sure it didn't. Once the seed had been planted, I imagined even further - what was Whitehope like? It was blurry, slightly warm, sunny with buildings made of smoothed ivory that could either be churches or lighthouses. A lighthouse might make sense, because I knew that Whitehope was an island, surrounded on all sides by a furious bubbling blue sea. It submitted to the ocean waves via rocky crags and clay-colored sand, while inland there were mountains surrounded by rolling green hills and pastoral fields filled with yellow flowers. It all sounded so perfect. I had to etch out some kind of aural tribute to this fictional place, perhaps even something that could stand up to the feeling of actually being there. So I set out on my course to find Whitehope in my instruments and on my tapes. Three different attempts to reach it failed, and landed me in different territories altogether that have themselves been issued under other names. Only when I began to give up on ever finding Whitehope did I arrive there, and when I did, I didn't even know I had made the trip. I had relinquished all hope of constructing my passage to this beautiful place to the fact that some ideas are just too perfect to ever create or attain. Then one night, while chasing some tangential idea in my studio that felt good, I did it. At first it was like remembering a dream - that foggy sensation that something made sense, even though it was not supposed to, and that you just couldn't forget it. I went to sleep that night with my completed recording and when I woke up, I realized what I had done. Cradling the sound of Whitehope are several layers (about a dozen) of oceanic field recordings - sea sound reconstituted into fantasist backdrop. Then nestled deep inside are buoyant stabs of chords that punctuate and propel a coalescing haze of pads, glossing lazily over a subdued rhythm section that could almost be a heartbeat. By the end of the hour, everything chimes together in a shimmering white glow, pure harmony. Now that I've finally reached Whitehope, I don't need to worry about ever leaving it, and neither do you. released September 15, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Transcribed via dream state at Botany Bay, Summer 2014. This is Milieu Music number ABX33. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Whitehope [Parts 1 & 2] (27:05) 02. Coppice Halifax - Whitehope [Part 3] (25:00) Recorded during the same dream-state session as Whitehope, these three versions subtly mutate and tangentially explore the hour long centerpiece track on the CD-R. When ripping the tape the recordings were laid to, it became apparent that the cassette itself was degrading the audio more than usual. Having tested the rest of the cassettes I ordered in the same batch, I determined that all of them shared this odd trait. The tapes record and play back just fine, yet they seem to process the audio in interesting ways that actually add to the quality of the music. So I decided to release this cassette version of the album, on intentionally degraded black cassettes, essentially making this the "black" version of Whitehope. The nature of the cassette degradation means that no two copies of the cassette will sound alike, and future listens may reveal deeper grades of degradation, making for a truly unique and transforming listening experience. Deep analog forests of cloudy techno! released September 15, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX33B. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Solus (1:17:08) Solus is the spiritual follow-up to Reflector, an album of extended minimalist ambient techno released at Entropy Records in France. A full eighty minute exploration of barely-there sonic sculpture, transparently draped over a consistent bass drum rhythm that frames the piece. With Solus, empty space is the key element in the composition. This is an atmosphere that has been deliberately colored to enhance and accompany the sounds of the listener's momentary surroundings, be they an open window at night, the hum of an engine while riding in a car, birdsong on a sunny day, the crash of waves on a shoreline or the insistent drops of rain on a rooftop during a storm. Solus guides the listener through a sensation of movement, provided by the rhythmic pulse and gradual shifts in temperature of the backing drones and textures buried deep within it, making it the perfect companion for sleeping, reading, driving or simply placing on repeat play while you go about your daily routine in your home or office. Solus is wallpaper music, but it is also detailed enough to enforce its own shapes and shadows onto any wall. An adventure in sonic absence, a Rorschach inkblot for the mind to ponder and discover its own sense of balance, purpose and placement. ***A limited edition CD-R version of Solus will be available in the coming weeks. released October 18, 2014 This is Milieu Music number MML096. Written and produced by Coppice Halifax, recorded September-October 2014 at Botany Bay. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant I [Berossus] (8:45) 02. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant II [Chryselephantine] (10:01) 03. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant III [Mausolus] (9:30) 04. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant IV [Pharos] (14:41) 05. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant V [Nekoma] (8:35) 06. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant VI [Colossus] (8:55) 07. Coppice Halifax - Solus Variant VI [Artemis] (19:14) Solus Variations is the result of my own excavation, extraction and repurposing of the gems I found while exploring Solus in my studio. Tangential processing techniques yielded deeper and more mutated results as the recording sessions continued. These seven pieces are themselves mirror images of Solus, albeit focusing on singular aspects of the original piece rather than the whole. You could even say that each "variation" is actually a segment of Solus, zoomed in on to a microscopic level, to reveal more intimate and engaging levels of detail that were deliberately avoided in the original piece. This is the sound of me taking Solus to different climates and exotic locales, applying it like a layer of paint over the landscape itself, then removing the landscape and examining the alien and organic shapes that remain. For the intrepid listener, other possibilities may present themselves in the practice of playing these variations over/under Solus itself, creating a potentially endless and unique atmosphere tailored to your own listening needs. ***A limited edition CD-R version of Solus Variations will be available in the coming weeks. released October 18, 2014 This is Milieu Music number MML097. Written and produced by Coppice Halifax, recorded October 2014 at Botany Bay. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - AFR-SMX (2:09) 02. Nacht Plank - Birth [Coppice Halifax Excavation] (13:21) 03. Endless Oceans - Waves [Coppice Halifax Amniotic] (11:09) 04. Biathalon - Sleepless [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (22:28) 05. Nacht Plank - Birth [Extended Cassette Mix] (31:56) The seventh volume of the ongoing Cmx series is, like disc two of Cmx III, a smaller number of much lengthier deep tracks. Opening with a Static Physics-era demo of Aeriformic Forests, Cmx VII quickly gives way to massive spaced out organic electronics with a previously unreleased mix of Nacht Plank's "Birth". From there, the Endless Oceans mix reintroduces soft melody and undulating rhythm one sweet step at a time, before the torrential downpour of Sleepless arrives. The album closes with an extended degraded cassette mix of the Nacht Plank remix, which turns the shades down on most of the first mix and points a light in other less explored corners... released October 29, 2014 Written by the credited artists, remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. All tracks used with permission. This is Milieu Music number MML095. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - River [MMXIV] (11:23) 02. Coppice Halifax - River [Secluded] (13:05) 03. Coppice Halifax - River [Inland] (4:42) 04. Coppice Halifax - River [Abandoned] (17:13) 05. Coppice Halifax - Riverside Acre (33:15) River Tableaux is, like Raft before it, an exploration of sonic possibilities that divide and evolve like distributaries from a lengthy body of moving water. Expanding on the 2014 version of River, which appeared on the Futur[e]cho compilation at Cold Fiction, Tableaux represents a confluence of organic Impressionist techno, even including the original version of River from Inland By Night (appearing here in a slightly altered form as "River [Inland]") and mutating into the extended pastoral suite of "Riverside Acre". A deep and introspective listening experience for those of us who don't mind nature spilling over into our homes through our speakers. released October 30, 2014 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay 2014, except River [Inland] - recorded at 114RKD in 2011. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX31. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cornucopiad I (10:41) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cornucopiad II (1:01:51) 03. Coppice Halifax - Cornucopiad III (4:56) Coppice Halifax has always been an elementally and seasonally inspired project, a fact longtime listeners know quite well by now. Cornucopiad is the bounty of my first Autumn recording session in 2014, heralding the return of cool air, the smell of smoky backyards and the turning from green to orange and brown. A celebration of inevitable death and decline, self-sacrifice in the name of composting and subsequent rebirth. Renewal through destruction and regeneration. Three pieces of Impressionist techno that tread the borderline between organic and electronic, as with most things this plentiful year has produced. So, make some coffee, put on a sweater and enjoy the first fruits of my Halifaxian Autumn. released November 18, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Autumn 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photograph by Penelope Grainger. This is Milieu Music number ABX36. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ice Forest (30:53) A Halifaxian interpretation of the cold ending of the year, and something to smear your brain across while the temperatures drop. Produced in the older style of Coppice Halifax records, with full compressor abuse to the point of textural overload, and inspired in equal parts by drone-techno fellows Submersion and Mon0, and the transmutation of the cold itself into sonic tapestry. The limited edition CD-R version contains the bonus 40+ minute piece "Ice Forest [Melted]", to warm your insides back up after traversing the immense and formidable Ice Forest. released December 1, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, November 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC31, and 31st in the ongoing Bedroom Compost series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Lowlights (43:41) Long after the sun has finished descending into the horizon line, and the relentless monotony of waves begins to drive lonesome men mad, the Lowlights appear. Faint at first, seeming to be a trick of the eyes, and then unmistakable. Ghostly forms of luminescence that hover just beneath the waves, always getting closer to the ship, but never surfacing. Some men hear voices, others see faces of long dead relatives or friends. Others still consider themselves seasick from isolation. For all of these men, and for you, the Lowlights are here. Waiting, watching, beckoning. Are they the spectres of a sunken fleet of ships, doomed to forever haunt their burial ground? Are they the spirits of lost navigators, following anyone who might help them find their way home. Are they even of this earth? Those who have seen the Lowlights and somehow managed to tell the tale have strangely only said this: The lights tug at your loneliness. They seem to sympathize with you when you miss the ones you love. They offer a constant unconditional comfort of companionship, and end to your isolation and desperation. "Just come down a little further, just beneath the water. We'll always be together, and we can never leave. Come down and stay with us forever. We all float down here." released December 16, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number RX222B. Photograph taken by Brian, 2014. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [RX24] Static Farm (22:55) "I end not far from my going forth By picking the faded blue Of the last remaining aster flower To carry again to you." -R. Frost, 1915 The end of a two-year road. Static Farm is not a pinnacle, nor a waypoint - rather, a demonstration of movement. A proof of concept that is able to stand on twenty-three other individual experiences. So you'll find that Static Pharming ends where it began - deep techno forms carved out of gaseous audio impressionistically, with the emphasis on lack of emphasis...a detailed meditation on the lack of detail. Hazy, out of focus and designed to induce altered states via repetition, low frequencies and swirling white noise. The Halifaxian vessel floats on, forward into the unknown. Further, into DEEP EARTH... released December 16, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, November 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number RX24, and 24th in the Static Pharming series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [RX13] Gemstones In Ice (20:50) 02. Coppice Halifax - [RX14] Outpost (22:43) 03. Coppice Halifax - [RX15] Eluvian (21:23) 04. Coppice Halifax - [RX16] Photo Fluor (21:04) 05. Coppice Halifax - [RX17] Cloudburst (20:48) 06. Coppice Halifax - [RX18] High Lights (22:02) 07. Coppice Halifax - [RX19] Voltaic (21:02) 08. Coppice Halifax - [RX20] Pol Secondo (19:58) 09. Coppice Halifax - [RX21] Marine Halide (21:20) 10. Coppice Halifax - [RX22] Sift (21:04) 11. Coppice Halifax - [RX23] Into Fog (21:32) 12. Coppice Halifax - [RX24] Static Farm (22:55) 13. Coppice Halifax - Lowlights (43:41) Almost 5 hours of Static Pharming sessions compiled from the 2014 series. All twelve EPs (RX13-24) plus the RX18 overgrowth Lowlights as a bonus 5th album. Deep, impressionist ambient techno, organic drones and loop composting, and various shades of textural dub and spaced-out house music all coalesce into a hazy foggy landscape for you to get lost in. Packaged in the same 5xCD black VHS-style case that Static Pharming: Year One was released in, making it the perfect complement to the Halifaxian section of your record shelf. released January 11, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, January-December 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number RX222. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Shimmering Aurum (12:30) 02. Coppice Halifax - Floating (16:20) 03. Coppice Halifax - Rurals (18:46) 04. Coppice Halifax - The Night Is Empty (15:11) 05. Coppice Halifax - Laid Repeats (13:39) Our first Cd release is from the man who wears many hats, but keeps gracing our label with remixes and appearances in the Futur[e]cho series. Coppice Halifax brings 5 tracks of Deep Ambient Techno that also fuses in the feeling of Drone. Call it what you will, this is sure to please fans of the label, and if you don't already know who Coppice Halifax is, a new artist to dive into. Catalog #: CFM-CD01 released March 13, 2015 Written & Produced by Coppice Halifax Mastered by The Analog Botanist Cover Art by Coppice Halifax ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - M31 (1:49:23) An experimental CH concept piece, consisting of thirty-one different two hour-long field recordings - one for each day in May - layered together and processed according to sets of numerical reference points, frequency band alignments and complex rules governing placement within the stereo field. The result is something unintentionally rhythmic and electronic sounding, while still conveying density and humidity while (hopefully) distorting the listener's sense of time and the feeling of moving forward / not moving at all. “The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark." -M. Crichton, 1969 A very limited edition 80-minute composite version is available for preorder on a run of 25 CD-Rs. The full digital version is nearly 2 hours long, and comes with the CD-R as a free download. released March 14, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded principally at 114RKD in 2007 and finalized at Botany Bay in 2015. This is Milieu Music number MML099 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Variation 657 (6:57) 02. Coppice Halifax - Variation 1838 (18:39) 03. Coppice Halifax - Variation 1123 (11:24) 04. Coppice Halifax - Variation 757 (7:58) 05. Coppice Halifax - Variation 1133 (11:33) 06. Coppice Halifax - Variation 710 (7:10) 07. Coppice Halifax - Variation 812 (8:13) Imperial Grey is an exploration of seven different levels of depth off the idyllic coast of Whitehope. High-pressure undersea environments, dark shades of blue, slow motion video footage of sunken ships and Atlantean ruins. Originally released as a free digital download at the wonderful Argentinian label Temiong, this Milieu Music version of Imperial Grey offers fans a limited edition CD-R version for the first time, with an alternate Lomographic cover. released March 20, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Winter 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photo taken by Brian in Loris, SC, 2010. This is Milieu Music number ABX37 and Temiong Recordings number TMONG024. Special thanks to Matias at Temiong for allowing Milieu Music to issue this version. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Malus (11:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - Malus [Hollow] (19:15) 03. Coppice Halifax - Malus [Black] (3:20) 04. Coppice Halifax - Malus [South Rains] (12:55) 05. Coppice Halifax - Malus [Obliterated] (29:36) Appleviolet is a recording session from late 2014 that yielded Malus, a piece of composting techno that warps and builds on a sample from one of my favorite video games, along with four other pieces that tangentially explore the terrain surrounding Malus. The result somewhat resembles my Verdant Acre series, but also delves into more direct dub techno movements in the 'Hollow' and 'Rains' versions. Further still, the 'Black' version sheds overt rhythm elements in favor of texture, temperature and color, until finally imploding on itself across the micro-cosmic 'Malus [Obliterated]' in its half-hour excursion. Embryonic, primordial, organic. released May 14, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Fall 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, May 2015, from the original session tapes. Cover photograph taken by the multitalented Rudolf Kremers, and graciously used with permission. This is Milieu Music number ABX42 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Humidex ) (1:00:41) "Sprung from the spring beneath our backyard" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME1. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Ridge ) (1:02:00) "The moisture of night transmits us its heart" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME2. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Vapored ) (1:00:46) "Enough to propel the sun into the morn" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME3. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Sinking ) (1:04:43) "And light up the street with rays golden and warm" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME4. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Aqueous ) (1:02:39) "The dewdrops condense on the blades of green grass" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME5. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Subtropic ) (1:07:31) "The Earth slowly waking from a comatose past" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME6. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Monowaves ) (1:00:46) "Our slumbering wren unfurls and departs" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME7. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Gastank ) (1:02:02) "Happily leaving behind all the stars" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME8. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Abiotics ) (1:05:22) "Stillness and quiet pronounce themselves king" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME9. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Gentlerain ) (1:00:47) "And queen to reign o'er the burbling spring" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME10. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Dayfall ) (1:03:19) "As noon fast approaches in the peak of the sky" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME11. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Reprocess ) (1:07:32) "Vaporous wetness absorbed with a sigh" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME12. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Troposphere ) (1:00:47) "Of bright and hot white and orange and red" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME13. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - ( Dripping ) (59:08) "And yellowing light saturating your head" released May 17, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, May 2015. This is Milieu Music number MME14. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Inside The Sun [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (43:25) Sun Vessel is a rephrasing of Milieu's track "Inside The Sun" by Coppice Halifax. Appearing physically as part of A Warm Wooden Hollow's expanded double-disc reissue, the remix appears here alone for fans who would prefer to just skip straight to the Halifaxian acreage. The piece itself is a throbbing 44 minute excursion, somewhat calling back to the early hazy mixing style of 1983. Heaps of tape hiss and analog compression help to coagulate a druggy substance made of Lowrey organ lines, swirls of rotary space drones and a Bronze-like propulsive kick drum and bass pulse. released June 4, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Rephrased by Coppice Halifax at Botany Bay, Spring 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photograph by Luke Hazard, rephrased by Brian. This is Milieu Music number AD4B ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ĉielarko 1.1 (9:04) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ĉielarko 1.2 (5:54) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ĉielarko 2.1 (8:54) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ĉielarko 2.2 (4:44) Ekzistas iu dubo ĉirkaŭ kie la lumo ene la planedo devenas, sed ĝi estas ĉi tie tutegale kaj ni estas dankemaj. Kelkfoje ĝi ludas ekstere de la kvarco-similaj rokoj en eta ĉielarkojn, fremdulo kaj bela. released August 29, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, April 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number EARTH 4, and fourth in the DEEP EARTH catalog. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Phern [Phase Phore Mix] (5:34) 02. aspect. - bp4 [Warm Milk Cmx] (8:39) 03. DeepWarmth - Crafting A Stream [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (11:10) 04. Arbee - Vérosène [Cmx] (5:28) 05. Zander One - Isolation [Frosty Field Cmx] (17:45) 06. Melotone - In The Distance [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (7:55) 07. Brother Blue - Royal Secret [Coppice Halifax VSOP Dub] (23:44) It's already been a year since the seventh installation of the Cmx series, so it should come as no surprise that there have been quite a few Coppice Halifax remix commissions in that time. For the eighth volume, I've assembled seven tracks that feel very at home with each other. Starting with the opening (previously unreleased) mix of "Phern", taken from the "morning after" Nepenthesol session, an immediate focus is drawn to melodic basslines, swirling flanger-soaked chords and propulsive drum machine rhythms. Following the vaguely house-like groove is the starry-eyed dub shuffle of aspect.'s "bp4", simmered down to a funk not unlike some of the Analog Botany series. The subtle house strain continues on my 11-minute rework of DeepWarmth's "Crafting A Stream", with delayed piano chords gently covering a bouncy and breezy deep techno mood, before the bottom drops out in Arbee's "Vérosène", during which a skeletal form made of sine-wave sinew and crisp amplifier hiss circles the drain and eventually dissolves. This emptiness gives way to the grand and glistening 17-minute mix of Zander One's "Isolation", filled with cascading paddy chords and buoyant hollowed out drums, floating serenely into a magic fog. By the time Melotone's "In The Distance" arrives, it's clear that the album is winding down again, with tape-processed vocal sounds and polite rhythms ebbing forward. Closing with the 20+ minute epic VSOP Dub of Brother Blue's "Royal Secret", the album has one last excursion for you to immerse yourself in. Warm, pooling drones and gradually rising chords build up to a dancefloor-ready techno funk that offers you one last push on the swing before the lights go out. Considering the (to my ears) accessible nature of this volume, it's safe to assume that Cmx IX will be a much deeper, psychedelic affair. Once again, my remixes seem to have a life and mind of their own, and assemble into an album that is a greater whole than the sum of its parts. Hopefully you enjoy this collection as much as I do, as all the leaves fall off the trees and the cool evenings keep you tucked in. released October 7, 2015 Written by the credited artists, produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, various dates 2014-2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML105. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Antauen (7:14) 02. Coppice Halifax - Antauen, Zwei Kreise Room 3B (6:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Antauen, Matias Bagato Mix (6:59) 04. Coppice Halifax - Antauen, Zwei Kreise L-Space (5:41) Sometimes, music makes itself, or at least it seems to. Antauen began with inspiration striking Argentinian producer Matias Bagato (aka Orson Throb, and one of the minds behind Temiong Recordings) to remix the Coppice Halifax track "Antu" from Radians (RP4). This mix was simply too good to let it fall by the wayside, so within a week of hearing it, we drafted the help of French producer Zwei Kreise (previously known as Axs) to fill out what would be a spontaneous single. Coppice Halifax went back to the source sounds for "Antu" as well, bringing into existence ANTAUEN, a heavy new track that slices through the original audio with a white-hot laser, ready to storm the decks. Once the leading single and the supporting mixes were laid out, tangents began to manifest, and both Zwei Kreise and Coppice Halifax went even deeper into "Antu" to excavate three more mixes: ZK's being a low-res nod to vintage game soundtracking, and CH's being a 40-minute drone-techno monolith with a washed out reprise. These experimental extras are only available as bonus tracks on the CD-R version of Antauen, which fully adds up to 71 minutes of new sound for your ears to process. Grab BC46 and thaw yourself out in deep space today. released October 19, 2015 #1 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, Autumn 2015. #2-4 written by Coppice Halifax, produced & remixed by the credited artists. Recorded in Argentina and France, Summer 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC46, and 46th in the Bedroom Compost series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Under Furs (20:10) 02. Coppice Halifax - Night Mining (17:36) 03. Coppice Halifax - A Blue Fume (33:27) Three soft drone-dub suites that are appropriate for Autumn. Recorded in three different sessions across two years, with principal location recording happening when I was away from home. A Blue Fume is melancholic night music, gentle techno for your ears and subconscious to ruminate on when you need the comforting nostalgia of home. Picking up sonically where Rurals left off, these three pieces are like a warm blanket of analog fuzz, tube-treated percussion, buoyant bass and tape-hiss bathed synthesizers. A second post-album session of more angular "dance" versions exists and will likely see a release in the coming months... released December 4, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at (and away from) Botany Bay, 2013-2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX48. Photography by Brian, Florida 2014. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Phase #i (7:08) 02. Coppice Halifax - Phase #ii (7:02) 03. Coppice Halifax - Phase #iii (6:05) 04. Coppice Halifax - Phase #iv (5:41) 05. Coppice Halifax - Phase #v (6:24) 06. Coppice Halifax - Phase #vi (12:25) 07. Coppice Halifax - Phase #vii (8:47) 08. Coppice Halifax - Phase #viii (8:28) 09. Coppice Halifax - Phase #ix (7:12) 10. Coppice Halifax - Phase #x (10:03) Green Shape is a single-session recording of ten variations on a theme, the central focus being on the lovely evergreens that populate the American landscape at this time of year. Impressionistic smears of fragrant green sound, pushed through warm pipes and across cozy carpets. The tools used this time around were two vinyl LPs of Christmas music boxes, composted and processed via many different analog effects, and sculpted into pleasant forms to float over and under Yamaha RX11 and RY20 drum machines, and a Roland TR-626 drum machine as well. The lovely sound of vintage spring reverb, analog delay and two Moog filters complete the formula. Green Shape is, in the same way Soft Shelter was, a holiday album, and as such, it is being offered here for free digitally, until sometime in the 2016 year. Feel free to download it, pay whatever you like, and pass it on to anyone else who might enjoy it. A limited CD-R version is also available, for anyone who prefers to hold it in their hands. Happy holidays, whatever you're celebrating, from a humid Botany Bay. See you next year! released December 25, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, December 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian in Florida, December 2014. This is Milieu Music number MMC006. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Serurtruo 2 (0:42) 02. Coppice Halifax - Portante Lumon (4:12) 03. Coppice Halifax - Vagante 1.1 (8:45) 04. Coppice Halifax - Vojeto 1.1 (6:29) 05. Coppice Halifax - Fokuso 1.3 (7:30) 06. Coppice Halifax - Malaperis 1.2 (6:16) 07. Coppice Halifax - Submetiĝo (1:57) 08. Coppice Halifax - Fandigis (8:35) 09. Coppice Halifax - Aŭ Aŭ [Senkorpa] (9:07) 10. Coppice Halifax - Glacio Fosilo (7:20) 11. Coppice Halifax - Preteksto (4:55) 12. Coppice Halifax - Cielarko 2.2 (4:44) This is a sampler for the Deep Earth series, which you can subscribe to at malfokusita.bandcamp.com - $150 per year gets you 76 releases (the current number) plus all new Deep Earth material every month, access to a private community with exclusive videos, music and discounts on all physical goods! The series is currently in its 3rd year and still moving steadily forward. released March 8, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2015-2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, Florida 2015. This is Milieu Music number MMLP14. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Marais [Ext. Mix] (6:03) 02. Rolando Simmons - Deep Trail [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (9:29) 03. Zzzzra - Nouvel Ordre Intestinal [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (8:46) 04. Christ. - U.P.R. [Coppice Halifax Remix] (9:05) 05. Canvax - Glide [Coppice Halifax Recycler Mix] (11:08) 06. Mon0 - Monophon [Coppice Halifax Evaporant] (9:20) 07. Substak - Beatless [Pulse Mutation Cmx] (16:12) The ninth volume of the Cmx series of Coppice Halifax remixes brings together six deep and psychedelic adaptations of works by Rolando Simmons, Christ. and Recycled Plastics alumni Zzzzra, Canvax, Mon0 and Substak. Headed off by an unreleased mix of Marais from South Sentral Positronix, these seven cuts are suitably humid and glazed over with the night's moisture. Deep wooden drones converge with coagulated rhythmic forms in shallow swampy pools, and chordal shapes seep out of the shifting compost like a green steam. released March 9, 2016 Written by the credited artists, remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML108 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Polysom (1:04:57) The sound of sleep, filtered through the Halifaxian crystal and rendered down slowly with the pull of gravity. Fitful, broken, breathless sleep, observed and documented across two different nights, before being arranged and processed into both conventional rhythmic forms and overtonal smears of soft white noise. At this level, there are no dreams, only a panic-induced state where time stops (or does it simply slow down?) and you wake up feeling exhausted. A monument for the lost and wandering, forever gasping in the bright white darkness of humid rooms. released April 1, 2016 Assembled, processed and constructed by Brian Grainger, using two room recordings committed to digital data on January 27, 2015 and March 21, 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD032. Photograph taken by Brian at Providence, March 21, 2016. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Magic Arrows - Bird Within Him (6:26) 02. Magic Arrows - Ultraviolet Butterflies [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (16:46) Magic Arrows (Scott Beschta) makes his first appearance on WR with his new single Bird Within Him. Taken from his upcoming full length album Ultraviolet Butterflies, this single also features an extended assemblage/remix of the album by Coppice Halifax. Happy cosmic listening! released April 1, 2016 WR-S002 Written and produced by Scott Beschta. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. analogbotany.com Artwork by Eric Adrian Lee. © 2016 Wil-Ru Records, all rights reserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Vintro [Redux / Zwei Kreise] (5:50) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cielarkus [Assemblage / The Green Kingdom] (6:01) 03. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth [Assemblage 1 / Ambigen] (5:55) 04. Coppice Halifax - Inundis [Psychic Alter / Arjen Schat] (7:51) 05. Coppice Halifax - Malaperis [Drone / Zwei Kreise] (7:23) 06. Coppice Halifax - Delokiĝo [Spirit Alter / Arjen Schat] (5:20) 07. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth [Assemblage 2 / Ambigen] (8:31) 08. Coppice Halifax - Vintro [Revised / Orson Throb] (28:07) 09. Coppice Halifax - [U.X. Red Winter] (13:24) The second release in the RIPETIS / REITERATED catalog of remixes and reconfigurations is ALKEMIISTO, a nine-track collection of selected remix approaches to Deep Earth by five of the most talented musicians I have the pleasure to know. Zwei Kreise, known previously as Axs, appears twice with a beat-based mix of Vintro and a beatless mix of Malaperis. Two of the denser mixes on ALKEMIISTO come from aural sculptor Arjen Schat, also known as Ohrwert. Fah appears here under his less-used Ambigen moniker, contributing two atmospheric pieces created with his custom-designed generative ambient software. Perhaps the most conventional sounding of all the mixes is the EARTH 4 reconstitution Cielarkus, courtesy of The Green Kingdom, while the album closes with a nearly half-hour excursion into Vintro by Orson Throb. An appropriate counterpoint to the year's fruits in the series, and a solid full-length album of deep and experimental techno works by some of the best minds in the market today. released May 31, 2016 Written by Brian Grainger. Produced and remixed by the credited artists. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, May 2016. Cover photography by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music number RIPETIS 2. © + ℗ Milieu Music, 2016. All rights reserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Prelural (2:41) 02. Coppice Halifax - Roralaxis (9:27) 03. Coppice Halifax - Laxis (1:05:52) RORALAXIS, the ninth commissioned work for Cold Fiction Music, this time for their Futur[e]cho 2016 compilation album, appears here as an expanded work with two additional pieces from the original session. PRELURAL is a modest opening piece, establishing the speed of the pulses, the tint of the colors and the temperature of the waters that are to follow. Built entirely from a single FM-synthesized kick drum and 9 different recordings of appliance and electrical humming, PRELURAL casts a tonal shade over three minutes before moving onward, into the title track. RORALAXIS itself is a 9-minute piece consisting of some of PRELURAL's appliance interference, along with Korg KPR-77 and ER-1 drum machines tethering the atmospheric sound to the rhythm. Extensive tape processing, spring reverb and analog delay boxes dowse the chords (themselves a set of two tape loops harvested from the RURALS session tapes) and give the piece a considerable amount of grit and detritus to find its way out of. In closing, LAXIS creeps in and hangs just above the waterline for 66 minutes. LAXIS combines elements from both previous tracks, processed further via FFT and an Alesis Quadraverb. In this, the rhythms are melted down to an intermittent buoy of ring modulation and bass, while a grandiose wall is erected from the fumes of the appliance loops. Mixed very far away in the stereo distance is a buzzing Nand Drone synth, buried in miles of storm cloud reverb and flange. In some respects, LAXIS is the closest CH has ever come to making "space music" in the traditional (new age) sense, although it could also fit into the more experimental CH canon such as NARCOTIC MONTHS or DEEP EARTH. Headphone music for nightly repetitions. **EDITOR'S NOTE: RORALAXIS is a free track when you download the FUTUR[E]CHO 2016 compilation at COLD FICTION: cfmlabel.com released July 19, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph taken by Brian in West Virginia, Summer 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX56. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat (Ph. 1 / Image 32.1) (1:00:51) 02. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat (Ph. 2 / Image 32.2) (56:00) 03. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat (Ph. 3 / Image 32.3) (1:16:04) Originally hidden in a very very small number of copies of the 5xCD-R STATIC PHARMING box sets, AUTOCHROMATA is a triptych of weathered and longform drone techno, intended to canonically relate to STATIC PHYSICS, REFLECTOR and deeper works like FISSURED BEACH or NIGHT'S MOISTURE. Constructed via extensive and mathematically harmonious formulae of processing, making creative use of low-bitrate sampling compression, tape saturation and analog reverbs. These pieces are somehow totally "other" while still inhabiting the Halifaxian woods and beaches, standing like secluded ruins of monumental structures long since overgrown or flooded over. Your only anchor in the abyss is a static pulse of a warm sub-bass kick drum, functioning more as a heartbeat than anything musical. AUTOCHROMATA, within this first volume (there are more yet to be issued to the public), focuses on very specific levels of digital and analog audio degradation, albeit in a controlled and directable fashion. Subsequent volumes will continue this approach, albeit with adjusted parameters - subtle shifts in pressure thresholds and depth levels as we map out yet another gigantic body of water. Remember: It's not a lake - it's an ocean. released July 25, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX50. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, UK. Used with gracious permission. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - AD27.1 (10:51) 02. Coppice Halifax - AD27.2 (9:46) 03. Coppice Halifax - AD27.3 (7:34) 04. Coppice Halifax - AD27.4 (11:20) Collecting material from MML040 and MML066, both EPs released alongside Ocean Lion and Ocean Lion II, respectively. These four tracks have been out of print for several years now, and were originally only available on 3" mini CD-Rs in a very limited quantity. Together, they create a worthy companion album to the Ocean Lion series, itself now seeing reissues as well, forming an album of sparkling aquatic psychedelia and tropical island solitude. released August 21, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008-2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number AD27, and 27th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. Photograph taken by Brian, Cleveland 2014. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.1 (8:52) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.2 (9:30) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.3 (13:23) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.4 (16:19) 05. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.5 (9:04) 06. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.6 (16:31) 07. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.7 (5:38) It's been six years since you left the island you found, and sailed back to civilization from there. You've almost forgotten what it was like, with all this time passing by, weathering the memory like wind and water. Yet, when you close your eyes, and lie down, you can begin to feel the sun on your cheeks and watch the phosphenes shift inside your mind's eye. It feels good, but it's still only pretend. So you make your mind up to take the time off, pack up your essentials and push off into the blue waves again, seeking that drifting sensation. You navigate there without a map, by feeling alone, and the closer you get the less you feel uncertain about it. After months of chasing down mirages, the scent of a bronze perfume fills the air. On the wavering horizon line, you can make out a thin dark crop of something. Is it a ship? Is it your imagination? Is it the island you have worked so hard to find again? As you ebb closer, you can clearly see it - a lone rocky beach lined with palm trees, leading up to a dense swath of forestation. An indescribable feeling of happiness fills you from head to toe - the warmth of contentment, greeting an old friend. returning home. The salty waves crash softly against your bow as you disembark, thrusting the metal anchor into the wet sand. As you stumble ashore, you can hardly believe what you see - your hammock hanging in front of your little cabin made of bamboo and driftwood, the body of your original lifeboat overturned and fashioned into a rooftop. Everything just as you left it, and how you hardly expected to ever return. Certainly, by the time you set out on your trek, you imagined the isle would have been consumed by the sea...and yet, here it is, and here we are. Both of us, all smiles and warm glow, happy to be together again. Let's stay a little while, rest and listen to the things we found in the ocean. released August 21, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD034. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, edited/processed by Brian Grainger, used with gracious permission. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.8 (12:10) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.9 (11:28) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.10 (8:42) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.11 (8:10) 05. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.12 (12:53) 06. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.13 (6:59) 07. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.14 (13:11) ...PART TWO... It's been six years since you left the island you found, and sailed back to civilization from there. You've almost forgotten what it was like, with all this time passing by, weathering the memory like wind and water. Yet, when you close your eyes, and lie down, you can begin to feel the sun on your cheeks and watch the phosphenes shift inside your mind's eye. It feels good, but it's still only pretend. So you make your mind up to take the time off, pack up your essentials and push off into the blue waves again, seeking that drifting sensation. You navigate there without a map, by feeling alone, and the closer you get the less you feel uncertain about it. After months of chasing down mirages, the scent of a bronze perfume fills the air. On the wavering horizon line, you can make out a thin dark crop of something. Is it a ship? Is it your imagination? Is it the island you have worked so hard to find again? As you ebb closer, you can clearly see it - a lone rocky beach lined with palm trees, leading up to a dense swath of forestation. An indescribable feeling of happiness fills you from head to toe - the warmth of contentment, greeting an old friend. returning home. The salty waves crash softly against your bow as you disembark, thrusting the metal anchor into the wet sand. As you stumble ashore, you can hardly believe what you see - your hammock hanging in front of your little cabin made of bamboo and driftwood, the body of your original lifeboat overturned and fashioned into a rooftop. Everything just as you left it, and how you hardly expected to ever return. Certainly, by the time you set out on your trek, you imagined the isle would have been consumed by the sea...and yet, here it is, and here we are. Both of us, all smiles and warm glow, happy to be together again. Let's stay a little while, rest and listen to the things we found in the ocean. released September 11, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD035. Photography by Brian, Cleveland 2015. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Atmo (9:48) 02. Coppice Halifax - Urceolus [Atmo II] (20:50) 03. Coppice Halifax - Osp [Atmo III] (6:09) 04. Coppice Halifax - Sphere (18:33) 05. Coppice Halifax - Ion Urn [Sphere II] (8:04) 06. Coppice Halifax - Oblate [Sphere III] (13:34) #cat: ROHS!019CD released October 3, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger Recorded at Botany Bay, 2015 Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay Cover photography by Rudolf Kremers Released by ROHS! RECORDS 2016 (Berlin) ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - MML114.1 (9:15) 02. Coppice Halifax - MML114.2 (18:52) A second, likely unexpected, volume of Lioness tracks - that is to say, Ocean Lion pieces that did not, for whatever reason, fit on the album. These two extended drifts are from the six-years-deep sessions for Ocean Lion III, and offer a soft epilogue to the monumental triple-disc affair. While Lioness II represents closure for this volume of Ocean Lion, by no means is it a denouement. There is still more to come, hopefully next year, in a new summer, remembering these same waves. released November 12, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML114. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, edited/processed by Brian Grainger, used with gracious permission. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.15 (11:39) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.16 (7:04) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.17 (14:06) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 3.18 (46:36) ...PART THREE... It's been six years since you left the island you found, and sailed back to civilization from there. You've almost forgotten what it was like, with all this time passing by, weathering the memory like wind and water. Yet, when you close your eyes, and lie down, you can begin to feel the sun on your cheeks and watch the phosphenes shift inside your mind's eye. It feels good, but it's still only pretend. So you make your mind up to take the time off, pack up your essentials and push off into the blue waves again, seeking that drifting sensation. You navigate there without a map, by feeling alone, and the closer you get the less you feel uncertain about it. After months of chasing down mirages, the scent of a bronze perfume fills the air. On the wavering horizon line, you can make out a thin dark crop of something. Is it a ship? Is it your imagination? Is it the island you have worked so hard to find again? As you ebb closer, you can clearly see it - a lone rocky beach lined with palm trees, leading up to a dense swath of forestation. An indescribable feeling of happiness fills you from head to toe - the warmth of contentment, greeting an old friend. returning home. The salty waves crash softly against your bow as you disembark, thrusting the metal anchor into the wet sand. As you stumble ashore, you can hardly believe what you see - your hammock hanging in front of your little cabin made of bamboo and driftwood, the body of your original lifeboat overturned and fashioned into a rooftop. Everything just as you left it, and how you hardly expected to ever return. Certainly, by the time you set out on your trek, you imagined the isle would have been consumed by the sea...and yet, here it is, and here we are. Both of us, all smiles and warm glow, happy to be together again. Let's stay a little while, rest and listen to the things we found in the ocean. released November 12, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD035. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, edited/processed by Brian Grainger, used with gracious permission. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Zander One - Iceberg [Blue Shape One] (6:59) 02. Zander One - Iceberg [Blue Shape Two] (7:56) 03. Zander One - Iceberg [Blue Shape Three] (8:11) 04. Zander One - Memory Faded [Time Traveler's Headwound] (15:54) 05. Zander One - Isolation [Frosty Field] (17:45) 06. Zander One - Hazel Canticle [Blue Shape] (10:35) 07. Endless Oceans - Waves [Amniotic] (11:09) 08. Zander One - Dreamwave [Blue Shape] (1:07:15) Blue Shape, a designator assigned to remixes drafted for Zander One, a close friend and talented midwestern producer. Since issuing his debut album Echoate at my Recycled Plastics imprint, back in 2012, I've remixed Zander One eight times - each subsequent attempt becoming more familiar with the details of his sound. Since my remixes adhere to a strict rule of only using the source material to construct the entire mix, Blue Shape is literally Zander One with the atoms rearranged, alchemically displaced and distilled down to forms that may not have been evident in the original tracks. Originally collecting the three "Iceberg" remixes on a 3" CD-R, which was issued in a limited run of 16 copies when Echoate was released, Blue Shape is expanded here to a double-album length, collecting all three original "Iceberg" versions, the fifteen-minute psychedelic dub-out of "Memory Faded" (from the Echonine remix album), the seventeen-minute winter monolith excavation of "Isolation" from his Inner Horizon album, the bronzed, baroque and Cylobian take on "Hazel Canticle" (released at Shimmering Moods) and the hazy and waterlogged subtropical mix of "Waves" (released under his Endless Oceans alias). New to this set is a mammoth hour-long remix for "Dreamwave", from his newest Visions album on Sequel Sound. An edit of this mix was played during recent Z1 live sets, but the full 67-minute piece has not yet seen any form of release, until now. CH remixing Z1 will likely not end here, with these eight mixes. Let this expanded edition stand as a milemarker in the endless white snow plains of Z1's Ohio home, and a focused study in remixing as composition. Swirling blue and white psychedelic dubs for the cooler months. released November 24, 2016 Written by Joe Maas / Remixed & produced by Coppice Halifax. All trax recorded at Botany Bay, 2012-2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Thanks to Z1 for graciously allowing his work to appear here. Reproduced with permission. Photograph taken by Brian, Ohio 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX16E. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Monument (51:36) In Spring of 2015, the Atrocious Symphonies label in Madrid contacted me to draft a Coppice Halifax piece that was deep, dark and thick. It was intended for their upcoming Compilation Vol. III cassette (which you can purchase here: atrocioussymphonies.bandcamp.com/album/atrocious-symphonies-compilation-vol-iii) and, as with all compilation requests that come my way, I sit down for a session devoted solely to the piece. This often yields much more crop than the compilation has a practical use for, as evidenced by the River Tableaux and Raft albums, and Monument, the piece I created for Atrocious Symphonies, was no exception. A single 51 minute excursion through murky spaces, flooded with damp and murmuring drones, punctuated by a watery rhythm generated via controlled modular feedback on analog FX devices. Monument is just what it says on the tin - a pillar of blackness, looming in judgment, with all tonal content created by processing tapes of human dialogue (specifically from the 1980s). There is something remarkably reminiscent of the monolith scenes in 2001, with the disembodied voices of Ligeti echoing throughout the alien location. This piece was also inspired by the processed recordings of NASA's Voyager spacecraft, produced by Brain Mind Research in the early 1990s - those albums have had a profound and lasting effect on my work, and have encouraged me to find melodious qualities in sources that traditionally have none. A six-minute edited "dance mix" version of Monument was created and released on the Atrocious Symphonies compilation tape, but until now, the full piece has never seen a release. Disembodied alien techno that hangs above the Earth, silently watching - perfect for the colder months. released November 24, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, March 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center. This is Milieu Music number ABX39. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Midsummer Acre (8:00) 02. Coppice Halifax - Midsummer Acre II (10:09) 03. Coppice Halifax - Midsummer Acre III (8:32) 04. Coppice Halifax - Midsummer Acre IV (35:50) 05. Coppice Halifax - Midsummer Acre V (10:33) Like Monument, a session album for a compilation track that laid dormant for a very long time, Midsummer Acre was itself drafted in 2014 for inclusion on a cassette compilation in France, which has since been abandoned. It was such a hot summer that year, I cannot even remember how this album was created. It was laid to tape and pushed to the back of the shelf, until now. Musically, it resembles a sun-bleached dub techno texture trip, closely comparable to River Tableaux. A deep blanket of fuzzy warmth, welcomed with open arms as I sit in my new basement studio, dug into a wooded ravine, in chilly Dayton. released November 24, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, June 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photo by Brian at Botany Bay, June 2014. This is Milieu Music number ABX32. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Casio Commander - N.E. (3:25) 02. Loafeye - Rest (3:13) 03. Overcast Sound - Settle (6:13) 04. Ndru - Tape (1:15) 05. Other Heights - Bubbling (6:24) 06. Skytree - Hearth (5:10) 07. Arbee - Couvert (4:24) 08. Radere - Ruby (6:24) 09. Photophob - Concrete (4:59) 10. Textural Being - Sixth (2:41) 11. Monoaxial - Pale (4:53) 12. Deepwarmth - Carbon (3:39) 13. Mikrokristal - Disphenoid (1:42) 14. Cybertone - Harem (1:22) 15. Textural Being - Depth (1:28) 16. Mr. Myoplast - Carolina (2:21) 17. Electricwest - Scarlet (12:02) Fittingly, alongside the 10th anniversary VAPORIZED FOREST INDEX album, we've also arrived at the tenth volume of the Cmx remix catalog. Considering this, it only felt appropriate to use this volume to make a counterpart for V.F.I., highlighting some of my favorite CH remixes from the last decade. Remixes for many other producers are often seen as trivial, promotional things, something you do to fill out a single or try and appeal to a club-going contingent with music that might otherwise stay out of such a setting. For me, remixing has always been one of my favorite studio activities, a way to momentarily see how sharp you can get with a single track, and someone else's source material. I have taken a more challenging approach to remixes as well, in that I do not use any of my own sounds in the tracks I produce - only things present in the original artist's piece. This process means a constant learning curve with sound design and FX processing, as well as creative mixing and sequencing work, in order to create a mix that is both faithful to the original music and adherent to my own sonic principles, and what I'd like to say in that moment. You might think such a stance would yield less melodic results, but in that case it becomes the opposite, most of the time - in becoming so intimate with the source sounds, new melodies and chord progressions are exhumed and an honest, valid reinterpretation of someone else's composition takes place. So for Cmx X, I picked seventeen of my favorite remixes, and with some preparatory work, I performed and recorded a DJ set using only those pieces. A constantly flowing and fluctuating seamless collection of all kinds of techno, ambient and braindance mixes, psychedelic and focused on the groove. With this, I offer a 10th anniversary Remix Appendix, and raise my glass to all of the many producers I've produced mixes for: Here's to ten more years of Coppice Halifax transmutations! released December 12, 2016 Written by the credited artists, produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Performed and recorded live at Botany Bay, Summer 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML115. Artists in order of appearance: 1 Casio Commander / 2 Loafeye / 3 Overcast Sound / 4 Ndru / 5 Other Heights / 6 Skytree / 7 Arbee / 8 Radere / 9 Photophob / 10 Textural Being / 11 Monoaxial / 12 Deepwarmth / 13 Mikrokristal / 14 Cybertone / 15 Textural Being / 16 Mr. Myoplast / 17 Electricwest. All remixes used with gracious permission. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Vapor Dub (4:48) 02. Coppice Halifax - Royal Purple Pageant (6:59) 03. Coppice Halifax - Braid (3:51) 04. Coppice Halifax - Forest (6:33) 05. Coppice Halifax - Sno Dreem (6:05) 06. Coppice Halifax - Dayglo Daze (5:54) 07. Coppice Halifax - Summer Park (4:55) 08. Coppice Halifax - Blue Nettles (6:27) 09. Coppice Halifax - Ovals (7:00) 10. Coppice Halifax - Orange Acre (5:21) 11. Coppice Halifax - Sun Version (5:31) 12. Coppice Halifax - Pacific Opal Hex (3:11) 13. Coppice Halifax - Barefoot Stargazer (6:07) 14. Coppice Halifax - Sandbar (4:06) 15. Coppice Halifax - Pharma C (7:45) 16. Coppice Halifax - Leaf Cloak (7:29) 17. Coppice Halifax - Unending (8:36) 18. Coppice Halifax - Splendour (7:38) 19. Coppice Halifax - Valerian (9:49) 20. Coppice Halifax - Sub (5:31) 21. Coppice Halifax - Eroded Visage (6:10) 22. Coppice Halifax - Ovals II (7:34) 23. Coppice Halifax - D.Y.B. (11:34) 24. Coppice Halifax - Coastliner (7:36) 25. Coppice Halifax - 8000 MBSF (8:36) 26. Coppice Halifax - Hex (10:18) 27. Coppice Halifax - Ovals III (6:50) 28. Coppice Halifax - Whitehope (9:16) 29. Coppice Halifax - Memory Wave (10:16) 30. Coppice Halifax - Raft (Mutated) (7:05) 31. Coppice Halifax - Verdant Acre 4 #6 (14:00) 32. Coppice Halifax - Winter (5:00) 33. Coppice Halifax - Lake Busbee (7:29) Coppice Halifax, originally a Milieu side-project, has now aged a decade. After a full year of painstaking selection, editing, sequencing and mastering, VAPORIZED FOREST INDEX is finally complete. A beginner's guide to the dense subtropical forests and the sprawling Atlantic seaside. Writing and assembling this collection has felt surreal and almost predetermined, as the track selection ended up numbering 33, while I am in my 33rd year. Three discs, as well - themselves grouped according to the general peaks and valleys of the Halifaxian oeuvre - spanning four hours of material from 2006 to 2016. The first Cide, subtitled CARPET, contains fourteen tracks that orbit the earlier Coppice Halifax core of melodic techno. These are tracks inspired by Warp's Artificial Intelligence series, early Rephlex vinyl like Cylobian Sunset, Desktop Robotics and Wasted Sunday, as well as early RDJ like SAW 85-92 and Surfing On Sine Waves. These are the pieces that most easily blur the lines between Milieu and CH, and establish a provenance that spirals further outward into deeper and more textured acres. The second Cide, subtitled CONTOUR, highlights the dub techno phase of CH, with tracks from the Analog Botany and Static Pharming series, Ocean Lion and Pawleys Island. This material is mostly inspired by Rod Modell's early Deepchord vinyl, labels like Chain Reaction, Mille Plateaux and early Kompakt, such as Dettinger or Jonas Bering. These pieces maintain a balance of techno rhythms and warm minimalistic basslines, anchored below layer upon layer of humid chords and restrained melodies - the sum of which often floats in a shallow pool of field recordings and tape hiss. The third and final Cide, subtitled COMPOST, contains the summation of those years lost in the Halifaxian overgrowth. Heavily textured works filled with mammoth drones, orchestral tape loops, guitar feedback walls, modular synthesizer constructs and a truly Impressionistic presentation of ambient music, deep techno and bedroom experimentalism. These pieces have been inspired by GAS, Aleksi Perala's Colundi series, Ourson's Warming Plant album, Mika Vainio's Ø alias, early Vladislav Delay recordings and Steve Hitchell's sprawling Variant, Echospace and cv313 projects. As a whole, these 33 tracks present a cohesive and guided trip through the Halifaxian ten year acre, while also hopefully providing a carefully considered tableaux of works for even the most ardent listener to appreciate. Where Milieu has always been a far more deliberate and composed project, Coppice Halifax eschews traditional forms of songwriting in favor of sonic mining and map making. Compost as composition, synthesis as song. For most of these past ten years, I've not been the creator of these woods and oceans - only a cultivator of analog botany, riding a wave thick with seratonin and surrealism. I've never been a builder, but a draftsman, providing the means for possible realities to enter into existence. Like Michaelangelo digging out the statue from inside the stone, and Monet repainting the Rouen Cathedral dozens of times in different grades of sunlight, I have accepted that there are greater forms in the universe than those I can conjure on my own, and they are far richer things to excavate and frame with so many miles of rippling cassette tape. Shapes in the vapour, phosphenes in the darkness, vibrations and radio frequencies in dimly lit machines, nudged to and fro by a sleep-deprived hand. released December 16, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll and Botany Bay, 2006-2016, in beautiful South Carolina. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2016. Photo taken by Brian in Columbia, SC, Spring 2016. This is Recycled Plastics number RPCHX. © + (P) Coppice Halifax 2016. All rights reserved. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Ph. 4 / Image 432.1] (12:19) 02. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Ph. 5 / Image 432.2] (17:21) 03. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Ph. 6 / Image 432.3] (29:25) The second volume of Autochromata, deep techno experiments with a particular focus on exploring the textural and tonal possibilities of low bitrates, alternative sampling rates and other deliberately lossy setups. This volume contains three pieces, like the first volume, that are anchored by hypnotic rhythms and sustained bass notes that intertwine with the waves of processed chords and drones. The first two tracks are notably more energetic and developed than the previous De-Sat tracks, with the opener sounding remarkably close to something from Static Physics, while the third returns to that monochromatic minimalism again. Between the two is a watery dub that connects both ends of the album's spectrum. released December 25, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay & White Pillar Workshop, 2013-2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, lightly processed by Brian. Used with gracious permission. This is Milieu Music number ABX61. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Phanta C (15:05) 02. Coppice Halifax - Icecaps II (6:31) 03. Coppice Halifax - Snow Vessel [Filter Edit] (5:55) 04. Coppice Halifax - Dry [45 Mix] (8:24) 05. Coppice Halifax - Jel Gun [Dripping] (12:16) The first volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from the C EP / ABX18 #2 from Ganymede Icecaps EP / Analog Botany 1 #3 +++ #4 from Ferro Tapes #03 / noorden.bandcamp.com/album/ferro-03 #5 from Jel Gun EP / ABX54 released January 10, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF1 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Clear (2:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - Blue Party (4:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Lush Q (3:58) 04. Coppice Halifax - Blue Nettles (7:34) 05. Coppice Halifax - Silverplane (4:02) 06. Coppice Halifax - Dayglo Daze (5:54) 07. Coppice Halifax - Purple Nettles (5:54) 08. Coppice Halifax - Vapor Dub (4:48) 09. Coppice Halifax - Quartnie (5:34) 10. Coppice Halifax - Honey (4:14) 11. Coppice Halifax - White Nettles (5:55) 12. Coppice Halifax - H-Tape (7:01) 13. Coppice Halifax - Marsh Acid (4:46) 14. Coppice Halifax - Repeat Unit (4:14) 15. Coppice Halifax - Orange Trak [Live At Foxhill] (5:31) 16. Coppice Halifax - Pawleys Lantern (6:52) 17. Coppice Halifax - Dayglo Daze [Original Version] (5:59) 18. Coppice Halifax - Clear Ii (2:07) 19. Coppice Halifax - Warmwater Boat (6:07) 20. Coppice Halifax - Qmx (1:09) 21. Coppice Halifax - Heliopolis (3:54) 22. Coppice Halifax - Threetone Trak (7:34) 23. Coppice Halifax - Plush Carpet (3:04) 24. Coppice Halifax - Opaque Gold Amb (9:14) From Coppice Halifax's inception in 2006, a thread of melodicism has run through the albums and EPs somewhat inescapably. Despite CH's topical obsessions with texture, density and atmosphere, certain compositions have emerged which (much like Milieu recordings) are designed for comfort listening, recalling sounds and shapes from the electronic music of years past. Influences such as Artificial Intelligence-era Warp Records, early Aphex and Autechre and Rephlex releases like Cylobian Sunset, Desktop Robotics, Wasted Sunday and Expert Knob Twiddlers - they all come flooding in like colorful waves of sound that pulse and emanate from drum machines and synthesizers. These interests provided the template for Q Trax, music created solely for purposes like reading in bed at night, driving with a loved one or going on photograph-taking jaunts during certain seasons. Albums like Milkwhite Plastic Galaxy Maker and Sno Dreem, and also the forthcoming Pink Acre / Plastic Acre cassettes, touch extensively on these themes, but until now, many of the earlier tracks that begat this sound have remained hidden, lost, out of print or unnoticed. Q Trax attempts to assemble a definitive set of these early recordings, with a remastering job from The Analog Botanist that hopes to spruce up old spaces since filled with dust and detritus and brighten the colorful palette once again. Contained here are all of the tracks from the Lush Q Trax splits (volumes 1, 2, 3 and 3.1) with Foamek, as well as material from the early Nettles and Honeysoil EPs, a track from the Casio Commander split EP and a track from a Metanoia Media compilation. They have been carefully remastered from their original recordings, although some tracks were never initially recorded very well, so please forgive any unintended roughness in spots. released January 16, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Poplar Drive / Foxhill / Rolling Knoll from 2004-2009. Remastered by The Analog Botanist, Dec. 2016/Jan. 2017, White Pillar Workshop. This is Milieu Music number AD29, and the 29th issue in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. Photography by Brian, Ohio, Summer 2016. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 1 (6:53) 02. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 2 (7:59) 03. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 3 (7:19) 04. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 4 (13:09) 05. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 5 (25:54) ...EARTH 19 in the DEEP EARTH series... De la kreskanta silenta varmo venas amasa subharmonic ekblovo, preskaŭ faligante vi viajn piedojn kiel vibras tra la kaverno. Kiel ĝi Rutas for en eĥoj, vi fine akiri indikon de kiom grandega spaco estas ke vi staru en nun. Nur kiam vi estas proksimume exhale, alia eksplodo venas, sed post la ŝoko de la unua, ĉi tiu sentas malpli disonanca iel. Certe sufiĉa, la eksplodoj ripetas en malrapida, giganta ritmo. A pulsante korbato kiu krevis maldorma de slumber tiel profunda kaj longa kiu la homaj mensoj ne povas kompreni ĝin. Vi trovos vian propran koron imposto eventuale egalante tiun de la vibroj, kaj eventuale vi sidiĝu sur la tero, kaj viajn okulojn. released January 27, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, February 2017, using an Alesis Quadraverb, a Boss SL20, RC20 & RV3, a Yamaha RY20, a Korg ER-1 and a Unisonic "Chippendale" receiver. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 19] and 19th in the Deep Earth series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pink Acre (6:22) 02. Coppice Halifax - Solar Surfer (5:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Orange Waves (6:54) 04. Coppice Halifax - Springvalley Sunsetter (5:06) 05. Coppice Halifax - Slo Plasticc (6:51) 06. Coppice Halifax - Swingtime (5:26) 07. Coppice Halifax - Thru Blue Mountains (7:45) 08. Coppice Halifax - L.O.P. (5:09) At long last, after a year and a half of work, the follow-up to Milkwhite Plastic Galaxy Maker has arrived! Pink Acre is the first of two scheduled cassettes containing the most melodic and playful Coppice Halifax trax in years. Nestled in bedroom warmth and backyard field recordings, filled with echoing moments of adventuring with my daughter, Pink Acre bounds through green grass and crashes into honeysuckles, before curling up on a worn out sofa for a nap in a sunbeam. The music on this release and the Acre that will soon follow is for my daughter Penelope, to assist in her frequent jaunts of toybox carpet fantasies and her humming snoozes in the backseat of my car. Miniature soundtracks for roaming, dreaming, bouncing and brainstorming. released February 3, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay & White Pillar Workshop, 2015-2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number RPC2-A ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Carpet Tape (5:05) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cmx II [Foamek Remix] (4:18) 03. Coppice Halifax - Enhasa [Filter Edit] (12:30) 04. Coppice Halifax - Saarlak (4:47) 05. Coppice Halifax - Opaque Gold (9:17) The second volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Sno Dreem / MML075 #2 from Cedarmill Dub EP / MMLP01 #3 +++ #4 from Halifaxian / MMD010 #5 from Moss & Green EP / MML055 released February 4, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger, except #2: Written by Brian / Produced & remixed by Foamek. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF2. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Marakvo (10:09) 02. Coppice Halifax - Marakvo [Malfluso] (13:35) ...EARTH 20 in the DEEP EARTH series... Vi turnas la interna parolanto sistemo en via kasko, kaj komencas akiri vian lagroj kun viaj maŝinoj surgrunde. Al via surprizo, la maŝinoj komencas traduki la legadoj de la kaverno medio en muziko! Almenaŭ, iu kiu similas muziko. Vi neniam aŭdis ion ajn kiel tio. Ĝi resaltas ĉirkaŭ la maldekstra kaj dekstra parolantoj en via kapaŭskultilo ludeme, ŝajne konscia ke vi aŭskultas. Vi rimarkos, ke vi povas agordi tiun fenomenon kaj subtile manipuli ŝin kun la kontroloj de via monitoreo aparatoj. Malrapide, vi forigas la brila gantoj de viaj manoj kaj tusxu la ciferdiskoj kun viaj fingroj - ili estas varmaj kaj invita, kaj proponas malmultan reziston al via impulsoj. released February 27, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, February 2017, using a Roland SH-32, Arturia Microbrute, Yamaha RY20 and a wide FX array. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 20], and 20th in the Deep Earth series. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Process² (10:51) 02. Coppice Halifax - CN (8:56) 03. Coppice Halifax - Spring Dub (5:46) 04. Coppice Halifax - 124° [Filter Edit] (12:06) 05. Coppice Halifax - EDE3DD (5:18) The third volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Process / Detail (with Contemporary Vision) / BC14 #2 from CH / CN (with CN) / ABX4 #3 from Spring Blend / MMD024 #4 +++ #5 from Narcotic Months / MMD021 released March 4, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF3. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 1 (6:06) 02. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 2 (6:15) 03. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 3 (5:08) 04. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 4 (6:38) ...EARTH 21 in the DEEP EARTH series... Prenante ĉiupaŝe, vian ilaron elsendas ritmaj serio de tonaltoj, pepoj kaj popoj. Pli kaj pli, vi sentas la senton de iĝi parto de pli granda oscilo, motorizando rado de sono kun vian korpon la locomoción. Kiel ĉi tio okazas, la tero sub viaj piedoj daŭre platigi kiel ĉiu Pasxoj surteriĝas antaŭ vi. Antaŭ via kadro de vizio, estas totala mallumo. Fronte al la ebleco de vundo, morto aŭ eĉ nur la nekonata, vi estas iel trankvila. Sorĉita, pelataj, senpovaj. released March 16, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, December-January 2016/17. Built using principal recordings of no-input modular feedback with three Moog units, with sequencing and final mix completed on a Korg ES-1, Boss SL-20 and Tascam 414 Mk. II, in conjunction with a Pioneer spring reverb box, Alesis Quadraverb and a Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 21], and 21st in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Plastic Acre (8:44) 02. Coppice Halifax - Bubble Playtime (7:42) 03. Coppice Halifax - Green Dreem (6:07) 04. Coppice Halifax - Mop Water (8:26) 05. Coppice Halifax - Columbia 6-5000 (7:04) 06. Coppice Halifax - Phuzzy Blankets (8:10) At long last, after a year and a half of work, the follow-up to Milkwhite Plastic Galaxy Maker has arrived! Plastic Acre is the second of two scheduled cassettes containing the most melodic and playful Coppice Halifax trax in years. Nestled in bedroom warmth and backyard field recordings, filled with echoing moments of adventuring with my daughter, Plastic Acre bounds through green grass and crashes into honeysuckles, before curling up on a worn out sofa for a nap in a sunbeam. The music on this release and the previous Acre is for my daughter Penelope, to assist in her frequent jaunts of toybox carpet fantasies and her humming snoozes in the backseat of my car. Miniature soundtracks for roaming, dreaming, bouncing and brainstorming. released March 17, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay & White Pillar Workshop, 2015-2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number RPC2-B. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Lioness (8:26) 02. Cetra - The Ash Park [Coppice Halifax Reversal] (6:57) 03. Nntblst - Risset Overtones [Coppice Halifax Circuit Burst] (9:16) 04. Screener36 - Jour Dans La Nuit [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (9:49) 05. Oxynucid - #1-5 [Live In The Dark Room Cmx] (11:24) 06. Magic Arrows - Ultraviolet Butterflies [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (16:46) The eleventh volume of the mountainous Cmx series, which collects Coppice Halifax remix works and sequences them into coherent album-like entities. This volume opens with a unique track commissioned by Always Human Tapes for their concept-compilation cassette "Mount Real - Music To The Motion Picture" - bearing the name Lioness, this piece meanders and slowly blooms across almost nine minutes, and is built almost entirely out of samples from a number of vinyl sides from Loretta Lynn, Simon & Garfunkel, M.I.A. and Buffalo Springfield. Following Lioness is a previously unreleased remix for Cetra, a Scottish musician perhaps better known as Mosca, which undulates with heavy synth chords and a Kompakt-like schaffel beat. The club vibe fully emerges on the "Circuit Burst" mix of Nntblst's Risset Overtones, a heavy dancefloor locomotive, bubbling over with white noise sweeps, spastic arps and hollowed out acid bass. After the workout is over, the chillout tent centerpiece Screener36 remix creeps in - sounding perhaps closer to early Aphex Twin than any other CH track to date. In the wake of the ambient techno bliss-out, the eleven minute "Live In The Dark Room" mix for Oxynucid's acid techno romp subtly invades the space, stripping back Oxynucid's harsh analog arps and pounding rhythms and melting them down into a smooth smoky dub. With nowhere left to go, the bottom drops out with a 17 minute Magic Arrows remix, swirling and psychedelic with spattered guitars and clouds of melody everywhere, until a slow tropical bassline anchored to a head-nod break drives us home. This closing piece should also not-so-delicately hint at what is to be expected from Peppermint Carousels, the soon to be debuted collaboration between Magic Arrows and Coppice Halifax. Altogether, a vibrant trip through sound fields both Halifaxian and foreign, which is what the Cmx albums continue to so effectively communicate. Remixing remains one of the most stimulating challenges for my studio, and I'm always content to hear the returns this series yields over the years. released April 6, 2017 Written by the credited artists / Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2015-2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to everyone for graciously allowing me to reproduce my remixes here. This is Milieu Music number MML120. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dissendilo 1.1 (5:27) 02. Coppice Halifax - Dissendilo 1.2 (6:14) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dissendilo 2 (7:19) ...EARTH 22 in the DEEP EARTH series... Kiel la tuta medio ĉirkaŭa vi malrapide dissemas krom kiel milionoj de aknoj de nigra sablo, kun ĉiam ĉeestanta aludo de neebla blanka lumo sub ili, via kostumo surprizas vin produktante nova sono. Unue, ĝi sonas kiel mal agordis radio, kelkaj gradoj for de ia stacio. Al ripeti basa tono permesas navigi pli proksima al la fonto, ĝis vi ŝlosi en ĝin - per nur pensas pri ĝi? - kaj via kostumo komencas registrado la mesaĝo. released April 10, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, February 2017. Built using principal recordings of no-input modular feedback with three Moog units, with sequencing and final mix completed on a Korg ES-1, Boss SL-20 and Tascam 414 Mk. II, in conjunction with a Pioneer spring reverb box, Alesis Quadraverb and a Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 22] and 22nd in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Greensea (5:23) 02. Coppice Halifax - Waterfalling [Dripping Hearth Mix] (5:19) 03. Coppice Halifax - Endless Acre [Sec. 5] (5:10) 04. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast III (7:02) 05. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion [MMD002 #2] (7:28) The fourth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Pawleys Island / MMD019 #2 +++ #3 from Endless Acre / ABX9 #4 from Cedar Mast / ABX12 #5 from Ocean Lion / MMD002 released April 10, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF4. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pluvo (29:48) 02. Coppice Halifax - Pluvo 2 (49:34) ...EARTH 23 in the DEEP EARTH series... La mesaĝo - serio de linioj en fremda lingvo - aperas pli proksime al programo kodo ol deklaro de iu ajn speco. Kvazaŭ ŝprucita de lia aktivigo, masiva subsónicas zumado krevas el ĉiuj direktoj, kaj akvo - aŭ kio ŝajnas esti akvo - inundoj en elsub aŭ malantaŭ la milionoj de vibrantaj nigraj kaheloj. released May 13, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Performed live in a dark room using a Nintendo 3DS XL, Yamaha RY-20, three Moog FX units, Boss SL-20, BBE Two Timer, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer spring reverb box and a Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 23] and 23rd in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [Lamont Kohner Mix I] (7:47) 02. Coppice Halifax - [Lamont Kohner Mix II] (6:41) 03. Coppice Halifax - [Mind Over MIDI Mix] (6:05) 04. Coppice Halifax - [The Green Kingdom Mix] (8:45) 05. Coppice Halifax - [Submersion's Verdant Storm] (12:14) 06. Coppice Halifax - [Ourson's Amythsis Reconstruction] (10:00) 07. Coppice Halifax - [La Forêt Noire Version by The Nautilus Project] (14:32) 08. Coppice Halifax - [Atheus Mix] (8:46) 09. Coppice Halifax - [Minute Of Arc's Viridis Ager Mix] (4:48) 10. Coppice Halifax - [Giriu Dvasios Mix] (6:08) 11. Coppice Halifax - [A.P. Mix] (3:03) 12. Coppice Halifax - [aspect. Mix] (7:30) 13. Coppice Halifax - [Brother Blue Mix] (9:19) 14. Coppice Halifax - [36 Warehouse Mix] (7:57) 15. Coppice Halifax - [Musicians With Guns' Hymne Au Repos] (7:28) 16. Coppice Halifax - [Grey Deer's Tunnel Expansion Rebuild] (13:25) 17. Coppice Halifax - [Am.Light Mix] (7:45) 18. Coppice Halifax - [As If Mix] (9:21) 19. Coppice Halifax - [Overcast Sound Mix 1/1] (6:52) 20. Coppice Halifax - [Overcast Sound Mix 3/4] (17:25) 21. Coppice Halifax - [Overcast Sound Mix 6/3] (6:29) 22. Coppice Halifax - [Purl Version I] (10:55) 23. Coppice Halifax - [Purl Version II] (7:36) 24. Coppice Halifax - [COAL's Poisoned Acre] (23:28) 25. Coppice Halifax - [Substak Long Edit I] (8:14) 26. Coppice Halifax - [Substak 114(-6) Mix] (4:04) 27. Coppice Halifax - [Substak 117(-6) Mix] (4:00) 28. Coppice Halifax - [Substak 119(-6) Mix] (5:55) 29. Coppice Halifax - [Substak 120(-6) Mix] (5:14) 30. Coppice Halifax - [Substak 127(-6) Mix] (5:02) 31. Coppice Halifax - [Substak Long Edit II] (6:42) 32. Coppice Halifax - [Coppice Halifax Subtropix Mix] (14:45) 33. Coppice Halifax - [Coppice Halifax Spring Valley Mix] (25:33) 34. Coppice Halifax - [Zwei Kreise Arpent Verdoyant A] (14:22) 35. Coppice Halifax - [Zwei Kreise Arpent Verdoyant B] (5:53) 36. Coppice Halifax - [Zwei Kreise Arpent Verdoyant C] (10:47) 37. Coppice Halifax - [Zwei Kreise Arpent Verdoyant D] (7:13) 38. Coppice Halifax - [Zwei Kreise Arpent Verdoyant E] (12:36) 39. Coppice Halifax - [Zwei Kreise Arpent Verdoyant F] (11:48) 40. Coppice Halifax - [Orson Throb Rework 5/1] (8:12) 41. Coppice Halifax - [Orson Throb Rework 1/1] (10:01) 42. Coppice Halifax - [Orson Throb Rework 2/3] (10:14) 43. Coppice Halifax - [Orson Throb Rework 3/4] (15:04) 44. Coppice Halifax - [Orson Throb Rework 4/6] (11:08) 45. Coppice Halifax - [Orson Throb Rework 6/3] (14:56) Almost seven years in gestation, Verdant Compost is finally ready to enter the public consciousness on Earth Day, 2017. A mammoth undertaking larger than any previous remix projects I've attempted before, Verdant Compost collects six discs of reconstituted Verdant Acre source sound, produced by a long and talented list of craftsmen from all over the world. The first four discs are sequenced sets of mixes, and the final two are themselves full-length album affairs by Zwei Kreise and Orson Throb, respectively. From deep and dubbed out techno to thick, textured drones, and everywhere in between, Verdant Compost casts a wide range of colors, temperatures and atmospheres, all built using source recordings from the same damaged vinyl sides and drum machines I used to create the original six volumes of the Verdant Acre series. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many talented musicians who took part, in order of appearance: Lamont Kohner (aka Electricwest / Eluder): lamontkohner.bandcamp.com Mind Over MIDI: mindovermidi.bandcamp.com The Green Kingdom (aka Dustcraft): thegreenkingdom.bandcamp.com Submersion: audio.submersion.info Ourson (aka Plantre / Meadows & Labyrinths): ourson.bandcamp.com The Nautilus Project (aka Nemo): thenautilusproject.bandcamp.com Atheus: atheus.bandcamp.com Minute Of Arc (aka Arjen Schat / Ohrwert): arjenschat.nl Giriu Dvasios (aka 101): giriudvasios.bandcamp.com A.P. (aka Anders Peterson / Relapxych.0 / Skyscaper): www.ghostsounds.net aspect. (aka Textural Being / Parallelism): sagetaylor.bandcamp.com Brother Blue (aka Tim Gray / Ethernet / Tanuki House): ethernetmusic.bandcamp.com 36: 3six.net Musicians With Guns (aka Zzzzra): zzzzra.bandcamp.com Grey Deer (aka Radere): radere.bandcamp.com Am.Light: soundcloud.com/am-light As If: kenneth-werner.bandcamp.com Overcast Sound (aka Mikaere): www.overcastsound.com Purl (aka Ludvig Cimbrellius / Alveol): eternell.net COAL (aka John-Paul Kramer / Casio Commander): tibbar.bandcamp.com Substak: substak.bandcamp.com Zwei Kreise (aka Axs): superfine.bandcamp.com Orson Throb (aka Matias Bagato): temiongrecordings.bandcamp.com The box set comes with six special glossy 4x6" photographic prints, mutated and reconfigured from the original Verdant Acre photography, housed comfortably with the six discs inside a VHS-tape sized black plastic box that matches the recent Verdant Acre reinstatement and the ambient companion Verdant Night. A humble and grateful thanks to all of the amazing producers who took part in this gigantic project - without you, we may have never known these half-familiar sound fields. released May 17, 2017 Written by Brian Grainger. Produced & remixed by the credited artists. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Photography by Brian Grainger. Principal source material recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2012. This is Milieu Music number VAX. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Coastline (6:21) 02. Coppice Halifax - Night Grove [aspect. Dub] (6:32) 03. Coppice Halifax - Treader Version [1/4] (6:41) 04. Coppice Halifax - Luxury (6:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Postscript B [Filter Edit] (8:31) The fifth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Amber Castles EP / ABX6 #2 from Ash Cloak / ABX21 #3 from Treader Versions EP / MML036 #4 from Luxury Dancehall EP / MML053 #5 +++ released May 17, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger, except #2: Written by Brian Grainger / Produced & remixed by aspect.. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF5 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Seventh Dub (8:53) 02. Coppice Halifax - Smoker's Lux [Clove Cigarettes] (8:54) 03. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Pine 2A] (6:22) 04. Coppice Halifax - Suncarpet [Filter Edit] (8:34) 05. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3B (8:36) The sixth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Milk & Quaaludes / ABX3 #2 from Sleeping Under Furs / ABX19 #3 from Midnight Snax / ABX7 #4 +++ #5 from Dusk Versions / RP2 released June 13, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF6 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ankoraŭ [Esti] (27:06) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ankoraŭ [Vidu] (47:21) ...EARTH 24 in the DEEP EARTH series... Naĝanta tra la likva, al la gestante dezerta (voĉo?), Viaj pensoj estas malplenaj. Viaj timoj forgesita. Via korpo malkonektita. Via celo unuopa. Via misio pala. Vi atingos la manojn eksteren, sed ili ne estas viaj manoj. Ili estas la manoj de korpo en kostumo, operaciita remotamente de vi, sed senvivaj. Se tio estas morto, ĝi ne doloras. Interne la nigreco, respondo venas al la demando vi ankoraŭ ne demandi. Malproksima lumo. Sentante la lasta de via fizika formo falas for ĉe via flanko, vi fermas la okulojn. released June 22, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded May-June 2017 at White Pillar Workshop. Built using runout grooves from a Peggy Lee LP, played through a Gemini PDT-6000 turntable and a Boss RC-20, alongside no-input modular feedback drones generated via three Moog FX units, Alesis Quadraverb, Digitech Synth Wah, Boss SL-20 and RV-3. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 24] and 24th in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar II.a (10:07) 02. Coppice Halifax - Pillar II.b (13:20) 03. Coppice Halifax - Pillar II.c (10:58) White Pillar II is the second of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This second volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys, a BBE Two Timer delay, a Nady MM14-FX delay mixer, the Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk. released July 1, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW002. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar III.a (6:22) 02. Coppice Halifax - Pillar III.b (9:47) 03. Coppice Halifax - Pillar III.c (11:34) White Pillar III is the third of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This third volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys, a BBE Two Timer delay, a Nady MM14-FX delay mixer, the Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk. released July 2, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW003. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar IV.a (1:16) 02. Coppice Halifax - Pillar IV.b (7:20) 03. Coppice Halifax - Pillar IV.c (10:56) White Pillar IV is the fourth of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This fourth volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys, a Nintendo 3DS XL, a BBE Two Timer delay, a Nady MM14-FX delay mixer, the Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk. released July 3, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW004. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar V.a (1:02) 02. Coppice Halifax - Pillar V.b (7:51) 03. Coppice Halifax - Pillar V.c (10:26) White Pillar V is the fifth of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This fifth volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys, a BBE Two Timer delay, a Nady MM14-FX delay mixer, the Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk. released July 4, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW005. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar VI.a (6:33) 02. Coppice Halifax - Pillar VI.b (14:35) 03. Coppice Halifax - Pillar VI.c (8:06) White Pillar VI is the sixth of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This sixth volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys, a Nintendo 3DS XL, a BBE Two Timer delay, a Nady MM14-FX delay mixer, the Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box and a Peavey FX2 mixing desk. released July 5, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Spring 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW006. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Green Shape [Radialtone Mix] (7:52) 02. Coppice Halifax - Smoky Acre (4:09) 03. Coppice Halifax - Hallex (10:14) 04. Coppice Halifax - Sleeper Botany (5:01) 05. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Overgrowth II] (7:07) The seventh volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 +++ #2 from Parallel Harbors / Other Heights #Six #3 from Hallex / Contemporary Vision CV29 #4 from Pawleys Island / MMD019 #5 from Dusk [Overgrowth] / AB+ released July 7, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF7 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Okazi [Lingvon] (3:02) 02. Coppice Halifax - Okazi [Implikigxas] (11:55) 03. Coppice Halifax - Okazi [Puŝon Ŝoto] (9:03) 04. Coppice Halifax - Okazi [Krado] (11:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Okazi [Precizigas] (21:29) For the fifth issue of the RIPETIS / REITERATED catalog, a surprising record emerges from the hands of both Coppice Halifax and COAL, who you may recall from his 20+ minute "Poisoned Acre" reconstruction for the recent Verdant Compost set. COAL and CH embark on an improvisational live session, rearranging and remixing OKAZI at the molecular level. The session yielded five distinct sections, culled from a very stream of consciousness performance process. The album moves through waves of drone, thick delay-spattered dub rhythms, pulses of bass textures and floor stomping techno, finishing with a lengthy meandering suite of ambient pings and resonant filter surfing. Part live perfomance, part remix, this "embodied" version of Okazi pairs well with the second year of the DEEP EARTH series. released July 12, 2017 "Okazi" originally written and produced by Brian Grainger. Remixed live and produced by Coppice Halifax & COAL. Recorded Summer 2017 at White Pillar Workshop, using 3x Moogerfoogers, Korg Volca Beats, BBE Two Timer, Nady MM-14FX, Pioneer S202W, Alesis Quadraverb and Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing desk. COAL appears courtesy of Boiler Room Sound. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [RIPETIS 5]. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Glissandic (A) (9:53) 02. Coppice Halifax - Glissandic (B) (10:57) 03. Coppice Halifax - Glissandic (Composite Dub) (33:51) Recorded sometime around 2011-2012, these two tracks were created using a single drum machine and several overdubs of a vocoder. All tonal content was generated by feeding field recordings of various places and things into a noise gate with a specific frequency threshold (in order to narrow the amount of sound getting through the gate), and then sending the gate output to the vocoder, which would then use the incoming sound to make chords. In this way, Glissandic plays with nature itself as a generative source, and relays such seemingly random compositional decisions through a system designed to be more musical than the sum of its parts. As an epilogue, Glissandic has been augmented with a third, extended dub for the CD-R edition. This new mix was created live using only the field recordings, vocoder elements and drum machine patterns from tracks A/B as source. Running at over 30 minutes, the "Composite Dub" recalls releases such as Narcotic Months and C, owing much to my influences from early Vladislav Delay, Mille Plateaux and Chain Reaction sounds. released July 20, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011/2012. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX68. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Limŝtono 1 (14:24) 02. Coppice Halifax - Limŝtono 2 (25:25) 03. Coppice Halifax - Limŝtono 3 (22:14) ...EARTH 25 in the DEEP EARTH series...the first section of YEAR THREE... Sen okuloj kaj sen fizika formo ni donas al ni la eblecon, ke iel ajn atestu mondon antaŭ la tempo kaj la historio komencis movi. Loko kie la kosmo mem estas ankoraŭ nekonsiderata en sia intenco. Morto ne ekzistas ĉar vivo ne ekzistas. Ĉio ankoraŭ ne estas io. Nur la severa bruo de embria kreo, fajro kaj premo, sferoj koliziante en mallumo. Kruda primordia realaĵo esti. Jen io okazas. released July 23, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2017, using multitrack tape loops of the Grass C-TCM, in conjunction with Alesis Quadraverb / Pioneer S202W / Moog LPF / BBE Two-Timer via a Peavey FX2x24 mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 25], and 25th in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (2:00:07) 02. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (2:00:07) 03. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (2:00:07) 04. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (2:00:07) 05. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (2:00:07) 06. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (2:00:07) 07. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Phases 7 8 & 9 / Image 32Mx6] (1:37:04) The third installment of the ongoing Autochromata series, which utilizes a foundation of low-bitrate and lossy file formats to explore digital texture and unexpected tonal possibilities. This volume began with a provenance of extremely pitch and FFT processed recordings of Erik Satie piano pieces, played backwards from vinyl and sampled at extremely low bitrates. From there, dozens of automation envelopes were designed across the length of the recordings, affecting filters, pitch, stereo separation and reverberation in both musical and non-musical ways, essentially becoming (to some degree) a form of generative music. Length, as ever, is something that goes further and further off the deep end in the White Pillar Workshop, and thanks to the abilities of computing power, extreme runtimes are more and more within reach. What began as 40 minutes of sound mutated across just over half a day, and arrived at 13 and a half hours of seemingly endless Autochromatic microcosms. So then, what does such a forest of sonic overgrowth sound like? To begin, a rhythmic anchor was needed to provide evidence of forward motion, and to maintain the deep pulse of distant Halifaxian life, beyond these light years of alien forests. This was accomplished by sampling (again, at a very low bitrate) the tiny blur of low end frequency pushed out of a cassette deck the moment you press play. This was processed, looped and subsequently layered at three different octaves to create a slowly evolving heart-throb drum sound. From this point, the expanse of generative work begins to approach across what feels like eons, rendering the hands of a pianist performing the compositions of a man who described his work as "furniture music" into a gently lapping stream in a pastoral wood, which slowly swells and overflows into a flood of harmony and vibration that takes your field of view down to the molecular level of sound itself. Here, at this depth, you can no longer discern how much time has passed - has it been two minutes or twenty? - and instead are left to focus your senses on what little you're actually able to comprehend: aural DNA strands as massive as galaxies, splitting and multiplying themselves forever. Autochromata III is a demonstration of music at the point of its genesis, illustrating the movement of centuries in a mere thirteen hours. Additionally, an alternate beatless low-resolution mix of De-Sat has been produced here: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/de-sat-ph-apm released July 29, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Engineered, generated and recorded at White Pillar Workshop across three Summer days in July 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Rudolf Kremers in England, used with gracious permission. This is Milieu Music number ABX70. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Repeat Unit (4:14) 02. Coppice Halifax - Gauss Dub (9:57) 03. Coppice Halifax - Pillar III [Triadic] (11:30) 04. Coppice Halifax - Sea Smoke [83 Version] (8:01) 05. Coppice Halifax - Sno Dreem [Icevent] (3:44) The eighth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Lush Q Trax 3.1 / MMDL07 #2 from ABX10 / ABX10 #3 +++ #4 from 1983 [Expanded Reissue] / MMD012 #5 from Sno Dreem / MML075 released August 8, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF8 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Armerio 1.1 (3:24) 02. Coppice Halifax - Armerio 1.2 (6:46) 03. Coppice Halifax - Armerio 2.1 (8:58) 04. Coppice Halifax - Armerio 2.2 (8:29) ...EARTH 26 in the DEEP EARTH series... Kiel fendeto de fulmo en frostita vizaĝo de nigra blindeco, same blinda lumo eksplodiĝas. Kiel mirinda kiel ĝi estas, ĝi estas nenio pli ol statistika neevitebleco. Eblo kaj ebla elĉerpita kun la tuta am-afero de ŝtoneto ruliĝanta malsupren monteton. En ĉi tio, vastaj eĥoj elĉerpas en la malplenaĵon, markante la malplenan epopean linion kiel la ringoj de arbo. Ĉi tio estas nia komenco, senpaga mensogo de la fingroj de dormanta kaj longa forgesita kreinto. Eĉ ili ne konas ilian nomon nun, pereis al ĉi tiu frandaĵo de atendado. released August 13, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2017, using the Korg MS-20 in conjunction with several FX devices and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 26] and 26th in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Whitenoise Almanac (28:14) 02. Coppice Halifax - Exalt The Sunbeam Clarion (7:03) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dripping Plastic Mnemonics (17:15) 04. Coppice Halifax - Atlantic Pharming (20:08) Using the field recordings harvested and processed for the Naked Sound Seventeen album (available at CO_RD Tapes here: cordtapes.bandcamp.com/album/naked-sound-seventeen ), Coppice Halifax distills down all of the colors, scents and sounds of a Carolinian Summer like crayon wax, and pours them out across rainsoaked drum machines, sunkissed synthesizers and (sub)tropical texture. More than simply a remix companion to the Naked Sound recordings, Subtropix is a signpost planted on the Richland County line in Columbia, South Carolina - almost 600 miles away from the currently thriving White Pillar Workshop - where Botany Bay yielded crop after crop of Halifaxian fruit. A place where Summer lasts 9 months of the year, and the nearly constant 90-100 degree heat is only broken by torrential downpours. A land where nothing dries out completely, with shaggy green grass overtaking everything in the space of a week, while yard hoses and plastic furniture disappear beneath a blanket of mosquito and snake inhabited microforests. I brought my daughter home from the hospital to just such a place, and I left great old friends behind when I drove away, through the mountains, to the windy valley I now call home. There's no regret, no going back - but there is always looking back, and feeling some sadness, and Subtropix is one of a few attempts to come to terms with no longer being a part of the place that I lived in for over thirty years. In all honesty, I was tired of it - the weather, the politics, the idea that raising a child down there might not be for the best - and that's why it was so important to get away. The great thing about remembering things as an artist, however, is that you can remember things however you choose to, and when you write about those memories, you have carte blanche to disseminate the past at arm's length. Remorse and regret can become romance and resolution, the sour syrup of sadness becoming a bittersweet tincture you can pocket away until the time is right again. And each time you open that little bottle up, it's always a little sweeter. Reality blurs further and further out of reach as your recollections of recollections overwrite themselves again and again. The tangibility of memory itself is fluid and vaporous, like a VHS tape you have rewound and replayed too many times, so now the blips and tracking errors are just as much a part of the subject matter as the film itself. So, with great glowing happiness I give you Subtropix - four vials of Summer memory perfume, filtered through a human brain for thirty-four years so that only the palatable remains, however dishonest that may be. If you can never truly revisit the past, then why not make that process more enjoyable? It takes some amount of distance to truly appreciate the view, so I've provided you with both here. Contented escapism for a time and place that so badly needs it. released August 28, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2017, using the field recordings from Naked Sound Seventeen as primary source sound, in conjunction with several pieces of hardware and software. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Florida 2016. This is Milieu Music number MMD039. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - 1988 Loop (1:45) 02. Coppice Halifax - Honey (4:14) 03. Coppice Halifax - Milkjam (4:29) 04. Coppice Halifax - Dripping Plastic Mnemonics [Filter Edit] (6:20) 05. Coppice Halifax - Rolling Smoke On Pier Four (6:17) The ninth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Bedroom Carpet / MMD004 #2 from Honeysoil / MML011 #3 from Sno Dreem / MML075 #4 +++ #5 from Pawleys Island / MMD019 released September 11, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF9 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar VII (22:45) White Pillar VII is the seventh of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This seventh volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg MS-20 / Volca Beats / Volca Bass / Volca Keys / Yamaha QY-70 / Unisonic "Chippendale" 8-track receiver / Grass C-TCM / Moog ringmod / BBE Two Timer delay / Boss RV-3 / Alesis Quadraverb / Pioneer S202W springverb thru a Peavey FX2x24 board. released September 14, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on September 14, 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW007. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ondoj 1.1 (12:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ondoj 1.2 (12:36) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ondoj 2 (10:32) ...EARTH 27 in the DEEP EARTH series... Pasante tra la atingoj de ŝajne senfina spaco, la resonantaj linioj trenas la realecon mem al ĝia destinita celo. Antaŭ ĉi tiu akto, ne ekzistas antaŭe, nur nun. Nur ĉi tio. Nur estas. Jen, ni spertas la unuan post kiam iam ajn estis. La longaj eĥoj de tiu eksploda neevitebleco malrapidas sufiĉe por foriri, kaj en ilia regreso estas la unuaj sekundoj de la unua horo iam ajn. Tempo, dum tute senutila en tia stato, marŝas, kaj la universo, kiel ni scias, nun moviĝas nur antaŭen. released September 24, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, September 2017, using a Yamaha RY-20 and a Grass C-TCM, in conjunction with a Boss SL-20 / Moog MIDI MuRF / Moog LPF / Moog Ringmod / Alesis Quadraverb / Pioneer S202W / BBE Two-Timer / Boss RV-3 thru a Peavey FX2x24 mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 27] and 27th in the Deep Earth series. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Francois H / Andy B / Joe U / Benoit P / Jonathan W / Jose S / Rik J / Dave W / Levi G / Chris S / Justin T / Burton T, as well as the subscribers of the DEEP EARTH series! ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar VIII (28:50) White Pillar VIII is the eighth of a multi-part series, intended to both document and transfigure the sonic ephemera from the White Pillar Workshop's surrounding area - a valley in southern Ohio, near such things as a USAF base, NASA and the Serpent Mound, the largest serpent effigy in the world, which dates back to 300 BCE. These locations and several others factor heavily into what populates the airwaves and frequency bands of many types, and the White Pillar series exists to isolate such bands and transmute them into something musically affecting. As such, it is fitting that this recording and those that follow it bear the namesake of the new studio, christening it publicly and properly, and looking ever forward to the future. This eighth volume was recorded live using a 95% analog rig, including Korg MS-20 / Volca Beats / Volca Bass / Volca Keys / Yamaha QY-70 / Unisonic "Chippendale" 8-track receiver / Grass C-TCM / Moog ringmod / BBE Two Timer delay / Boss RV-3 / Alesis Quadraverb / Pioneer S202W springverb thru a Peavey FX2x24 board. released September 25, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on September 15, 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number WPW008. Photography by Brian at Rolling Knoll, Summer 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Halftank Dub (6:10) 02. Coppice Halifax - Di-Polar Dub (4:47) 03. Coppice Halifax - QM Dub (10:26) Three alternate mixes of trax from the White Pillar sessions, which (big surprise) don't really sound too much like their counterparts. From the texture surfing hip-hop of Halftank Dub, to the minimal techno bleep lab of Di-Polar Dub, and finally the thick dark techno mammoth QM Dub, this EP displays a varied but cohesive set of Halifaxian sonics. Lots of rugged low end for bigger systems and lots of detail-driven nuance for headphone and home listening, and a perfect companion to the two previous EPs of alt. mixes, Irondrum Dub and Worktop Dub. released October 4, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Spring-Summer 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Columbia SC, Summer 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX67. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ag. Confiture [Coalescence] (24:46) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ag. Confiture [Ebullient] (23:45) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ag. Confiture [Oligodynamix] (11:53) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ag. Confiture [Halides] (6:06) Argentine Confiture is a wild tangent of an album, performed live in the White Pillar Workshop using mostly analog hardware. Fitting in somewhere in the space between the thick techno of Marais, the acid and house moments of Pink/Plastic Acre and the dubbed out deep electronix of the White Pillar series, Ag. Con. came together in two different live sessions during my first Daytonian Summer in 2017. In many ways, this album is yet another line-treading act between what makes a CH record and what makes a Milieu record. Most of the time, I feel like my projects remain consistent, but every now and again music seems to make itself and I get nowhere by denying it. This is the sound of unrestrained, barely tamed bedroom electronics, bounding playfully through phase after phase of pattern jamming and knob twiddling. Waiting for you at the finish is an ambient Roland arpeggiator piece to dwindle the energy back down to an acceptable level. To keep this very loud and very analog-led sound within that realm, I'm also issuing Argentine Confiture on a very limited (read: 10 copies) 90-minute cassette tape, with a bonus 15-minute track to fill out Side A more evenly. released October 4, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2017, using Korg Volca Bass / Beats / Keys / Sample, Korg MS-20, Roland SH-32, Arturia Microbrute, Korg ER-1, Korg KPR-77, Grass C-TCM, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3 via a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, on the road between South Carolina and Ohio, Summer 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX71. © + (p) Milieu Music 2017. All blights deterred. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - B / A (22:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - B / B (47:35) Two extended pieces recorded to four-track cassette tape as far back as 2011, then forgotten, lost and found after unpacking from a near-600 mile studio relocation. With this much time passed from the point of genesis, it is impossible to discern the true intent of these recordings. Instead, I am focusing on what they seem to functionally do, here in the present. The first piece is a minimal and slowly coalescing drone piece with a peculiar wobbly rhythm, which gives way to blooming sine tones and bass across the 20+ minute length. It resembles an ambient techno retake of the Milieu album Leaves Painted Purple, which was created only two years prior to these sessions. The second piece is a more textured and spacious affair, clocking in at just under 50 minutes, which moves incredibly slowly through an exposition of guitar drone loops, as a KPR-77 drum machine emerges like lights barely seen through fog. By the halfway point, a majestic Lowrey organ motif is unfurled, and a dubbed out pedal bass anchors the track's bottom end, not unlike the three dense tracks on Pacific Opal Hex. Both of these unearthed pieces recall a very specific time in the Halifaxian oeuvre, where long runtimes were still being dabbled with and the vaguely shoegaze influence, heard on records like High Hawaiian Fog, Pacific Opal Hex and the unreleased Coastal Reveries, was still very much in vogue. The title chosen for this album, Biorhexistasis, implies two phases of an elemental process, one which erodes and another that renews and restores. These recordings exist like a fossil retrieved from an epoch long since passed, frozen in time between seasons of change. released October 5, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at the White Pillar Workshop, Summer-Autumn 2017. Photography by Brian, somewhere between South Carolina and Ohio, Summer 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX72. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Francois H / Andy B / Joe U / Benoit P / Jonathan W / Jose S / Rik J / Dave W / Levi G / Chris S / Justin T / Burton T. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Night Soil [Fumes] (4:16) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ovals [Ivy Ovalgrowth] (14:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Chemist Cloak [Mk. IV / Artefacts] (11:14) 04. Coppice Halifax - Raft [Mutated] (16:51) 05. Coppice Halifax - Snow Vessel [Shape III] (22:55) 06. Coppice Halifax - Phanta C (15:05) 07. Coppice Halifax - MD-DV (15:42) 08. Coppice Halifax - River [Secluded] (13:05) 09. Coppice Halifax - Midsummer Acre V (10:33) 10. Coppice Halifax - Whitehope [Part 3] (25:00) 11. Coppice Halifax - Malus [South Rains] (12:55) 12. Coppice Halifax - Chloroformic Forests [Rephrase III] (22:00) 13. Coppice Halifax - Imperial Grey [Variation 1123] (11:24) 14. Coppice Halifax - Cornucopiad I (10:41) 15. Coppice Halifax - C-Phoam (21:05) The MM14-FX album is a collection of fifteen longform CH tracks that were partially brought into existence via the Nady MM-14FX battery-powered 4-channel mixer, which also has a handy analog-like delay built into it. The Nady is a constant in my setup, because it can be used to mix out of a suitcase with a 100% battery powered hardware rig, and the delay aspect of it is incredibly versatile for running in an auxiliary send loop on my main studio board. Before I moved to Ohio, my first Nady unit burned out - literally: I'm not an engineer or a very handy person with repairing electronics, so all I can say is that it suddenly stopped working and briefly smelled of smoke. I replaced the unit, but for some reason, took the broken one with me to Ohio, where it was unpacked in the new White Pillar Workshop space. I'm not sure why I didn't throw it away - perhaps I thought I might attempt to repair it? Or maybe it just felt dear enough that I couldn't bear to think of it in the trash. Or, on a deeper level, I was waiting until the right time to give this rugged unit the respect it deserved, as I am doing with it here and now. I thought it was strange at first, but why not? Other musicians dedicate entire releases to synthesizers, drum machines, effects boxes...why not a reliable little mixer? After all, the Nady's simplicity is no doubt responsible for shaping much of these Halifaxian pastures into what they are. Sometimes, the notion of having less options and less flexibility just reinforces the need to make things that sound good in other ways, and I think that is precisely where this little unit succeeds. As such, I've assembled this 3xCD shrine around the burned out box, filled to the brim with music that once ran through it like hot techno blood, revealing one of the dozens (if not hundreds) of threads that connect every CH release to every other one like a massive system of streams, tributaries, rivers, oceans... released October 12, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MM14-FX. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Sen (10:44) 02. Coppice Halifax - Sen [Reprenu] (12:28) ...EARTH 28 in YEAR THREE of the DEEP EARTH series... [Tempo ne favoras nian koncepton de ekzisto. Ĝi nur kreas finitan spacon, en kiu ni povas mezuri la aĵojn. Sen tempo ne ekzistus morto, neniu koncepto de soleco aŭ deziro. La tempo donas al ni nur la ŝarĝon de senfina abundo, markis diligente kun senprudentaj linioj tra distancoj tiom vastaj, ke neniu vivanta iam ajn komprenos ĝin. Tempo estas la konstanta hontinda vivo, ĝi reduktas ĉiujn eblajn agojn, ĉiajn konsidojn kaj pensojn, al ŝerco de vanta momento. Laŭvorte, nenio, kion ni povas fari, ne povas malfari, svingi kaj konsumi.] released October 18, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, September 2017, using Yamaha RY-20 / Korg Volca Beats / Boss SL-20 / Moog MIDI MuRF / Ringmod / LPF / BBE Two Timer / Boss RV-3 / Pioneer S202W / Alesis Quadraverb / Grass C-TCM / Tascam 414 Mk. 2 via Peavey FX2x24 board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 28] and 28th in the DEEP EARTH series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pomwater [Excerpt] (6:59) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cmx I (8:50) 03. Coppice Halifax - U.P.B. 3 [Excerpt] (12:31) 04. Coppice Halifax - Trans Vibro [Triobla Riprozo] (10:03) 05. Coppice Halifax - MD-DV (15:42) The tenth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Aubreeze / ABX59 #2 from 1983 / MMD012 #3 from U.P.B. / ABX47 #4 +++ #5 from Static Physics / ABX25 released October 20, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF10. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Passage I (33:10) 02. Coppice Halifax - Passage II (8:10) 03. Coppice Halifax - Passage III (38:35) Principally recorded during the Autumn of 2015, lost via the hard drive crash of Summer 2016, recovered/restored/completed Autumn 2017. Cedar Mastodon is one of a few records that nearly weren't, only recently retrieved and shaped into a final, gorgeous form after being stuck in digital limbo for over a year. As the name implies, Cedar Mastodon was born from the original recording sessions for Cedar Mast - a unique album that was created by using only the boot menu sounds from the Sega Dreamcast, alongside a single drum machine. The Mastodon pieces emerged from the provenance of the Cedar Mast Reduced release (a modest EP of ambient reductions that was issued as a 3") when the raw Cedar elements rendered off of my equipment and onto the cassettes (that fostered Reduced) were revisited, with longer and deeper passages in mind. Initial sessions yielded five lengthy tracks, and two of these were worked into "beta" forms as demos before I lost a massive amount of work in my Summer 2015 hard drive crash. Fast-forward to Summer 2017, and I've finally been able to retrieve the five original beatless recordings from the Mastodon session, and finish my original intended work within the White Pillar Workshop, bringing these pieces into new spaces I never would've previously at Botany Bay. Mastodon's lengthy walls of whirling ambient sound immediately bring to mind albums like Reflector, and the Static Pharming series, and these comparisons are not incorrect. The emphasis is on the soaring pad chords, constantly unfurling themselves in majestic sunlight and retreating into grey clouds, all while an extensively-patched and processed Yamaha RX11 drum machine marks progress in the waves, with a minimalistic dub bass foundation laid out by a Yamaha QY-70. These are gigantic tracks, not totally unlike the recent Subtropix album, that take their time burning through different elements as they are slowly presented one by one. The final pass on the mix was done via the warm, fat analog circuits of a JVC KD-A11 cassette deck, giving the album a crusty top coat that recalls the textured compressor abuse of the Coppice Halifax self-titled. Huge, warm, wooly and formidable, Cedar Mastodon is sure to keep you lots of contented company this Autumn and Winter. released November 19, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded principally at Botany Bay, Autumn 2015, with subsequent recording at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2017. Built using retrieved four-track cassette live sessions from a Tascam 414, alongside a Yamaha RX11 and QY-70, Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI MuRF, Boss RV-3 & SL-20, Digitech Envelope Filter, Ibanez Phase Modulator, BBE Two Timer, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer SR202W and a Peavey FX2x24 hybrid mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Florida 2014. This is Milieu Music number ABX51. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Passage IV (34:54) 02. Coppice Halifax - Passage V (43:05) Principally recorded during the Autumn of 2015, lost via the hard drive crash of Summer 2016, recovered/restored/completed Autumn 2017. Cedar Mastodon is one of a few records that nearly weren't, only recently retrieved and shaped into a final, gorgeous form after being stuck in digital limbo for over a year. As the name implies, Cedar Mastodon was born from the original recording sessions for Cedar Mast - a unique album that was created by using only the boot menu sounds from the Sega Dreamcast, alongside a single drum machine. The Mastodon pieces emerged from the provenance of the Cedar Mast Reduced release (a modest EP of ambient reductions that was issued as a 3") when the raw Cedar elements rendered off of my equipment and onto the cassettes (that fostered Reduced) were revisited, with longer and deeper passages in mind. Initial sessions yielded five lengthy tracks, and two of these were worked into "beta" forms as demos before I lost a massive amount of work in my Summer 2015 hard drive crash. Fast-forward to Summer 2017, and I've finally been able to retrieve the five original beatless recordings from the Mastodon session, and finish my original intended work within the White Pillar Workshop, bringing these pieces into new spaces I never would've previously at Botany Bay. Mastodon's lengthy walls of whirling ambient sound immediately bring to mind albums like Reflector, and the Static Pharming series, and these comparisons are not incorrect. The emphasis is on the soaring pad chords, constantly unfurling themselves in majestic sunlight and retreating into grey clouds, all while an extensively-patched and processed Yamaha RX11 drum machine marks progress in the waves, with a minimalistic dub bass foundation laid out by a Yamaha QY-70. These are gigantic tracks, not totally unlike the recent Subtropix album, that take their time burning through different elements as they are slowly presented one by one. The final pass on the mix was done via the warm, fat analog circuits of a JVC KD-A11 cassette deck, giving the album a crusty top coat that recalls the textured compressor abuse of the Coppice Halifax self-titled. Huge, warm, wooly and formidable, Cedar Mastodon is sure to keep you lots of contented company this Autumn and Winter. released November 21, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded principally at Botany Bay, Autumn 2015, with subsequent recording at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2017. Built using retrieved four-track cassette live sessions from a Tascam 414, alongside a Yamaha RX11 and QY-70, Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI MuRF, Boss RV-3 & SL-20, Digitech Envelope Filter, Ibanez Phase Modulator, BBE Two Timer, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer SR202W and a Peavey FX2x24 hybrid mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Florida 2014. This is Milieu Music number ABX52. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cede I (8:02) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cede II (32:46) Mastodon Dub's two tracks were recorded in early 2016, just a few months before my catastrophic hard drive crash, as a proof of concept for the Cedar Mastodon releases. After time passed, and the source material was lost until this past Summer, these two pieces became a bit of a curiosity for me, as I was finishing Cedar Mastodon with completely different equipment in a completely different studio. These two cuts represent what Cedar Mastodon very likely could have sounded like, if I'd had the chance to finish it at Botany Bay. You can hear certain similarities between these two and their finished versions on Cedar Mastodon 1 - short minimalistic basslines, omnipresent thudding drums, a lot of spacious FX play - and yet these two tracks are themselves completely different as well. An interesting companion piece to the now-finally-issued ABX51/52 set. released November 21, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Florida 2014. This is Milieu Music number ABX73. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Humid Acre (8:50) 02. Coppice Halifax - Monowaves [45 Mix] (10:18) 03. Coppice Halifax - Yepun (9:31) 04. Coppice Halifax - VA3-5 (9:07) 05. Coppice Halifax - UT2 [K² / Excerpt] (9:09) The eleventh volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Vapor Acre / Wil Ru Records WR013 #2 +++ #3 from Radians / Recycled Plastics RP4 #4 from Verdant Acre Three / VA3 #5 from Reflector / Entropy Records EL.008 released November 21, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF11. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Night Lands (25:45) 02. Coppice Halifax - Burnt Chapter (39:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - Sunphantom (1:03:56) 04. Coppice Halifax - Deep Field (1:05:10) 05. Coppice Halifax - Stellar Catalogues (1:12:40) For 2017's approaching Winter season, I was interested in producing a musical work that could be considered the aural equivalent of the Yule Log - an object of reportedly mystical ability, that could protect households, bring luck and prosperity and...of course...keep your house warm too. In the holiday spirit of keeping warm and filled with contentment, I am happy to offer you the Coppice Halifax Ferrolog: five extended suites across four discs, brimming with warm blanket chords, windswept drones, wet leafpile textures, thick humming basslines and tight drum machine rhythms that pop and spatter like embers in a hearth. Sitting sonically somewhere between Ocean Lion, Reflector and Static Physics - with just a hint of modern tangents like Verdant Acre, Autochromata and Earthworks - Ferrolog is a slow-burn of deep and emotive ambient techno that will be a nice, reliable go-to as Autumn turns to Winter. Stay warm and happy! released November 25, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, using treated fourtrack cassette tapes via a Tascam 414, a Yamaha RX11, RY-20 & QY70, Arturia Microbrute, Boss RV-3 & SL-20, Moog LPF, Ringmod & MIDI MuRF, Korg MS-20 & Volca Sample, Digitech Envelope Filter, BBE Two Timer, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer SR202W, Peavey FX2x24. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, Dayton Winter 2016. This is Milieu Music number MMD040 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Amaso 1 (9:47) 02. Coppice Halifax - Amaso 2 (12:35) 03. Coppice Halifax - Amaso 3 (15:16) ...EARTH 29 from YEAR THREE of the DEEP EARTH series... [Kaj tamen, malgraŭ la frivola senlaboreco de ĉiu ebla penso, movado kaj deziro, ni premas. Vivo devas komenci, do ni (la observantoj) povas komenci. Neniam malplena skribtabulo estis tiel malplena. Nur la nevidebla, senĉesa tikado de la horloĝoj ankoraŭ konstruitaj, antaŭdifinanta nian tutan movon. Kaj tiel, kiel la neevitebleco de la frakasanta lumo, kiu alportis nin ĉi tien, aliaj pli malgrandaj neeviteblaj formoj komenciĝos. La malrapida oscilado de tempo moviĝas tra la spaco de ĉio, koincidas en pli densajn sekciojn en iuj lokoj, kaj malrapidiĝas al la punkto preskaŭ ne ekzistanta en aliaj. De ĉi tiu modo, la ŝtofo de la realaĵo komencas amasigi.] released November 27, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, November 2017, using a Yamaha RY-20 drum machine and a Korg MS-20 monophonic analog synthesizer alongside three Moog FX processors, an Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3 & SL-20 and a Pioneer SR202W spring reverb box, channeled via a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 29] and 29th in the DEEP EARTH series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Transiro 1.1 (13:35) 02. Coppice Halifax - Transiro 1.2 (13:10) 03. Coppice Halifax - Transiro 2.1 (10:49) 04. Coppice Halifax - Transiro 2.2 (11:02) 05. Coppice Halifax - Transiro 2.3 (13:10) ...EARTH 30 from YEAR THREE of the DEEP EARTH series... [Kun ĉio moviĝanta ekstere de centro, ĝi sekvas, ke la potenca kerno de la universo influas la formon de ĉio, kio kreskas ĉirkaŭ ĝi. Same kiel gigantaj fontoj, kiuj longiĝas kaj plifortiĝas denove, la polvo de kreado vibras en pli dikajn erojn, tiam nubojn, tiam siropojn densaĵojn, ĝis finfine la sferoj komenciĝos el la kolombo. Kiel ĉi tiuj galáctaj gutoj de materio formas, ili komencas ruliĝi laŭ la linioj de tempo kaj la trenado de la centro. Ili kolizias kiel superbaj marmoroj, iuj detruas sin kaj aliajn sorbante pli malgrandajn kaj solidigantajn.] released December 1, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2017, using a Korg MS-20 monophonic analog synthesizer, a Yamaha RY-20 drum machine, three Moog FX units, an Alesis Quadraverb, a BBE Two Timer, a Boss SL-20 and RV-3 and a Pioneer SR202W spring reverb, channeled via a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 30], and 30th in the DEEP EARTH series. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Francois H / Andy B / Joe U / Benoit P / Jonathan W / Jose S / Rik J / Dave W / Levi G / Chris S / Justin T / Burton T, as well as the subscribers of the DEEP EARTH series! ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Green Pharming [Live November 18th, 2017] (59:41) Green Pharming is a recording of a live in studio Halifaxian improvisation, which was streamed via video/audio broadcasting online on the night of November 18th, 2017, for an invite-only audience of the Milieu Music Fan Club ( www.patreon.com/analogbotany ). It was created using only hardware, no computers, and has been mastered completely intact, without edits or any post-processing that would obscure the source material. Musically, it could be considered the liminal space between the Verdant Acre series and the Static Pharming series, as the title reflects. It utilizes live orchestral vinyl sampling in the same way Verdant Acre did, and transmutes that sound into atmospheric waves that wash over and under a foundation of a Yamaha RY-20 drum machine, a Korg Volca Sample & MS-20 monophonic analog synthesizer, an Arturia Microbrute monophonic analog synthesizer, a DSI MoPho monophonic analog synthesizer, a Grass C-TCM generator, a Unisonic receiver and a host of analog and digital FX, such as Moog low pass filter and MIDI MuRF, Boss RV-3 & SL-20, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Digitech Envelope Filter and Pioneer SR202W spring reverb, all channeled through a Peavey FX2x24 hybrid mixing desk. Passing through phases of submerged dub warmth and vibrant psychedelic peaks, Green Pharming is a deep excursion through the ever-familiar Halifaxian sonic lands - drugged blue ambient seas, looming shadowy texture forests and a rhythmic presence as constant as a heartbeat - proving once again that somewhere in my musical subconscious, these locations can be revisited, albeit with varying degrees of clarity. Two editions of this release have been produced - one standard CD-R edition, and a second more limited (only six) edition that includes a one of a kind readymade art assemblage. Additionally, rehearsal/tuning recordings done in preparation for this live set were selectively culled and mutated into a four-EP set called Phyllex, and these EPs will be issued subsequently. released December 5, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, November 18 2017, using Gemini PDT-6000 / Yamaha RY-20 / Korg Volca Sample / Korg MS-20 / Arturia Microbrute / DSI MoPho / Grass C-TCM / Unisonic Chippendale / Moog LPF / Moog MIDI MuRF / Boss RV-3 / Boss SL-20 / Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Pioneer SR202W / Digitech Envelope Filter / Peavey FX2x24. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, somewhere between SC and OH, 2013. This is Milieu Music number ABX74. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Blue Vale Snowdream (1:17:40) Every year, I always have lots of new ideas for holiday-appropriate recordings, and most years, I simply run out of time to complete them. This year, I resolved to work on some of these ideas once and for all, and Blue Vale is one such recording. Picking up where Ferrolog leaves off, with a Yamaha RX21L drum machine (processed into a mutant techno pulse) anchoring an exploration vessel in a frozen sea of white noise, cold blue chords and empty Winter spaces. Aside from the aforementioned drum machine, the only other source of sound on Blue Vale is an LP of Christmas music played via music boxes, elongated/processed through a Gemini PDT-6000 turntable and the White Pillar hardware rig, including three Moog FX units, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer spring reverb, multiple analog filters (Steiner-Parker, MS-20, Digitech, Akai Variwah, in different successions as well as blended) and multiple analog/digital delays from Danelectro, BBE and Boss. The texture-rich final mix was channeled through the vintage circuits and signal paths of a JVC KD-A11 cassette deck, with tasteful software cleanup in post. Not completely a "Christmas record" by any definition of the term, but rather, a psychedelic meditation on Winter snowfall, filling up the valley behind my studio. Submarine scanner pings in the cold darkness, marking hints of a massive landscape like distant flares intermittently falling, while a lost crew of naval explorers begin to part with reality from exposure and isolation, beating a warm drum to keep the blood flowing... released December 12, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop using only a Gemini PDT-6000 with one side of vinyl holiday music box sounds, and a Yamaha RX21L drum machine, in conjunction with the WPW hardware processing rig. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian at Botany Bay, 2014. This is Milieu Music number MMC007. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xi (17:34) 02. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xii (21:38) 03. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xiii (16:59) 04. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xiv (17:25) Christmas is known for being a time of bountiful pleasures to share with friends, family and those dear to us (gather near to us once more). 2017 has been a tough year for me, and for a lot of people, so I'm very happy to have Christmas here now, with the beautiful snowy Ohio weather I've inherited, and a new year right around the corner. To emphasize this seasonal happiness, I've really put in a lot of time and energy this year for holiday-friendly music. There's my 4xCD-R "aural Yule Log" album Ferrolog, my 3xCD-R ambient Milieu triptych Snowradius, my longform icewater expedition Blue Vale Snowdream and now, to cap it all off, Green Shape II - a follow-up recording to (you guessed it) the original Green Shape album, which was recorded using holiday vinyl LP sides and three drum machines to create a unique holiday techno album. Green Shape II was recorded in much the same fashion, only this time the operative drum machines were a Yamaha RX11, Roland TR505 and TR626. A bit more techno and a little less ambient dub than the first volume, Green Shape II contains four extended romps through brisk fir forests, clad in warm pea coat with iced espresso in hand. There are moments that recall the Subtropix album, with bounding archs of chords over a dance beat, while some of the bassline work on this album brings to mind things like Ocean Lion and Snow Vessel. Hopefully, everyone else can enjoy the holidays as much as I'm trying to this year, and it is my sincere wish that these new recordings bring joy, pleasure and contentment to everyone who needs a little more. Happy holidays from the White Pillar Workshop! released December 13, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using a Gemini PDT-6000, Yamaha RX11, Roland TR505 & TR626 and Arturia Microbrute, alongside an extensive analog and digital FX rig, channeled through a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Photograph by Brian, Florida December 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMC008. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - R4 (3:36) 02. Coppice Halifax - Winter Blurring [Excerpt] (10:24) 03. Coppice Halifax - De-Sat [Ph. 2 / Image 32.2 / Excerpt] (11:10) 04. Coppice Halifax - Mistmorning [Stoneship Threshold / Excerpt] (12:16) 05. Coppice Halifax - Hallex [V.G.C. Mix] (4:04) The twelfth volume of a monthly series of 5-track samplers. Digital only, and only obtainable via download codes hidden inside shipping packages carrying physical orders from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics / CØ_RD Tapes. Usually, Valley Filter issues will consist of previously released music, but occasionally the receptive listener will discover exclusive material in certain places... #1 from Cedar Mast Reduced / ABX15 #2 from Winter Blurring / ABX17 #3 from Autochromata / ABX50 #4 from Mistmorning / ABX22 #5 +++ released December 24, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMVF12. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Vintra Mallumo (56:41) ..EARTH 31 in the third consecutive year of the massive DEEP EARTH series... (Highly recommended for fans of VIBRAFOAM DUB and the WHITE PILLAR series - dubby, funky, heavy!) Ni malrapide fermas sin sur unu tian sferon, senmanan kaj senkolorajn globulojn de pura frostigita spaco, kiu ne distingas de iu alia. Ĉi tiu ŝpinila pilko inter multaj aliaj kiel ĝi estos unu tago, kaj kiam ĉiuj, kiuj iam ekzistos, iam ajn scios. Dum ni pli proksimiĝas, ni povas detekti la perforton de kolonio, la kolizio de ĉiuj ebloj samtempe ĝis, kiel la granda neevitebleco de la tuta genezo, io korektiĝas kaj ŝlosiloj. La amasa nevidebla horloĝo de la kosmo antaŭeniras, kun nenio ŝanĝita. Sur ĉi tiu senvalora kresko tempo antaŭas senhelpo. released January 2, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised live at White Pillar Workshop on April 8, 2018 using Korg MS-20, Arturia Microbrute, Grass C-TCM, Korg Volca Beats, Boss DR-660, Yamaha RY-20, Pioneer SR202W, Alesis Quadraverb, Synthrotek PT2399, Boss RV-3, Boss SL-20, Moog low pass/ringmod/MIDI MuRF, BBE Two Timer, Ibanez PM-7, Peavey FX2x24 channel mixer, C.S. piezoelectric microphone, spring tube. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 31] and 31st in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Greenspace (21:08) The fourth of five EPs in a set named PHYLLEX - shorthand for Chlorophyll Extracts - which are fashioned from the distilled substances extracted from a rehearsal session for the GREEN PHARMING live set. As such, elements of Phyllex may seem familiar, although similarities between Green Pharming and these five EPs are likely to be few. GREENSPACE is the fourth volume, containing a single 20 minute track that builds up a grand analog forest out of little synthesized seeds. Bass notes, fed through analog delay and reverb, compound and coalesce into chordal structures, slowly across the runtime. This is a beatless dub crawl from the bottom of a rain-filled valley to the top of a shimmering cosmic peak, carefully mapped out and developed via exponential FX processing and harmonic layering. Truly, the sound of green space, green time and green noise. released January 23, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using Korg MS-20 / Volca Sample / Arturia Microbrute / DSI MoPho / Grass C-TCM / Gemini PDT-6000 / Unisonic Chippendale Multiplex / Yamaha RY-20 / Boss SL-20 & RV-3 / Moog LPF & MIDI MuRF / Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Pioneer SR202W / Digitech Envelope Filter in conjunction with software post-processing. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX75D. All nights preserved. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: Justin T / Burton T / Brian C / Chris S / Levi G / Rich A / Peter B / Rik J / Jose S / Jonathan W / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / Alex G / Daniel F / Joel B / Gordon C / Alex B / Alex S / Sean W. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Greensmoke (34:47) The fifth of five EPs in a set named PHYLLEX - shorthand for Chlorophyll Extracts - which are fashioned from the distilled substances extracted from a rehearsal session for the GREEN PHARMING live set. As such, elements of Phyllex may seem familiar, although similarities between Green Pharming and these five EPs are likely to be few. GREENSMOKE is the fifth volume, containing a single 30+ minute wall of air, burnt leaves, ash, debris and dim sunlight. The remains of only the orchestral vinyl source that was sampled on Green Pharming, incinerated down to these quiet embers, slowly smoldering on a wooden plank overlooking a black valley. No rhythms, no chords, no movements - only droning stillness, forever, in the solidarity of a green plume of smoke. released January 23, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using Korg MS-20 / Volca Sample / Arturia Microbrute / DSI MoPho / Grass C-TCM / Gemini PDT-6000 / Unisonic Chippendale Multiplex / Yamaha RY-20 / Boss SL-20 & RV-3 / Moog LPF & MIDI MuRF / Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Pioneer SR202W / Digitech Envelope Filter in conjunction with software post-processing. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX75E. All nights preserved. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: Justin T / Burton T / Brian C / Chris S / Levi G / Rich A / Peter B / Rik J / Jose S / Jonathan W / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / Alex G / Daniel F / Joel B / Gordon C / Alex B / Alex S / Sean W. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Greenpaint (20:14) The first of five EPs in a set named PHYLLEX - shorthand for Chlorophyll Extracts - which are fashioned from the distilled substances extracted from a rehearsal session for the GREEN PHARMING live set. As such, elements of Phyllex may seem familiar, although similarities between Green Pharming and these five EPs are likely to be few. GREENPAINT is the first volume, containing a single 20 minute track that recalls the Static Pharming series, with its epic ambient techno excursions. Greenpaint is a thick slab of forestial rhythm, loud and rattling with heavy wooden kick drums, rain-slicked percussion and tonal spatter that weaves over and under the pulse, like a fragrant wind blowing through dark trees. Similar in tone and structure to the IRONDRUM DUB EP, Greenpaint should present substance and layered nuance on both large speaker setups as well as smaller ones, although a subwoofer is recommended to get the most out of it. released January 24, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using Korg MS-20 / Volca Sample / Arturia Microbrute / DSI MoPho / Grass C-TCM / Gemini PDT-6000 / Unisonic Chippendale Multiplex / Yamaha RY-20 / Boss SL-20 & RV-3 / Moog LPF & MIDI MuRF / Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Pioneer SR202W / Digitech Envelope Filter in conjunction with software post-processing. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX75A. All nights preserved. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: Justin T / Burton T / Brian C / Chris S / Levi G / Rich A / Peter B / Rik J / Jose S / Jonathan W / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / Alex G / Daniel F / Joel B / Gordon C / Alex B / Alex S / Sean W. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Greenfilter (9:45) 02. Coppice Halifax - Greenfilter II (9:04) The second of five EPs in a set named PHYLLEX - shorthand for Chlorophyll Extracts - which are fashioned from the distilled substances extracted from a rehearsal session for the GREEN PHARMING live set. As such, elements of Phyllex may seem familiar, although similarities between Green Pharming and these five EPs are likely to be few. GREENFILTER is the second volume, containing two tracks of slo-mo dub techno that feel soaked in downers and rain. Taking a bit of influence from things like TM404 and Andy Stott, these cuts hang around like rhythmic fog that is only measurable by the punctuations of chord stabs or rusted snare drums. Retaining the volume and weight of the previous EP, GREENPAINT, Greenfilter processes the source sound in a more lethargic way. Headphone tracks for stoners, comedowns and comas. released January 24, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using Korg MS-20 / Volca Sample / Arturia Microbrute / DSI MoPho / Grass C-TCM / Gemini PDT-6000 / Unisonic Chippendale Multiplex / Yamaha RY-20 / Boss SL-20 & RV-3 / Moog LPF & MIDI MuRF / Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Pioneer SR202W / Digitech Envelope Filter in conjunction with software post-processing. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX75B. All nights preserved. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: Justin T / Burton T / Brian C / Chris S / Levi G / Rich A / Peter B / Rik J / Jose S / Jonathan W / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Greencarpet (7:02) 02. Coppice Halifax - Greencarpet II (6:42) 03. Coppice Halifax - Greencarpet III (8:24) The third of five EPs in a set named PHYLLEX - shorthand for Chlorophyll Extracts - which are fashioned from the distilled substances extracted from a rehearsal session for the GREEN PHARMING live set. As such, elements of Phyllex may seem familiar, although similarities between Green Pharming and these five EPs are likely to be few. GREENCARPET is the third volume, containing three tracks that, in some respects, could have appeared in the Analog Botany series 8 years ago. These three cuts bring bouncy rhythmic components in alongside melodic dub chords, bass bits and heavily processed orchestral loops, while textures and sonic artifacts spray all around the stereo field like leaves and pinecones pouring out of pine trees in spring. This volume also most closely resembles the GREEN PHARMING live set, with recognizable drum loops and chordal parts, showcasing an embryonic process of creation beneath a frenetic haze of post-production mutation. released January 24, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using Korg MS-20 / Volca Sample / Arturia Microbrute / DSI MoPho / Grass C-TCM / Gemini PDT-6000 / Unisonic Chippendale Multiplex / Yamaha RY-20 / Boss SL-20 & RV-3 / Moog LPF & MIDI MuRF / Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Pioneer SR202W / Digitech Envelope Filter in conjunction with software post-processing. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX75C. All nights preserved. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: Justin T / Burton T / Brian C / Chris S / Levi G / Rich A / Peter B / Rik J / Jose S / Jonathan W / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / Alex G / Daniel F / Joel B / Gordon C / Alex B / Alex S / Sean W. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Kolizii 1.1 (7:07) 02. Coppice Halifax - Kolizii 1.2 (10:20) 03. Coppice Halifax - Kolizii 2.1 (3:46) 04. Coppice Halifax - Kolizii 2.2 (7:11) 05. Coppice Halifax - Kolizii 2.3 (4:36) ...EARTH 32 in the third consecutive year of the massive DEEP EARTH series... Naskiĝo, generacio, komencante de antaŭ ĉio alia. Tavolo per turmentita tavolo, nia mondo sin turnas en formon, farante mallongan laboron de jarcentoj, zorgante tra aĝo post nenomata aĝo, ĝis la evidenteco de monta sxtono havigas pruvon de pezo. Kaj sur ĉi tiuj rokaj vizaĝoj, la senfina ŝtorma maro kraŝas blankan likvan betonon en nigran kronon, ŝokante la unuajn tavolojn de molekula karbono bazita en sian unuan senmovan staton. Kunligante kune kiel malforta ĉeno, tiuj embriaj progenintoj stariĝas facile en pigraj ŝtuparoj. De ĉi tie, la magnetismo de nia orb kaj ĝia mikrola administrado disponigas ŝtupojn kaj ĉenojn en altajn liniojn. Arkitekturaj planoj, mapoj de biologia oscilado. Maŝino por konstrui pli da maŝinoj. released February 5, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, January 2018, using a Boss DR-660, Alesis Quadraverb, Pioneer SR202W, BBE Two Timer and Boss RV-3 with a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 32], and 32nd in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ebla (30:47) ...EARTH 33 in the third consecutive year of the massive DEEP EARTH series... Kresko komencas serioze. Ĉiu branĉa ebleco okazas en sennombraj iteracioj. Vivo mem, mutacio de mutacio de mutacio. La elektro de kruda procezo, enkondukante universalan leĝon pri movado. Malmoleco kaj silento jam ne plu ekzistas. Eĉ la mallumaj spacoj inter sistemoj hum kun ambientokomocado, jam malproksime de jarcentoj post siaj vivokondiĉoj finiĝis, aŭ gajnante momenton antaŭ anticipado de nova. Konstanta movado, jen la maniero de aferoj. released March 2, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised live at White Pillar Workshop on April 16, 2018 using Korg DS-10+, Korg MS-20 and a Memphis Blue Beat, in conjunction with Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3 and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 33] and 33rd in the Deep Earth series ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Elektro 1.1 (6:25) 02. Coppice Halifax - Elektro 1.2 (5:43) 03. Coppice Halifax - Elektro 1.3 (4:32) 04. Coppice Halifax - Elektro 2 (5:28) 05. Coppice Halifax - Verbotempo 1.1 (9:06) 06. Coppice Halifax - Verbotempo 1.2 (8:10) 07. Coppice Halifax - Verbotempo 2 (5:22) 08. Coppice Halifax - Atendi 1.1 (5:45) 09. Coppice Halifax - Atendi 1.2 (5:17) 10. Coppice Halifax - Atendi 2.1 (7:11) 11. Coppice Halifax - Atendi 2.2 (3:05) 12. Coppice Halifax - Atendi 3.1 (4:27) 13. Coppice Halifax - Atendi 3.2 (6:05) 14. Coppice Halifax - Okcidenta 1.1 (6:09) 15. Coppice Halifax - Okcidenta 1.2 (9:46) 16. Coppice Halifax - Okcidenta 2.1 (6:33) 17. Coppice Halifax - Okcidenta 2.2 (5:47) 18. Coppice Halifax - Okcidenta 3 (49:29) 19. Coppice Halifax - Komenca 1 (6:58) 20. Coppice Halifax - Komenca 2 (10:59) 21. Coppice Halifax - Komenca 3 (12:01) 22. Coppice Halifax - Komenca 4 (16:22) 23. Coppice Halifax - Komenca 5 (6:11) 24. Coppice Halifax - Ero 1.1 (8:30) 25. Coppice Halifax - Ero 1.2 (6:56) 26. Coppice Halifax - Ero 2 (6:55) 27. Coppice Halifax - Malcefa Konstruo 1.1 (3:50) 28. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 1 (6:53) 29. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 2 (7:59) 30. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 3 (7:19) 31. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 4 (13:09) 32. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 5 (25:54) 33. Coppice Halifax - Malplena 6 (15:05) 34. Coppice Halifax - Marakvo (10:09) 35. Coppice Halifax - Marakvo [Malfluso] (13:35) 36. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 1 (6:06) 37. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 2 (6:15) 38. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 3 (5:08) 39. Coppice Halifax - Disfalo 4 (6:38) 40. Coppice Halifax - Dissendilo 1.1 (5:27) 41. Coppice Halifax - Dissendilo 1.2 (6:14) 42. Coppice Halifax - Dissendilo 2 (7:19) 43. Coppice Halifax - Malcefa Konstruo 1.2 (12:51) 44. Coppice Halifax - Pluvo (29:48) 45. Coppice Halifax - Pluvo 2 (49:34) 46. Coppice Halifax - Ankoraŭ [Esti] (27:06) 47. Coppice Halifax - Ankoraŭ [Vidu] (47:21) 48. Coppice Halifax - Ankoraŭ [Okulo] (4:56) 49. Coppice Halifax - Cirkviton (10:11) 50. Coppice Halifax - Rotacii (7:33) 51. Coppice Halifax - Elektro [Kontrapunktaj] (1:21) 52. Coppice Halifax - Verbotempo [Armilo] (8:20) 53. Coppice Halifax - Verbotempo [Mallumo] (7:28) 54. Coppice Halifax - Cirkviton [Nokte Templo] (19:39) 55. Coppice Halifax - Rotacii [Pulvita] (20:52) 56. Coppice Halifax - Elektro [Tusinta] (1:00:50) 57. Coppice Halifax - Elektro [Tensio] (15:08) 58. Coppice Halifax - Prirezignita (43:46) 59. Coppice Halifax - Delokadoj (5:01) 60. Coppice Halifax - Valo (12:58) 61. Coppice Halifax - Malcefa Konstruo 2.1 (12:12) 62. Coppice Halifax - Keletaĝo (4:51) 63. Coppice Halifax - Mola Kelo (14:00) 64. Coppice Halifax - Vento [Ŝvelaĵo] (7:47) 65. Coppice Halifax - Vento [Limítrofes] (12:25) 66. Coppice Halifax - Vento [Parolanto] (23:36) 67. Coppice Halifax - Malcefa Konstruo 2.2 (12:05) 68. Coppice Halifax - Kliŝ (1:32:24) 69. Coppice Halifax - Akceptejo 1.1 (7:43) 70. Coppice Halifax - Akceptejo 1.2 (12:07) 71. Coppice Halifax - Akceptejo 1.3 (54:34) 72. Coppice Halifax - Akceptejo 2 (1:07:24) 73. Coppice Halifax - Akceptejo 3 (10:23) 74. Coppice Halifax - Klara Lageto (5:06) 75. Coppice Halifax - Revas Marcoj (6:58) 76. Coppice Halifax - Malseka Flaŭro (7:28) 77. Coppice Halifax - Detruo De Menso (9:08) 78. Coppice Halifax - Diseriĝanta Imperio (5:47) 79. Coppice Halifax - Aeraj Lokalizilo (9:15) 80. Coppice Halifax - Okazi (15:43) 81. Coppice Halifax - Elektro [Disvastigota] (14:37) 82. Coppice Halifax - Malcefa Konstruo 2.3 (4:12) 83. Coppice Halifax - Refluo (8:25) 84. Coppice Halifax - Fluas (33:46) 85. Coppice Halifax - Sigelita (35:30) Deep Earth is a project that began in May 2015, with the initial recordings happening a few months before. It was conceived as a monthly series that would yield a minimum of 20 minutes of sound per installment, plus peripheral installments of discarded material (or forĵetitaj). The series was set up as a subscription service, wherein supporters would exclusively receive the "forĵetitaj" recordings, in addition to the main run of releases. By May 2016, the project held enough support to be considered a success, and was subsequently reinstated for a second year, and again for a third (currently in progress). Musically, Deep Earth sounds like almost nothing else in the entire Milieu Music catalog. It is almost entirely recorded live, in a dark bedroom studio, using old amps for monitors (no headphones), tape machines, archaic laboratory equipment, vintage rhythm boxes, analog and digital synthesizers and a wide array of traditional and unorthodox FX units. It is the closest I've ever come to achieving a kind of total sonic isolationism, the aural equivalent of a long-lost military bunker beneath the polar ice, whose tunnels lead downward into a hidden underworld of unmapped hollow earth. Exploration as performance, improvisation in lieu of composition. As with the first year, Year Two of the series has yielded massive amounts of material - 20 hours, 48 minutes and 23 seconds - no small effort, considering that I relocated from the subtropics to a midwestern valley almost 600 miles away, in the middle of the series. The new studio, White Pillar Workshop, immediately afforded more possibility than Botany Bay did, so it is interesting to see the pivot points between the two studios during Year Two's trajectory. Somewhat coincidentally (because as the runtimes on DE tracks should tell you, none of these recordings are "planned" like regular albums are) we have ended up yet again with 16 CD-Rs of music, filled out with almost five hours of previously unissued recordings. All twelve of the public catalog releases, all twelve of the private subscriber-only Forĵetitaj releases, audio versions of both of Year Two's video singles, plus a beautiful array of extras. Outtakes and alternative versions from throughout the series, a truly comprehensive tableaux of the continually mutant and alien project - arranged carefully across sixteen discs, with custom stickers, 16 photographic print inserts, hidden messages and a sturdy lidded plastic box. A monolith of greyscale electronic music, with equal parts throbbing techno, dusky ambient, minimalistic drones and texture-thickened experimentalism. NOTE: Out of respect to the Deep Earth subscribers and their incredible support of this project, I've turned off streaming for the Forĵetitaj material, as well as the five hours of new unreleased material. Basically, since the subscribers paid for this content, it is packaged only in the downloadable and physical editions of this release. Subscribers to the series receive all of the previously unreleased material for free, in addition to the entire series up to this point. released March 8, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, May-October 2016 and White Pillar Workshop, October 2016-May 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [DE-C2]. Photography by Brian at White Pillar Workshop, 2016. Many humble thanks to the members of the Deep Earth community - without them, this music might not exist. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pillar 3.3 [Triadic] (11:30) 02. Coppice Halifax - Suncarpet [Filter Edit] (8:34) 03. Coppice Halifax - Green Shape [Radialtone Mix] (7:52) 04. Coppice Halifax - 124° [Filter Edit] (12:06) 05. Coppice Halifax - Waterfalling [Dripping Hearth Mix] (5:19) 06. Coppice Halifax - Trans Vibro [Triobla Riprozo] (10:03) 07. Coppice Halifax - Blue Vale Snowdream [Filter Edit] (12:33) (24Bit) 08. Coppice Halifax - Dripping Plastic Mnemonics [Filter Edit] (6:20) 09. Coppice Halifax - Enhasa [Filter Edit] (12:30) 10. Coppice Halifax - Snow Vessel [Filter Edit] (5:55) 11. Coppice Halifax - Monowaves [45 Mix] (10:18) 12. Coppice Halifax - Postscript B [Filter Edit] (8:31) 13. Coppice Halifax - Greenpaint [Wetpaint Dub] (13:57) (24Bit) 14. Coppice Halifax - Hallex [V.G.C. Mix] (4:04) Throughout 2017, I discretely circulated twelve Coppice Halifax samplers - one each month - via printed Bandcamp download codes hidden in packages containing shipped CD-Rs and tapes from Milieu Music, Recycled Plastics, CO_RD Tapes and Psoma Psi Phi. This monthly series was called Valley Filter, and functioned as a sort of alternate-universe set of "what if" CH albums, where five tracks were picked and organized into cohesive runtimes, despite their disparate origins. Each month, one of these five tracks would be a previously unreleased track, often a version/alt. mix of an album track, taken from the literally hundreds of hours of offcuts/outtakes/etc I have generated through the years. Sometimes, the tracks would simply be in a different key and tempo, or have a different mix than the album version, but other times, the tracks were more or less brand new pieces - parallel universes forever bound to their counterparts in our universe. And so, here lies a compilation of all twelve exclusive cuts from the 2017 Valley Filter series, augmented by two more unreleased cuts that are exclusive to this set. The word "filter" is used here in multiple meanings: First, to imply association with the Valley Filter series, which subsequently refers to the fact that the releases were the collected results of a filtering process, such as gold panning, where only the best cuts were used. Secondly, the word represents the often unsung lead instrument in my studio, the envelope filter. While my mixer is usually considered my main vehicle for creating these Halifaxian microverses, it would be not nearly as sufficient were it not for creative use of filters in both the parametric equalizers, as well as onboard DSP filters I have created custom patches for, and further still my external filter processors by Akai, Moog, Digitech and Boss, and those present in my Korg, Arturia and Dave Smith Instruments analog machines. Filters dictate the physical shape and movement of many of my sounds, from the ground up, and so it only made sense to be able to finally give them the veneration they deserve. If Sunn O))) are a band obsessed with amplifier worship, then Coppice Halifax is the founder of The First Church Of Filter Worship. Come in, get comfortable, and melt. released March 13, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded on various dates at 114RKD / Botany Bay / White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, Cleveland 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX76. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tone (22:17) 02. Coppice Halifax - Canal (11:41) 03. Coppice Halifax - Continent (17:01) 04. Coppice Halifax - Tone Canal & Continent [Continuous Mix] (50:59) Recorded live on the evening of March 10th, 2018, and broadcast via audio/video stream from the White Pillar Workshop to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon. Tone Canal & Continent is the first of its kind, an almost "proof of concept" live performance using only a single Korg analog drum machine. Improvising from scratch, starting with a lone bassdrum, and building up a rhythmic microcosm that gradually shifts through three distinct sections. The first of these sections, titled Tone, is a minimal techno exercise that recalls influences such as Studio 1, Pole, Plastikman and Thomas Brinkmann, among others. It leads to the bridge section, a live iteration of the track Canal (which originally appeared on the self-titled Coppice Halifax album in 2008, recorded in 2006) that initially involves bass-heavy dancefloor pulses that begin to break apart like shifting tectonics, spattering out in wet waves of molten earth that eject from the spaces between drum hits, eventually falling to the bubbling sea. The third and final section, titled Continent, is what remains of the turbulence - kicks and toms reduced to filtered smears of 300 Hz wobble, phasing out and trailing off into a haze of mixer feedback and artificially extended reverb tails. The vessel has sunk, and silently drifts down to rest on a black seafloor. All that remains is the purple sky that becomes darker and darker from beneath the waves. Tone Canal & Continent is a unique piece in the CH acreage, bearing momentary similarities to other recordings, while also establishing a new possible trajectory forward in the realm of live performance and analog potential. The sound of just one drum machine, cleverly programmed and processed in realtime, becomes less and less monochromatic as a sonic presence as the piece develops, with the toms and kick mutating into a strange melodic movement. Augmented only by a noise generator, between-band fuzz from the local AM radio airwaves and a piezoelectric microphone picking up occasional artifacts from a bedside monitor next to my sleeping daughter - these additions providing no substantial tonalities, but an atmosphere, like a curtain backdrop - contrast, depth of shadow, measurable distance in an otherwise unmappable space. Hopefully, despite this being only the initial realization of this idea, it becomes more than the sum of its parts, and will give way to more attempts at music made within this framework. released March 13, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Performed and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on March 10, 2018, using only a Korg Volca Beats drum machine, split signalled into a Zoom 506 compressor and a Synthrotek PT2399 delay, augmented by a Grass C-TCM, Unisonic MX8888 and C.S. piezoelectric microphone, and channeled through a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk with the following outboard FX: Pioneer SR202W spring reverb, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover design and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX78. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 00.0] (6:08) 02. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 01.0] (9:44) 03. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 02.1] (10:32) 04. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 02.2] (8:08) 05. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 02.3] (11:45) 06. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 03.1] (3:10) 07. Coppice Halifax - [Rust Dub 03.2] (25:01) Since starting CH as a project in 2006, I've been asked to produce dozens and dozens of remixes. One of the very first was a remix for longtime friend and influence Dissolved, for his Macrocyclic Blues album (dissolved.bandcamp.com/album/macrocyclic-blues ). In the years since then, Coppice Halifax has mutated again and again, shifting through phase after phase of weird and not-so-weird techno, never quite repeating itself but never totally abandoning what came before either. The strains of that first remix for Dissolved ran deep in the project's veins, and it felt familiar all over again when he asked me to produce some remix work for his Hallucino Attics album (section27.bandcamp.com/album/hallucino-attics-dissolved-re-constructed-2001-2006 ). Unexpectedly, I found so much flex in the material I was working on, that I handed in three remixes, and knew that more were easily possible. After the release was issued, and had some time to breathe, I approached Dissolved about doing some additional cuts, approaching them this time like the completion of an album proper. That album became what you see here, Etchings In Rust. Appropriately, it begins with a newly remastered version of the very first Dissolved remix (originally Slektramine), and proceeds seamlessly through six more remixes created during 2017 and 2018. These seven tracks recall many classic CH sounds, as well as influences such as early Autechre, mid-nineties industrial music and psychedelic drum and bass, some of which do not tend to manifest very often in the CH palette/palate. They are warm and crunchy, heavy in parts and spacious in others. Melodically they are equal parts Halifaxian and Dissolved, fused at the molecular level and transmuted into a rainbow of tones and tails. With Etchings In Rust complete, the next step is a proper collaboration between Dissolved and CH. If these recordings are any indicator, I'm excited by the prospect of such a blend and hope to explore it soon. released March 27, 2018 Written by Dissolved / Produced & Remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2017-2018, except #1: recorded at 114RKD, 2006. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, UK / Gently processed by Brian. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX77. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase One] (5:42) 02. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Two] (7:30) 03. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Three] (8:27) 04. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Four] (11:37) 05. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Five] (6:33) 06. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Six] (9:01) 07. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Seven] (6:59) 08. Coppice Halifax - Vfoam [Phase Eight] (2:55) 09. Coppice Halifax - Vibrafoam Dub [Continuous Mix] (58:45) Following ABX78 / Tone Canal & Continent is another recent live Coppice Halifax set - an eight section dub techno floorshaker called Vibrafoam Dub. Vibrafoam is slightly related to the recently drafted White Pillar 9 release, which has yet to be issued, in that it is built using almost the exact same equipment configuration. Improvised live on hardware alone, in a dark room, this set pushes sub-bass speaker response to a hard limit, exploring heavy low frequencies with the assistance of ring modulation and resonant filters. Above the thick bottom slabs of bass rattle are punctuations of snares, percussion and hi hats, augmented by a surrealistic atmosphere built from the reverb trails of a piezoelectric microphone and a medical tone generator. Subtle color changes waft in and out of the mix, in the form of detuned synthesizer sequences, chord stabs that eventually become longer voices of pads (and vice versa) and a generally restrained melodic sense that presages the minimalism of Tone Canal & Continent, which was actually recorded after Vibrafoam. A deep and sometimes dark dub techno excursion, with strains of the White Pillar series and recent Occur recordings seeping through - and recommended for fans of my work in either of those outlets. released March 27, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop and broadcast online on February 24, 2018. Improvised on Korg Volca Bass/Beats/Keys/Sample, Korg MS-20, Arturia Microbrute, Grass C-TCM, Roland SH-32, Boss DR-660, Yamaha RY-20, C.S. Piezoelectric Microphone, processed by BBE Two Timer, Pioneer S202W, Alesis Quadraverb, Synthrotek PT2399, Ibanez PM7, Boss RV-3, Zoom 506, Boss SL-20, Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI MuRF, channeled through a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. No edits, post processing or computers were used. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX79. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tra 1.1 (5:08) 02. Coppice Halifax - Tra 1.2 (4:00) 03. Coppice Halifax - Tra 2 (10:17) ..EARTH 34 in the third consecutive year of the massive DEEP EARTH series... La elasteco de la tempo nun kondukis nin al pejzaĝo kun vivo. Verdaj arbaroj kun arboj la grandeco de ĉielskrapanto, kristalo blua maro akvo kun gigantaj akvaj loĝantoj. Ŝafo de grandaj flugaj bestoj ŝveliĝas trans la ĉielon, ĵetante rubandojn de ombro sur la haŭton kaj skvamojn de eĉ pli grandaj bestoj, lignigante tra ĉi tiuj ĉefaj teroj. Malantaŭ la purpura kaj oranĝa akvarela horizonto, la steloj sidas en silenta juĝo pri siaj bublaj kreoj. Malantaŭe eĉ tiuj steloj atendas alian sennoman aferon, vizitanton en ĉi tiu spaco. Entrudulo kun senpuna bezono kaj neplena celo. Kiel certe kiel vivo formiĝis en niaj ĥaosa maroj de neevitebleco, ĉi tiu nekonata afero atendis, ke ĝi estu tiel. Nu, ĉar la lumo de la vivanta kaj spiranta mondo atingas ĝin post vojaĝo de eternaj tra la malklera nigreco, nur nun ĝi povas scii tiun movadon. Malrapide, pli ol dek mil jardekojn, ĝi ekprenas ekstere kaj vekas. released April 2, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 34] and 34th in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Alignment (8:32) 02. Coppice Halifax - Lethargy (8:54) 03. Coppice Halifax - Lethargy II (8:56) The second release in the Milieu Music Fan Club catalog, Alignment Lethargy, is a three-track Coppice Halifax EP that feels like a long lost Analog Botany installment. Composted from the salvaged remnants of a live set, broadcast to the Fan Club in 2017, which was riddled with recording errors and could not be released, Alignment Lethargy serves as an ample compromise with carefully selected loops and source textures from an analog hardware rig. To get this EP, and also the COUNTRY LOW single, for free, become a member of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon! www.patreon.com/analogbotany released April 29, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2018, using source material from a live broadcast from Winter 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, Dayton April 2018. This is Milieu Music number MMFC002, exclusive to the Milieu Music Fan Club community at Patreon. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar I (9:12) 02. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar II (6:09) 03. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar III (8:28) 04. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar IV (10:46) 05. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar V (6:32) 06. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar VI (10:09) 07. Coppice Halifax - Violet Culivar VII & VIII (28:32) Notes Limited edition of 34. www.recycled-plastics.net ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2018 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Radioeye 22 (5:52) 02. Alternating Queues - a000q8(CHx) [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (12:20) 03. Passage - 95 [Sleepy Monitor Cmx] (8:53) 04. Jetman Jet Team - Albatross [Coppice Halifax Reduction] (11:44) 05. Skyscaper - Temperature Inversion [Coppice Halifax Rephrase] (13:35) 06. Royce Allen - She Cried [Coppice Halifax Evaporant] (6:30) 07. COAL - Attic Lingering [Crawling Dusk Rephrase] (16:34) The twelfth volume of the ongoing Cmx series of remix compilations arrives just in time for spring, with 75 minutes of CH composting for your ears. Opening with the customary CH track to lead the way, we start with "Radioeye 22", an unreleased alternative mix of "Radioeye 20", which was itself released on a compilation at Data Network, Ukraine. From there, we progress slowly into a bubbling ambient techno field, with an unreleased remix for Alternating Queues, drafted during the mastering of his excellent Hand Sines album (Recycled Plastics). The AQ mix leans in and out of a bleepy coda, and brings us into the droning techno bounce of the Passage remix. Commissioned for the expansive Worked On album at Illuminated Paths, this mix was so warm and comforting that I nearly passed out in the studio finishing it. Next, we have the huge and almost beatless shoegaze bliss-out of "Albatross", a rare remix commissioned by a band (Jetman Jet Team) instead of a solo artist, that has been floating around the web without any kind of proper release. This mix pulses and throbs through a deep blue haze, relying mostly on an omnipresent bassline to carry everything else above it. The rhythms pick back up on "Temperature Inversion", a minimal dub techno rephrase of a track from Anders Peterson's Skyscaper project, which until now has also remained unreleased. The next mix, the shortest piece of the remix lot, is the previously unreleased mix of Royce Allen's "She Cried", which was a sporadic side-effect of mastering Allen's EP in 2014. This mix is a strange coalescing of irregular percussive forms and shuddering, wet grey shapes, draped over a wobbling structure that never quite holds itself upright. The closing piece, a 16 minute creep out for COAL's Infested release in 2016, slowly lurches forward through ring-modulated dub chords, distant tangles of tonal atmospheres and skeletal drums. A dark, yet suitably expansive, curtain to pull across a varied set of remix works. Altogether, as always, the Cmx volumes seem to flow intuitively in and out of themselves, as if they were albums in their own right long before I considered them as such. Hopefully, this tableaux of reconstructions stands alone as a Halifaxian landmark, while also paying appropriate tribute to the original artists' works. Every remix on this release was created using a strict system of employing only the original source sound, with no sounds of my own added during the remix process. released May 17, 2018 Written by the credited artists. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax, except #1: W/P by Coppice Halifax. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Recorded various dates 2014-2018. Cover design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML125. Tracks 1/2/4/5/6 previously unreleased. Special thanks to all of the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon (www.patreon.com/analogbotany). With their continued support, more music like this release can happen! At the present moment, the members of the Fan Club are: Justin T, Burton T, William C, Brian C, Chris S, Levi G, Rich A, Jonathan W, Joel B, Matthew D, Peter B, Rik J, Jose S, Tony S, Alex G, Seth B, Jim P, David T, Devin H, Mathieu L, Andy B, Francois H, Benoit P, Daniel F, Gordon C, Alex K, Peter B, Sean W, Alex B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Earth Eraser 1.1 (58:37) 02. Coppice Halifax - Earth Eraser [Alignment] (12:27) 03. Coppice Halifax - Earth Eraser 1.2 (43:17) 04. Coppice Halifax - Earth Eraser 2.1 (15:44) 05. Coppice Halifax - Earth Eraser 2.2 (39:38) Earth Eraser follows the previous two live albums Tone Canal & Continent and Vibrafoam Dub with a triple-volume set of improvised synthesizer sprawl and electronic deep diving. Comprised of material from two different live sets (each broadcast online for the Milieu Music Fan Club here: www.patreon.com/analogbotany ) plus an "alignment" mix, created from the salvaged pieces of a previously broadcast live set that was so riddled with audio problems that it can never be released in full, Earth Eraser is a varied trip that begins with Vladislav Delay-influenced analog meandering, created using a no-input analog setup of three Moog units, a Korg MS-20 and an Arturia Microbrute. From there, the "alignment" moves through hypnotic sections of Microbrute stabs soaked in spring reverb and ring modulation alongside a Korg sampler mulching up a forward-backward drum machine. 1.2 reprises many of the sounds heard in 1.1, but further transforms them over/under rhythmic anchors from a Yamaha RY-20 and a Korg Volca Beats, and even slips in some warbling acid lines on a Volca Bass. By the time the 3rd disc arrives, 2.1 resets the brain with another no-input drone and negative space kick drum produced by the MS-20, giving way to the most melodic parts of the set in 2.2. Arpeggiators and almost-Berlin-school sequencing dominate this final set, which even dips very slightly into early nineties trance music before dropping itself into a void of feedback tails and whispering white noise. Altogether, a formidable tableaux of bedroom electronics, processed and performed with a Halifaxian approach that recalls moments from the Deep Earth series and albums like South Sentral Positronix. Recommended for fans of either. released May 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, December 23, 2017 (1.1 & 1.2) April 7, 2018 (2.1 & 2.2) and April 24, 2018 (Alignment). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design & text by ABM&D, using photography taken by Brian, Dayton 2018. This is Milieu Music number ABX80. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Black Currant Dub (5:49) 02. Coppice Halifax - Hypersweep Dub (8:25) 03. Coppice Halifax - Baseband Dub (7:10) A new EP of heavy dub versions, reconstituting recently unearthed material from the White Pillar sessions. Three tracks of bass-centric dub techno exploration, spattered and re-re-filtered through rugged outboard FX processors. This EP continues the ground broken on the previous Milieu Music EPs Worktop/Irondrum/Thrujack Dub, and brings hazy radiobands, police scanners and ring modulators into a thick cubist forest of chiseled lines and wet static. released May 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Engineered using source material from November 2016, transfigured via hard and soft wares April 2018. Recorded top to bottom at White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photograph taken by Brian in Cleveland, June 2016. This is Milieu Music numb-er ABX81. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Earth Dub (45:37) Recorded on Earth Day, 2018, using prepared loops of tonal information from the (recently recovered) White Pillar [Recalled] EP, laid to four-track cassette tape and used as a starting point for an improvisation involving a Boss DR-110's analog kick drum, an Arturia Microbrute bass and a number of analog FX including three Moogerfooger units, a BBE Two Timer delay and a Pioneer spring reverb box, among others. EARTH DUB is a veneration of the first Mother, the source of all of us and everything we know. Coppice Halifax as a project only exists via the elements of the forest and of the sea, from the Deep Earth to the Verdant Acre - it is all hers. Hopefully, it goes without saying that in the White Pillar Workshop, every day is Earth Day. released May 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live on Sunday, April 22, 2018 using a Tascam 414, Boss DR-110 and Arturia Microbrute in tandem with several outboard FX. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Cleveland June 2016. This is Milieu Music number ABX82. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Naskigi (14:55) 02. Coppice Halifax - Naskigi 2 (18:11) ..EARTH 35 in YEAR THREE of the DEEP EARTH series... Se la tuta ekzisto povas esti resume priskribita per kolora rado, aŭ gamo de oftecoj aŭ eĉ limigita nombro da dimensioj, tiam la afero, kiu nun sekvas sekrete nur povas esti nomata kiel alia. Ĝi estas la escepto al ĉiuj regaj aroj kaj atendoj, kaj eble laŭ sia propra maniero ankaŭ tio estas la rezulto de la granda neevitebleco, kiu kondukis nian konscion. La tuta naturo de ĉi tiu objekto eĉ ne povas esti nomata tia, ĉar nenio natura pri ĝi. Ĝi estas fremda korpo, contaminante, pli malproksima en la plej ekstrema kunteksto. Ĝi neniam komunikos aŭ deklaras intencon, ĉar nia universo estas nur oceano de bruo, sen traduko kaj sen diferenco. Ĉu ĝi serĉas eskapon? Sekureco? Regado? Ĉi tie kaj nun ĝi nur ŝajnas deziri nian mondon, lokon profunde ene de sia centro. Ĝi devas, kion ĝi alproksimiĝos, kaj nia natura patrino de vivo, kiel ni komprenas, nur akceptas ĉi tion en ŝiajn miliardojn da malfermitaj brakoj. released May 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, June 2018, using a MIDI-free configuration of the following: Korg MS-20 / Grass C-TCM / Korg Volca Beats / Arturia Microbrute / Pioneer SR202W / Alesis Quadraverb / Boss RV-3 / Boss SL-20 / BBE Two Timer / Synthrotek PT2399 / Peavey FX2x24. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 35] and 35th in the third year of the DEEP EARTH catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase One] (8:56) 02. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase Two] (5:53) 03. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase Three] (11:09) 04. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase Four] (9:19) 05. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase Five] (9:36) 06. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase Six] (13:19) 07. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Phase Seven] (9:54) 08. Coppice Halifax - Appleblue Dram [Continuous Mix] (1:08:06) Live streamed from the White Pillar Workshop to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club on May 13, 2018, APPLEBLUE DRAM is the newest Halifaxian live set to be properly mastered and given a physical format release. Completely improvised using only hardware (no computers involved, no overdubs and no post-production editing), Appleblue is a heavy mid-tempo lurch that brings to mind the ultra-low basslines of the recent Vibrafoam set and combines them with the cloudy smeared hip hop of the Grey Shape album. Having previously been away from the studio for weeks with a flu, I returned to the faders with a renewed sense of purpose, and maybe a little aggressiveness too. This set begins and ends with a romping elephant stampede of rhythm and bass, but in between those bookended moments are surprisingly light and melodic passages of playful ambient techno, reverb-soaked dub stabs and effervescent pad passages. I'm particularly excited to release this set properly, as the original live stream had some volume dropouts and clipping errors. This set left me feeling invigorated and excited to be back in the studio, and hopefully that translates through these colorful and potent blasts of sound! **NOTE: The digital download of this release contains a bonus "continuous mix" of the original liveset, unbroken and unedited, for your listening convenience. released May 30, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised live at White Pillar Workshop on May 13, 2018, using the following hardware: Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys/Sample, Arturia Microbrute, Roland SH-32, Korg MS-20, Yamaha RY-20, Boss DR-660, processed via Pioneer SR202W springverb, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3, Synthrotek PT2399, Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI MuRF, Boss SL-20...and channeled through the hot veins of the Peavey "King Stevie" FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design & text by ABM&D, using a photograph by C.W., Columbia SC 2017. This is Milieu Music number ABX84. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Foresto (1:08:24) ..EARTH 36 in YEAR THREE of the DEEP EARTH series... Tiel rapide, kiel lumo forŝaltas. La vibra verda mondo frostis en nigra ŝtono. De la profundoj de la masaj oceanoj al la neĝaj krestaj mondopartoj, la mondo haltis. Se eble estus malŝpari ĉi tiun trompan sorĉon, nia patrino ne sciis ĝin, ĉar ŝi ankaŭ estis senprokraste kristaligita en vasta sistemo de metalaj ebonaj kaheloj, tute perfekte interligitaj en siaj geometriaj ŝablonoj kaj rigidaj linioj. Kio iam florenta kaj sovaĝa planedo estis nun malliberulo, enfermita en ĉi tiu fremda ŝelo, kiu servis aliflanke, nia granda patrino neniam scias. La perfektaj nigraj pecoj multiĝis en la miliardoj, elĉerpante kaj forkaptis la mondon per sia malhumila silento, ĝis ĉio, kio povis vidi, estis netaŭga nigra sfero. Ĉi tiu malsana surfaco nur reflektis la lumon de la varma flava stelo, kiu iam nutris la aferojn, kiuj tie loĝis. Kaj tamen, kontraŭ ĉi tiu senespereco, io forpuŝis ĉi tiun asimiladon. Iuj aspektojn de nia verda patrino, enterigita profunde sub la metala ŝtono, oferante, kian vivon ĝi ankoraŭ konservis kontraŭ la plej simpla ago - rezisti, por postvivi. Nia tero ne mortis, sed anstataŭe estis nur devigita denove. Kaj tiel estis, ĉar ekde la ekstere de la mikrobiaj ligoj de la malluma fremda malliberejo, la mondo denove ekkreskis ankoraŭ unu, unu malgranda klingo de herbo samtempe. Tamen, ĉar la koro de nia patrino estis malliberigita, la vivo mem estis malrapida, malpliigita, malklara. Eble unu tagon, en la estonteco de la kosma kalendaro, eble la Patrina Tero povas disbati kaj digesti ĉi tiun putran kernon, liberigante sian veran vivon ... sed nun la nigra kaŝas sub ĉio, kroĉante la tutan mondon en ĝia marko, kaj vokante al homoj kun strangaj kantoj de scivolemo kaj kuraĝo, rigardante ilin iam ajn en la mallumon sub la surfaco, kie ili certe perdos iliajn mensojn, iliajn korpojn kaj iliajn animojn. released June 20, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, June 2018, using processed vinyl source (Coltrane, via a Gemini PDT-6000 and Boss RC-20) in conjunction with a Teenage Electronics PO-12 drum machine, a Grass C-TCM medical unit and a Peavey FX2x24 hybrid mixing desk. Laid to dictation-grade cassette tape on a Tascam 414 tape machine, with additional post processing via Moog filters and the Korg MS-20's external signal processor. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 36] and 36th in the third year of the DEEP EARTH catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - A Green Fume (20:55) 02. Coppice Halifax - A Grey Fume (26:31) 03. Coppice Halifax - A Purple Fume (23:46) Collecting two super-rare Coppice Halifax pieces that were originally issued only as limited (around 20 copies each) edition promotional CD-Rs, included as "thanks" with orders for particularly supportive customers in the Milieu Music store, PERFUME TRIAD represents in some ways a return to the Static Pharming format of 20 minute ambient techno epics, and (in name, at least) a fashionably late reprise to the deep techno triptych A Blue Fume. Backed with a third previously unreleased track, recorded shortly after the Appleblue Dram live set this Spring, Perfume Triad is a solid hour of Halifaxian drone-techno, with bits of dub, house and ambient music slipped in discreetly. A nice apertif/digestif to accompany your warm Summer sunshine and/or your tired Summer evenings. released July 19, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay (#1-2) 2016 and White Pillar Workshop (#3) 2018, using various rigs of hard/software, outboard FX and Mackie/Peavey mixing desks. #1 originally issued as promo CD-R MMLP13A. #2 originally issued as promo CD-R MMLP13B. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD36, and 36th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - 16R.i (23:20) 02. Coppice Halifax - 16R.ii (7:30) 03. Coppice Halifax - 18R.x (35:44) Originally a 2-track EP distributed discreetly as a promotional item with Milieu Music web store orders (circa 2016-2017), Soft Dirt has lain dormant in my archives since drawing up those 20 or so CD-Rs. Three tracks of Earthy, raw techno that aren't afraid of getting loud or heavy, while still remaining beautifully decorated with gem-lined majesty. The first two tracks were two of the very first ones I recorded in the proto-version of my current studio, which then consisted of only a corner of drum machines, analog synths and FX piled on top of a few moving boxes and haphazardly wired in and out of a small Mackie mixer. Revisiting this material earlier this Summer yielded a third expansive cut to the release, possibly the most spacious and dub-minded of the three. Soft Dirt is the perfect sound to push through car stereos and PA systems to distract from the blistering heat of the Summer, although I suspect the crunchy textures and buzzing overdriven bass sections of these tracks will weather well into the Autumn also. Here and now, Soft Dirt is exhumed for the ears of the world, beyond the twenty people who were privy to it the first time around... released July 19, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2016 (#1-2) and Summer 2018 (#3). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text/photography/design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD37, and issue no. 37 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Visual Phase I (10:25) 02. Coppice Halifax - Visual Phase II (15:50) 03. Coppice Halifax - Visual Phase III (19:15) 04. Coppice Halifax - Visual Phase IV (24:05) In classic dub fashion, Accumulation Dubs revisits session recordings for the Deep Earth recording Amaso (which translates to "accumulation" in Esperanto) and transfigures the material (via further processing and selective overdubbing/erasing/replacing) into four deep dubbed out excursions. Starting with abandoned alternate takes of the original Amaso, which was created almost entirely with the Korg MS-20 monophonic analog synthesizer, Accumulation re-processes Amaso's chord structures and rhythmic pulses with Moog and Digitech filters, as well as utilizing the MS-20's external signal processor to further color and reiterate Amaso's tonal profile. Taking influence from Stephen Hitchell's untouchable Intrusion project, as well as Pole's first three LPs and Rhythm & Sound's first few twelves, Accumulation Dubs visits a not often explored reggae-informed dub techno side of the machines and processors I regularly use. It's a slow, heavy and sexy album, perfect for night drives (intimate or solo), or mellow evenings inside, while thunderstorms rumble over the Miami River valley. released July 26, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2018. Composted and transfigured via Korg MS-20 analog monosynth, Korg Volca Bass analog monosynth, Korg Volca Keys analog polysynth, Korg Volca Sample, Korg Volca Beats, Arturia Microbrute analog monosynth, Grass C-TCM, Roland SH-32 digital polysynth, Yamaha RY-20, channeled thru the veins of a Peavey FX2x24 mixing board, augmented with the following outboard FX: Boss RV-3/SL-20, Synthrotek PT2399, Pioneer SR202W, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Ibanez PM7, Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI MuRF & Digitech Synth Wah. Mastered by The Analog Botanist (www.analogbotany.com). Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX85. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Raindrop [Bow Splash] (7:07) 02. Coppice Halifax - Raindrop [Flood Dub] (8:56) 03. Coppice Halifax - Raindrop [Bedside Postscript] (8:29) 04. Coppice Halifax - Raindrop [Night Flood] (13:19) 05. Coppice Halifax - Raindrop (11:49) An expanded "single" for the 2016 Coppice Halifax track Raindrop, which was featured in a very edited form on Cold Fiction Music's Forest of Sound compilation ( cfmlabel.bandcamp.com/album/forest-of-sound ). Also included on this release are four previously unreleased versions of Raindrop, which ebb and flow from tropical and psychedelic, to heavy and dubby, to pretty and ambient. Having had a particularly rainy Spring and Summer here in the valley this year, I'd been wanting to revisit this material and release it before the leaves started falling off the trees. Hopefully, it isn't too late in the season for some humid dub techno and hissy analog ambient music, and this collection will lend some depth and extra color to your travels, whether indoor or outdoor... released August 8, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded principally at Botany Bay, South Carolina in 2016, with subsequent recording and final gloss applied at White Pillar Workshop, Ohio in 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. #5 appears courtesy of Cold Fiction Music. Photography, text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX86. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Floodlights (42:28) (Recommended for fans of Verdant Acre, Lowlights or Fissured Beach) It's been six years since we left the Verdant Acre, or tried to. The past can be a romance that's hard to quit, sometimes like a warm blanket and sometimes like a drug. Other times, it sits waiting to be discovered in the backwoods of your mind, omnipresent, casting a shadow over your agency, informing the illusion of your freedom to choose. So, while retreading a patch of wet landscape in my sentimental estate, to pull some weeds and transplant some particularly nice flowers, I tripped over a strange object in the muddy dirt. Initially, I thought it was just the root of a tree, or a stone - something to be ignored or bypassed - but upon closer inspection, I discovered it to be the edge of a much larger structure. After spending a week in the rain with some shovels and tarps, I laid my eyes on the strange object - a forty foot long primitive submarine, that somehow seemed to be made of wood that had long since petrified into stone. I began to wonder if this section of the Acre had ever been under seawater, and then further deduced that if it were, that would have made this vessel... released August 8, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, August 2018, using cassette recordings from a 2016 Botany Bay session as compost source, in tandem with Korg Volca Bass / Beats / Sample and several outboard FX, channeled through a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. Photograph shot with a modified Holga 120 CFN using 35mm film, unaltered in post. This is Milieu Music number ABX87. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Hightide Crush (8:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - Clover Pharm (13:57) 03. Coppice Halifax - Nineteen Dopamine (6:56) 04. Coppice Halifax - Bermuda Drag (8:07) 05. Coppice Halifax - River Flood (20:20) 06. Coppice Halifax - Memorial Evaporant (11:58) The third and final single from/for the Milieu & Coppice Halifax triple-album SUN CAST lands in the form of a Coppice Halifax tableaux. Presenting the opening cut on the second side of Sun Cast, Hightide Crush instead leads the listener down a different path, winding through more psychedelic smears of ambient techno, oceanic overexposure, tropical gloss and mid-fi mindmusic. Essentially a full album of material that, for runtime and sequencing reasons, was left off the primary release. In some respects, the supporting material issued here is a softer approach to that tape-worn Halifaxian sound (found elsewhere on Ocean Lion, Pawleys Island and High Hawaiian Fog), whereas the second Sun Cast side presents a more aggressive tack - well, about as aggressive as 30-minute stoned and droned beach jams can get. A fitting encore to the massive Sun Cast trip, which is now over - or is it? Additionally, a video has been assembled for Hightide Crush, and you can watch it here: youtu.be/cqAcVjgIxDk released September 28, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2017-2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML129. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - White Shape [114°] (36:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - White Shape [124°] (38:43) 03. Coppice Halifax - Postscript [A] (22:11) 04. Coppice Halifax - Postscript [B] (19:12) 05. Coppice Halifax - A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions [Halifaxian Excavation] (37:11) 06. Coppice Halifax - Varosha (1:01:52) 07. Coppice Halifax - Autumn Soil Feedback [Halifaxian Excavation] (31:50) 08. Coppice Halifax - Inside The Sun [Halifaxian Excavation] (43:25) 09. Coppice Halifax - Workingman's Drone [Halifaxian Excavation I] (58:17) 10. Coppice Halifax - Workingman's Drone [Halifaxian Excavation II] (53:55) 11. Coppice Halifax - Blue Country Rain [Halifaxian Excavation] (51:23) 12. Coppice Halifax - Oceans [Halifaxian Excavation] (1:13:20) 13. Coppice Halifax - Buried [Halifaxian Excavation] (1:15:52) After a decent amount of requests for it, I've decided to issue a public iteration of this compendium. ARBORIST'S EXCAVATIONS collects and compiles all of the Coppice Halifax remixes (to date) that have been drafted in support of Arboreal Digest series reissues, and a couple other Milieu Music releases. These remixes have developed into a sort of ritual, allowing me the opportunity to mine old master tapes of material for new and interesting shapes and textures. As with many CH recordings, it follows that these separately issued pieces come together exceptionally well to form a cogent whole, perhaps owing to the consistency of CH as a vessel. In any case, the entirety of the set has been included here digitally, with the exception of the tenth disc (two remixes for the as-yet-unreleased remaster/reissue of A Dusty Box Of Old Memories), which has been kept as a physical box set exclusive out of respect to Illuminated Paths, the label soon issuing that expansive remaster. The digital release has been priced lower than the cost of its combined parts, 10 hours of music for under $100, making it a convenient bargain for those of you who do not wish to collect all of the associated reissues in order to obtain the CH mixes. released October 1, 2018 W/P by the credited artists. Remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax. Recorded various dates 2011-2018 at Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop in SC/OH. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ASH0002. #1/2/5/6/8/12/13 constructed using source material by Milieu. #3/4 constructed using source material by Coppice Halifax. #7/9/10/11 constructed using source material by Brian Grainger. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [Descender] (1:09:04) 02. Coppice Halifax - [Submix] (1:04:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - [Apophenol] (1:11:43) 04. Coppice Halifax - [Stowed Under] (57:08) 05. Coppice Halifax - [Vibrance] (1:07:56) Previously recorded as a private commission in 2016-2017, Electric Fields is a collection of five deep extended Halifaxian mixes, transfiguring an unnamed piece of music that was written and recorded over ten years prior. With names changed, out of respect to the original commissioned work, these recordings have been given the chance to see a public release for the first time, making this five-album set an unexpected chapter in the CH catalog that fits in somewhere between Dripping Earth and Ferrolog, as well as bearing some resemblance to the recent Arborist's Excavations collection. At 5:30:24, Electric Fields offers a dense and exploratory listening experience that should be equally immersive on headphones as well as current stereo rigs and public address systems, and a perfect counterpart to the chilly Autumn season presently in phase. released November 16, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Excavated at White Pillar Workshop, December 2016-Spring 2017 by Coppice Halifax. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX88. Special thanks to J.T. for graciously allowing Milieu Music to publicly issue these recordings. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Dissolved - Cyan [Evaporant] (55:52) Following on the successful depth analyses of longtime friend and collaborator Dissolved's massive remix album Hallucino Attics (which manifested as the Etchings In Rust remixes collection here at Milieu Music), comes another deep Halifaxian long-player for the heads: CYAN EVAPORANT. Picking up on cues left by releases like Static Physics, the recent Arborist's Excavations box set and the Autochromata recordings, this 56-minute trip begins with emotive washes of synthesizer fragments, beached on the sun-burnt shore of a great blue sea. Gradually, the waves recede into low tide to reveal the shape of a metal vessel, lopsided and just barely below the water line. Slow breaths of sub bass emanate from within the rusted frame, suddenly bursting to rhythmic life in a spray of ocean foam and coral detritus. The colliding wet wreckage and diminishing light from the setting sun give in to the purple cloak of nightfall, until all that's left is a ship's hull jutting out of the surf, heavy and asleep like some ancient skeleton. Cyan Evaporant is a vibrant, psychedelic techno excursion that emerges from and retreats back into ambient sadness, and manages to stand with feet in both Coppice Halifax waters and Dissolved acreage. released November 16, 2018 Written by Dissolved. Produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to Dissolved for graciously allowing Milieu Music to issue this full session version. Photography by Rudolf Kremers. This is Milieu Music number ABX89. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Riverblue (25:55) If I could, I would gather up all the green grass, flower petals, sunshine and tufts of cloud, and I would melt them down into a sweet syrup that I could keep in the cabinet. On grey days, I'd pour just a little bit into a glass, and fill the Earth with softness and color while I sipped myself into a cozy contentment. But I can't do that, so instead, I've made this, and I've offered it to you. (...to be followed by another blue shape...) released November 16, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Transfigured at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX90A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Blaubac (8:13) 02. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Broken Machine Films (5:52) 03. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Oxynucid - Nug Mix (5:59) 04. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Forest Satellite - Arbaro Ceremoniaro (7:46) 05. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Time For Trees (8:33) 06. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - DeepWarmth (6:01) 07. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Adrien75 - Ear Worm (7:59) 08. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Dissolved - Eleven Fifty Mix (21:26) 09. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - The Nautilus Project - Coastal Footpath Remix (18:18) 10. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Arjen Schat - Al-kimia-00 (3:09) 11. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Arjen Schat - Al-kimia-01 (4:38) 12. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Arjen Schat - Al-kimia-02A (5:54) 13. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Arjen Schat - Al-kimia-02B (5:55) 14. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Arjen Schat - Al-kimia-03 (2:56) 15. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Substak - Edit I (7:40) 16. Coppice Halifax - Deep Earth - Substak - Edit II (8:00) After several months of careful curation, arrangement and mastering work, ALKEMIISTO III has finally emerged from the darkness. A winding, tangential affair spread across two discs and just over two hours, this is perhaps the most diverse collection of remixes for the Deep Earth series, to date. Returning producers from past volumes include The Nautilus Project (with a hypnotic 18-minute excursion), Arjen Schat (with a five-track suite of mixes), Substak and Time For Trees, while the majority of Alkemiisto III is populated by newcomers who have certainly left their own unique marks with the material. Longtime friend and collaborator Dissolved appears with what could be the album's penultimate moment, in a psychedelic and seemingly bottomless 21-minute recontextualization, while Adrien75 (whose 2002 watery ambient work Coastal Acces made a major impression on my formative beatless recordings) forms strange, organic shapes out of Deep Earth's black compost. Much of Alkemiisto III feels caught in between worlds, with tracks often dropping out of and back into different phases almost abruptly. It is as if the very disconnected group of producers appearing here employed a hive-mind approach, to grow something that felt wholly singular and alive, rather than a large space filled with many disparate sections, making the remix series' title all the more appropriate here. All of these excellent contributors have my highest gratitude, as the pleasure in being able to share in the work they do has always been an honor, and will continue to be so long as this series remains active. released November 19, 2018 Written by Brian Grainger. Produced & remixed by the credited artists. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at the White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2018. This is Milieu Music number RIPETIS 7, and is the 7th such iteration in the RIPETIS / REITERATED subcatalog of Deep Earth. Photography & text by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Solus 3 (1:12:44) Following the last iteration of the SOLUS recordings over two years ago, SOLUS 3 emerges from the void like a beam of alien light crossing cosmic expanses over eons. For those who don't yet know, Solus recordings are created using a simple rule: Rhythmic elements and possibly a bass element are mixed to the absolute forefront, while all things tonal and textural are reduced to between 5-20% of the volume of the rhythms. This is an experimental approach that somewhat embodies a techno variant of Eno's original ideas regarding ambient music - where composed sound could exist harmoniously in the background, right below the threshold of awareness, allowing for a kind of Rorschach effect of the ear, hearing overtones and patterns where there may have been none. Solus recordings apply this thinking to a minimal techno template, where Coppice Halifax supplies the rhythmic components, and the incidental sounds/overtones of the just-out-of-reach atmospheric elements in the piece provide the impetus for the listener's brain to find anchors in the sonic freefall. So, it follows that Solus 3 is designed for playing alongside all manner of external interference, such as open windows, appliances, radio fuzz, a TV in another room, vehicles passing by or even the reverberations of the playback in the listening space itself. All of these, and more, are completely canonical elements of the work, thereby creating a totally different playback experience every single time. This third Solus recording was improvised live on outboard hardware in the White Pillar Workshop, and broadcast to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, on September 9th, 2018. All sounds were generated using a MIDI-free hardware rig of: Korg Minilogue / MS-20 / Volca Beats / Volca Bass / Volca Keys / Volca Sample, Arturia Microbrute, Roland SH-32, Grass C-TCM and AM radio band processed via Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI-MuRF, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3, Synthrotek PT2399, Pioneer SR202W, Alesis Quadraverb and 2x DSP patches in the Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing board. As with the first two volumes of Solus recordings, there is also a collection of alternate mixes/versions/variants drafted as a companion piece to this release, fulfilling the second aspect of the Solus ethos: Using only the singular source of the original recording to isolate and arrange new tracks, thereby utilizing the atmospheric content as a primary "lead" voice, despite the fact that very little emphasis has been placed on the creation of those sounds. released November 21, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, September 9th 2018, using a MIDI-free hardware rig of: Korg Minilogue / MS-20 / Volca Beats / Volca Bass / Volca Keys / Volca Sample, Arturia Microbrute, Roland SH-32, Grass C-TCM and AM radio band processed via Moog LPF/Ringmod/MIDI-MuRF, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3, Synthrotek PT2399, Pioneer SR202W, Alesis Quadraverb and 2x DSP patches in the Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML131. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - 333 [Sundepth] (16:42) 02. Coppice Halifax - 333 [Navigant Void] (12:15) 03. Coppice Halifax - 333 [Ultramedial] (13:06) 04. Coppice Halifax - 333 [Slow Light] (13:26) 05. Coppice Halifax - 333 [Lustre] (19:50) As with the first two volumes of Solus recordings, Solus 3 has generated a companion release of alternate versions. Transfiguring Solus 3 into five totally different macrocosms of sonic space, 333/SOL fulfills the second aspect of the Solus ethos: Using only the singular source of the original recording to isolate and arrange new tracks, thereby utilizing the atmospheric content as a primary "lead" voice, despite the fact that very little emphasis has been placed on the creation of those sounds. This process allows subconscious design decisions to bubble up to the top, inevitably turning out unique and mutant music that is adherent to no real template or convention. 333/SOL is, topically speaking, a thick and organic techno record that dips its toe into drone and dub pools with total alien indifference. It would likely appeal to listeners who enjoyed albums like Chloroformic Forests, Photovoltaic Fragments, Somx, Cornucopiad and Eluvian II, and feels perfectly suited to the current chilly Autumn that's blowing through the Miami River valley. released November 21, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, November 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML132. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tetrachromatisol (3:10:31) While exploring the tangential variations on the SOLUS 3 album, a large amount of recorded material was generated due to the processing-heavy nature of the experiments. One such recording took the form of this three-hour macroverse, found hiding within the sonic DNA of SOLUS 3, and was far too engrossing to leave unreleased. TETRACHROMATISOL is a near-generative result of isolating various narrow frequency bands and non-stereo information from the original SOLUS 3 live session, and elongating/pitch shifting/filter shaping that content via Fourier transforms, stereo differentials and various digital/analog signal processors. Essentially, this is the shape of SOLUS 3's skeleton, after much of the topical and immediately defining characteristics have been stripped away. The several dozen layers of processed sound that were "grown" from this approach were then laid over/under/beside a drum machine & monosynth loop taken from a rehearsal for the original SOLUS 3 broadcast. The feeling of an artificially created physical landscape is echoed in the heavily processed photography that represents the album visually, and TETRACHROMATISOL recalls aspects of previous CH releases in this vein, such as the AUTOCHROMATA series, the right/left pair of NEPENTHESOL / AMBUSILICATE and the procedurally built NIGHT'S MOISTURE. Thanks to a very careful FLAC compression, I was able to provide a completely uncut/unedited 3 hour file for your deep listening use, hopefully allowing TETRACHROMATISOL to aid in sleep and meditation sessions, in addition to the usual playback settings. For the physical edition, I've divided the full piece into 1-hour sections across three discs, with fades/additional filter processing, offering the option of more modest listening sessions. released November 21, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Extracted, regenerated, reprocessed and captured at White Pillar Workshop, November 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, text and photo processing by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX90. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xv (8:03) 02. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xvi (7:48) 03. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xvii (8:13) 04. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xviii (9:51) 05. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xix (8:26) 06. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xx (7:09) 07. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxi (7:10) 08. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxii (9:45) 09. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxiii (8:50) 10. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxiv (7:47) 11. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxv (8:21) 12. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxvi (7:48) 13. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxvii (7:05) 14. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxviii (8:55) 15. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxix (8:13) 16. Coppice Halifax - Phase #xxx (6:56) Following 2015's GREEN SHAPE and 2017's GREEN SHAPE II, albums that grew majestic forestial structures out of composted recordings of holiday traditionals, set against an ever-shifting framework of drum machines...comes the double-album GREEN SHAPE III, the latest and perhaps deepest iteration of the concept. While the first two volumes sampled Xmas music box recordings from vinyl sides to generate their voices, Green Shape III reshapes the sounds of German metal bells, ringing out traditional Christmas songs, into a deep green Halifaxian Winter forest. Since the first Green Shape album, these recordings have taken on the role of being a sort of spiritual successor to the Verdant Acre series. The approach to the sessions is the same - a vinyl side (sent through numerous hardware filters/reverbs/delays/pitch processors and more) is carefully aligned with between one and three drum machines (in this case, a Yamaha RX11) and a bass synthesizer (a Korg Volca Kick) rounds out the mix's low end. On a handful of tracks, the Grass C-TCM and Korg MS-20 were used as white noise generators, to help widen the stereo field and fill out some of the blank space in the slower sparser moments. 2018's sessions for Green Shape have yielded, by far, the most material yet to come from the Green Shape approach - over two hours, plus another subsequent "Green Shade" session that was intended to further/furthur space apart the filter passes and LFO sweeps to create three longform suites ( coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/green-shade ). The final of these sessions became an extended deep listening experience that lasted over 82 minutes, and has itself been given a solo release with some slight runtime editing: ( coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/gs-3a3x ). Additionally, a five-disc boxed set has been produced, limited in print number, that collects Green Shape I / II / III and the Green Shade session as a bonus 5th disc - the definitive sonic object to keep you tranquil and warmly contented through this stressful holiday season: ( coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/green-shape-complete-sessions-i-ii-iii ) released December 12, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, December 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMC011A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - GS-3A1 [Phase Inversion / Overtone Field] (22:00) 02. Coppice Halifax - GS-3A2 [Phase Inversion / Flooded Emerald Mines] (23:37) 03. Coppice Halifax - GS-3A3 [Phase Inversion / Ursus Arctos] (34:51) After finishing the session for Green Shape III, enough raw material remained to draft an unexpected second pass, allowing these three extended 'inversions' to happen. Using the same provenance of the Green Shape III album, Green Shade further transfigures those sounds by way of glacially slow tempos and additional tape looping/filter/pitch manipulation. Not quite Green Shape anymore, but not quite a totally new vessel either - it felt appropriate to issue these recordings as extensions of the main album recordings. They inhabit a similar space as releases like Fissured Beach, Reflector, Verdant Overgrowth and Lowlights. Further, the third inversion presented here is an edit of a much longer piece, which finished the Green Shape sessions for good after running on late into the evening. The complete extended mix of GS-3A3 has been issued here for those who like to explore the bottommost depths of these green Halifaxian seas: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/gs-3a3x released December 12, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, December 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMC011B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - GS-3A3X [Ursus Archesporiad] (1:18:40) The final, mammoth leg of the extensive recording sessions for the Green Shape III album in 2018. A monolith of deep listening, constructed with transfigured vinyl sides of German bell music, a Yamaha RX11 drum machine and a considerable amount of analog and digital hardware processing. Perfect warm blankets of filtered Halifaxian audio to comfort and consume over the Winter holidays. Collector's note: This is the only physical edition of GS-3A3X. The Green Shape 5xCD box set only includes this recording in digital download form. released December 12, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, December 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMC011C. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [E25] Limŝtono 1 (14:24) 02. Coppice Halifax - [E25] Limŝtono 2 (25:25) 03. Coppice Halifax - [E25] Limŝtono 3 (22:14) 04. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Limŝtono [Kavita] (13:43) 05. Coppice Halifax - [E26] Armerio 1.1 (3:24) 06. Coppice Halifax - [E26] Armerio 1.2 (6:46) 07. Coppice Halifax - [E26] Armerio 2.1 (8:58) 08. Coppice Halifax - [E26] Armerio 2.2 (8:29) 09. Coppice Halifax - [E27] Ondoj 1.1 (12:13) 10. Coppice Halifax - [E27] Ondoj 1.2 (12:36) 11. Coppice Halifax - [E27] Ondoj 2 (10:32) 12. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Ondoj 3.1 (7:32) 13. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Ondoj 3.2 (7:01) 14. Coppice Halifax - [E28] Sen (10:44) 15. Coppice Halifax - [E28] Sen [Reprenu] (12:28) 16. Coppice Halifax - [E29] Amaso 1 (9:47) 17. Coppice Halifax - [E29] Amaso 2 (12:35) 18. Coppice Halifax - [E29] Amaso 3 (15:16) 19. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Senfonta 1 (5:55) 20. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Senfonta 2 (5:55) 21. Coppice Halifax - [E30] Transiro 1.1 (13:35) 22. Coppice Halifax - [E30] Transiro 1.2 (13:10) 23. Coppice Halifax - [E30] Transiro 2.1 (10:49) 24. Coppice Halifax - [E30] Transiro 2.2 (11:02) 25. Coppice Halifax - [E30] Transiro 2.3 (13:10) 26. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Kvadrato (14:40) 27. Coppice Halifax - [E31] Vintra Mallumo (56:41) 28. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Kvadrato [Malplenaj] (15:20) 29. Coppice Halifax - [E32] Kolizii 1.1 (7:07) 30. Coppice Halifax - [E32] Kolizii 1.2 (10:20) 31. Coppice Halifax - [E32] Kolizii 2.1 (3:46) 32. Coppice Halifax - [E32] Kolizii 2.2 (7:11) 33. Coppice Halifax - [E32] Kolizii 2.3 (4:36) 34. Coppice Halifax - [E33] Ebla (30:47) 35. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Ebla [Kuniganta] (15:13) 36. Coppice Halifax - [E34] Tra 1.1 (5:08) 37. Coppice Halifax - [E34] Tra 1.2 (4:00) 38. Coppice Halifax - [E34] Tra 2 (10:17) 39. Coppice Halifax - [E35] Naskigi (14:55) 40. Coppice Halifax - [E35] Naskigi 2 (18:11) 41. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Tra 3 (24:36) 42. Coppice Halifax - [E36] Foresto (1:08:24) 43. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Carente (9:45) 44. Coppice Halifax - [EK10] Tranĉaĵoj (9:08) 45. Coppice Halifax - [F25] Scii (31:19) 46. Coppice Halifax - [F26] Diakilo (26:55) 47. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Cesigoj (9:54) 48. Coppice Halifax - [F27] Sekvi (1:13:40) 49. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Vosto (5:06) 50. Coppice Halifax - [F28] Ridiganta (32:01) 51. Coppice Halifax - [F29] Solvita 1 (5:27) 52. Coppice Halifax - [F29] Solvita 2 (6:56) 53. Coppice Halifax - [F29] Solvita 3 (10:50) 54. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Malmola Akvo (7:01) 55. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Fero (11:54) 56. Coppice Halifax - [F30] Mankantaj Iu (10:39) 57. Coppice Halifax - [F30] Iu Mankas (13:35) 58. Coppice Halifax - [F31] Nego (7:09) 59. Coppice Halifax - [F31] Malkovrita [Karno] (46:27) 60. Coppice Halifax - [F32] Flustri (43:41) 61. Coppice Halifax - [F33] Nepra 1 (7:21) 62. Coppice Halifax - [F33] Nepra 2 (9:09) 63. Coppice Halifax - [F33] Nepra 3 (9:07) 64. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Nivelo (7:52) 65. Coppice Halifax - [F34] Ujo [Konsonanto] (4:36) 66. Coppice Halifax - [F34] Ujo (16:01) 67. Coppice Halifax - [F35] Celo (30:10) 68. Coppice Halifax - [F36] Libera (27:25) 69. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Malŝparoj (29:16) 70. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Fenestro (39:35) 71. Coppice Halifax - [EC3] Sekvis En Mallumon (1:12:46) Sixteen white discs, laser-etched with 20 hours 13 minutes and 42 seconds of subterranean synthesis, across seventy-one tracks. The third year of Deep Earth is no less substantial than the first two, and the fourth year is already underway. As before, Year Three Compleat collects all 12 public releases, all 12 private releases, all video singles and five hours of previously unreleased material from those sessions. Deep Earth is the longest running consecutive monthly series I've maintained since starting the CH project in 2006. There was a small break from July to December of 2018, but even during that time, aspects of the series were finished and issued, and others ran in the background. It has always symbolized the borderlands of the Halifaxian acreage, an unmapped and alien expanse that both informed and contradicted the 'canon' of CH albums that were drafted and issued outside of it. It has been host to bodiless drone paths, dense techno rock walls, steep ambient canyons and synthetic light trails, billowing through the cavernous dark. Year Three seemed to mostly focus on both solo-machine studies and massive 20+ channel gear configurations, swimming in wires and blinking LEDs. It began with three extended four-track cassette explorations of the Grass Click-Tone Control Module, a medical unit I added to the studio a couple years ago that generates tone, and followed with four pieces built using only the Korg MS-20 monophonic analog synthesizer. These recordings gave way to many other experiments, using everything from digital arpeggiators to mixer feedback, from MIDI-free setups to tightly wound industrial noise. The Transiro tracks recall the filter-passed tonal rhythms of the first year of the series, and the Kolizii tracks introduce house music rhythms and patterns to Deep Earth's palette for the first time. Foresto zooms into digital 12-bit sampling and tape loops on a molecular level, and the Solvita tracks reveal hidden rhythmic shapes inside stereo differentials. Year Three's sessions seem to both push CH further out than it's ever been, while also bringing the series itself closer to the sound of non-Deep Earth recordings than before...perhaps recalling the mantra of the entire approach: Tempo Pulsos Malfokusita / Time Pulses Out Of Focus. Deep Earth is sometimes near, sometimes far, always peripheral and perpetually in motion. It remains a healthy discipline in artistic perspective, and a motivation for getting the very most out of the studio equipment I have, and for these reasons alone, it may go on forever. released January 1, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, June 2017-June 2018, using only outboard hardware and no computers. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number DE-C3. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Rekursia 1 (4:10) 02. Coppice Halifax - Rekursia 2 (4:08) 03. Coppice Halifax - Rekursia 3 (4:10) 04. Coppice Halifax - Rekursia 4 (4:19) released January 26, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop using a Korg Monologue monophonic analog synthesizer, tuned according to a system dictated by two random number generators and a set of 12 dice bearing every note in the musical scale. Each of the 16 steps are also step-sequenced according to that same system (12 random notes, with the first 4 recurring). Additional supplemental FX were applied, starting with a Pioneer spring reverb, then a Boss RV-3 digital reverb and finally an Alesis Quadraverb. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photo by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number EARTH 37, and 37th in the Deep Earth catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Nightly Quarter (24:22) 02. Coppice Halifax - Downtune Lux (30:48) In a slight return to 2017's two-part Springthaw album, the format of two half-hour live jams alongside an ambient backdrop reincarnates here as Winterthaw. Winterthaw consists of two extended ambient techno explorations that process and transfigure source material from the Winterspheres sessions The first half, Nightly Quarter, begins subdued and distant, but builds into a larger and ever-heavier structure of overlapping rhythms and effects textures, generated live with multiple samplers and drum machines. The second half, Downtune Lux, is a further reduction of the ambient source material, with pitch shifters, noise gates and multiple reverbs/delays, over a simple low-passed kick drum and one-note bassline from the Korg MS-20 monosynth, while a field recording of a 2015 sleet storm unspools in the back. Together, these two pieces provide a stimulating counterpoint to the recent Winterspheres reissue, as well as revisiting a Halifaxian acre during a different season altogether. released January 30, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, January 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX92. Photography and text by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Mensogema (18:17) 02. Coppice Halifax - Mensogema [Apekso] (6:29) ...EARTH 38 in YEAR FOUR of the DEEP EARTH series... Prenante en la mallumo por lumo, vivo, linio. Ajna punkto de referenco por pruvi, ke ni staras ankoraŭ kaj ne falas tra senfina buklo. released February 20, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, in one take, using only the Grass S10CTCMA in conjunction with a Digitech Synth Wah & WH-4, Moog LPF and an array of analog/digital delay and reverb FX, with the LPF being modulated via CV signals from a Korg MS-20. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photo by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number EARTH 38, and 38th in the Deep Earth catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - 111 (9:16) 02. Coppice Halifax - 111 [Radiant Gold] (7:22) 03. Coppice Halifax - 111 [Saturnine Metals] (8:52) 04. Coppice Halifax - 111 [UUU] (11:37) An extension of the track "111", which previously appeared in digital form only on the compilation marking Cold Fiction Music's 100th cataloged release. 111 was originally an outtake from the Analog Botany series in 2009, which somehow went missing and resurfaced after I relocated to a new studio in 2016. Upon rediscovering it, I applied a few final brushstrokes to the track, and went further with new coats of paint on three subsequent alternative mixes. The resultant EP feels somewhat between the Analog Botany series that birthed it and the more textured dub of releases like Leaf Cloak or Night Soil. Altogether a funky bit of composting for the heads... released February 21, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Initial session recording at Rolling Knoll in 2009, subsequent and final session at White Pillar Workshop in 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX93. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Post #H7 (1:00:41) 02. Coppice Halifax - Post #R5 (1:02:00) 03. Coppice Halifax - Post #V7 (1:00:46) 04. Coppice Halifax - Post #S7 (1:04:43) 05. Coppice Halifax - Post #A7 (1:02:39) 06. Coppice Halifax - Post #S9 (1:07:31) 07. Coppice Halifax - Post #M9 (1:00:46) 08. Coppice Halifax - Post #G7 (1:02:02) 09. Coppice Halifax - Post #A8 (1:05:22) 10. Coppice Halifax - Post #G10 (1:00:47) 11. Coppice Halifax - Post #D7 (1:03:19) 12. Coppice Halifax - Post #R9 (1:07:33) 13. Coppice Halifax - Post #T11 (1:00:47) 14. Coppice Halifax - Post #D8 (59:08) 15. Coppice Halifax - Post #W8 (1:01:58) 16. Coppice Halifax - Post #U7 (1:09:05) 17. Coppice Halifax - Post #S7B (1:06:34) 18. Coppice Halifax - Post #W10 (1:01:47) 19. Coppice Halifax - Post #B8 (1:15:59) 20. Coppice Halifax - Post #G10B (1:06:40) 21. Coppice Halifax - Post #S9B (1:03:19) 22. Coppice Halifax - Post #R11 (1:02:05) 23. Coppice Halifax - Post #S8 (1:15:59) 24. Coppice Halifax - Post #C9 (1:16:09) Over time, a number of materials pile up through the process of packaging and shipping so many copies of so many releases, with a considerable amount of containers, sleeves and jackets that are discarded for cosmetic or other minor flaws. In the interest of wasting as little material as possible in my studio, I set these cast-offs aside until I have enough to use for assembling a new project entirely. This process has given way to what I have dubbed "Ashcan Editions" of certain releases - incredibly limited, built with recycled materials and often containing alternative mixes/versions of the original audio as well. Vaporous Post is such a release, being born from a reprocessing of the master tapes for the sprawling 24xCD Dripping Earth set. The original recordings have been completely transfigured via a process involving mid-side equalization and pitch shifting, with warm analog reverb and compressors - an absolute reshaping and reimagining of this already deep and tangential source sound. Sonically speaking, these revisions are much more ambient in tone and texture, with many of the details melted down and smeared through processing and re-placement. Still, the chord structures and shifts between changes remain present, even from a completely different vantage point, offering an experience that is somehow equal parts sub-vibrational drone, dub techno and ambient meditation. Influences of Variant's Vortexual series at Echospace, Wolfgang Voigt's first GAS album (as well as bits of Pop) and the late Michael Mantra's work all came to mind during these sessions. It felt fitting then, that these reworks be carried in a physical vessel that is, in and of itself, a recycled object. The entire 24xCD affair exists inside six slightly damaged 4xCD plastic boxes, whose only flaw is that the inside hinges that hold the disc trays in place are broken. I have exactly twelve such cases, meaning there are only TWO copies of Vaporous Post in existence. As "Ashcan Editions" only tend to materialize when I have enough packaging I can re-fit, releases like these are sporadic and impulsive, and I quite enjoy having outlets like these to explore tangents and force myself to consider things in a packaging first/reverse engineered kind of way. The two copies of Vaporous Post are signed and numbered, and sell/ship with the caveat that the buyer accepts the re-fitted/recycled aspect of the materials used. No returns or refunds, these are for the most dedicated collectors and listeners only. Considering the price of the original Dripping Earth series was $300, Vaporous Post has been priced to reflect the damaged nature of the cases, but also the uniqueness of the audio. Your consideration and understanding in this area is appreciated. released February 22, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Transfigured at White Pillar Workshop, Winter 2019, using the original Dripping Earth session masters. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ASH0003, third in the Ashcan Editions subcatalogue of recycled and reconstituted works. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Lethargy [Slo Wave Dub] (9:33) 02. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Perfume Lux] (14:16) 03. Coppice Halifax - Amaso 1 [Pliigita] (9:33) 04. Coppice Halifax - Dayglo Daze [Dusk Artifax Mix] (4:58) 05. Coppice Halifax - Tone [Radial Dub] (17:26) 06. Coppice Halifax - Vapor Dub [Sunroof Mix] (5:43) 07. Coppice Halifax - White Pillar 8 [April Showers] (9:47) 08. Coppice Halifax - White Pillar 9 [Retrograde Dub] (9:42) 09. Coppice Halifax - Ebla [Pezaj Gutoj] (8:41) 10. Coppice Halifax - Amaso 2 [Malpurajo] (12:36) 11. Coppice Halifax - Fokuso 1.2 [Acuífero] (7:32) 12. Coppice Halifax - Solus 3 [Groundskeeper's Dub] (7:46) 13. Coppice Halifax - Amaso 3 [Triopo] (15:16) 14. Coppice Halifax - Halides [Field Tape] (7:47) Another year has flown past us, and it is once again time to collect the previously unreleased mixes from the second year of Valley Filter, a serial sampler that is issued as a promotional digital download each month and dispersed with packages shipped from the studio, as well as offered to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon as part of their monthly rewards. Each issue of Valley Filter comes with a single unreleased cut that is usually an alternate mix or version of an album track, although for those familiar with the CH sound, this often means they are basically totally different tracks. On this second volume of Filtered Artifacts, there are numerous reworks of Deep Earth material (Amaso, Fokuso, Ebla), White Pillar jams and even an outtake from the Solus 3 session. Additionally, a long lost mix of the 2008 track Vapor Dub from somewhere around 2010-2011 has been retrieved, as well as two psychedelic phase-outs of the Appleblue Dram and Tone Canal & Continent material. A standout is the particularly grooving Lethargy version, taken from a session that happened somewhere between Earth Eraser and the Alignment Lethargy EP. Filtered Artifacts II once again feels much more like a cogent album that was conceived at one time, in a single approach, rather than a stitched-together collage of offcuts from several different years, studios and recording setups. It is my hope that it offers some interesting perspectives on my workflow and some unique reconsiderations of material that already exists elsewhere, in other shapes and shades. released March 2, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded various dates between 2010-2018, at Rolling Knoll, Botany Bay and the White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number ABX94. Photography, text and design by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Disradii (30:54) ...EARTH 39 in YEAR FOUR of the DEEP EARTH series... Sciante tiam, ke ni vere estas en la mallumo, lumo flagras en milionoj da neeviteblaj fendoj ĉirkaŭ ni. I ĉiam estis tie, ni nur fermis niajn okulojn. released March 19, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, March 11 2019, using a DOD FX75B flanger as the sole input source, processed through the veins of an Alesis Quadraverb resonator, Pioneer SR202W spring reverb box, Digitech WH-4 pitch shifter, Boss RV-3 digital reverb, BBE Two Timer analog delay and two custom DSP patches onboard the Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number EARTH 39, and 39th in the Deep Earth series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Riverblur (52:02) The second of two Blue Shapes from two different seasons in the valley. RIVERBLUR composts, smears, dissolves and reconstitutes the RIVERBLUE ambient pasture that was ambiguously issued in Autumn 2018. In a classic Halfiaxian fashion, RIVERBLUR feels very much in line with things like the Static Pharming series, aspects of Verdant Acre and even the mossy dub techno of Leaf Cloak. Splashy and blue dub chords puddle up beneath a Springtime sunbeam, as filter-passed rhythms creep in between the cracks in the sidewalk. Invisibly, a mammoth rhythm section of analog kicks, airy percussion and a sub bass fill the air, while somewhere far off in the distance, a painter walks us through a rural fantasy one brush stroke at a time. This is CH at peak time, high on the Hawaiian fog and drunk on windy valley splendours. All the colors on the wheel, all the crayons in the box. Hi-fi psychedelic mindmusic for club and bedroom applications! NOTE: The limited edition CD-R also contains RIVERBLUE, previously only issued digitally. released March 26, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, March 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX91B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Window Cill (19:02) Recorded in August 2016, right before I moved 600 miles from the subtropics, Window Cill was essentially the first take of the composition that would become Cillage on the CH section of the Sun Cast triple-album. While it conveys a totally different soundworld, melodically, one can see parallels in my producer's approach, with the long slow burn of chopped breaks building up, swirling chords coating the rhythm like a psychedelic fog and an elasticizing of time to further disorient the listener. In the end, it was redone entirely with a larger focus on the orchestral sampling that fills out Cillage, and this cut was left off of both Sun Cast and the subsequent singles due to its considerable length. Finally, Spring has arrived in the valley and Window Cill feels like the perfect thing to cast out into the air. This is one to be taken with you when you go, and played as loud as possible. released March 27, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, August 2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML133. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack (9:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Pine 2A] (6:22) 03. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Carbonated] (7:56) 04. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Milkwhite] (9:50) 05. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Pine 2B] (8:28) 06. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Blue Silver] (8:43) 07. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Orangerie] (9:49) 08. Coppice Halifax - Midnight Snack [Lime Fizzy] (10:13) Originally released in 2011, and recorded during the months following the closure of the Analog Botany series, Midnight Snax was issued in the middle of a hot Carolinian June on only a 16-copy first edition, and a 34-copy second edition, before going out of print until now. The seventh installment of the post-Analog Botany ABX catalog, it continued to expand on the dub techno and house music informed production work within the AB series, while also going into more bass-heavy dancefloor directions. Of the five original cuts, two were subsequent retakes of the AB track "Pine", while another track recorded during the sessions (but omitted), "Mintmorning" led to the Leaf Cloak album that followed. In this way, Midnight Snax feels almost more like a bridge between the Analog Botany series proper, and the sort of "Mark II" material that would inform the more organic and compost-minded CH releases in the following years. These five tracks have been gently remastered in the White Pillar Workshop, and augmented with three previously unreleased cuts from the original sessions. The "Blue Silver" mix is first, a crusty, humid house track, built on a Korg ES-1 sampler alongside a Boss DR-660 and a Roland SH-32 digital polysynth. "Orangerie" reprises the original mix with a more Speicher-influenced schaffel and additional drum machine work. "Lime Fizzy" closes the expanded album with a deeper and more reggae-dub take on the "Carbonated" mix, which contrasts against its faster tempos and heavier rhythms. Having spent some time with these recordings again after nearly nine years of space, I feel that Midnight Snax is even more boldly colorful, accessible and seasonally appropriate than it's ever been. For fans of the Analog Botany series, Leaf Cloak or even the more recent White Pillar series, there is a lot of heavy groove on offer here. An excursion well worth taking as the Spring breeze begins to blow in... released April 23, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2010-2011. Remastered at White Pillar by The Analog Botanist, April 2019. Tracks #6-8 retrieved from the Milieu Music archives, 2019. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD41, 41st in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. Many thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, and the passengers of the Deep Earth series: Without them, this music may not be possible. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 1 (9:23) 02. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 2 (11:16) 03. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 3 (11:17) 04. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 4 (13:11) 05. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 5 (13:55) 06. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 6 (15:53) 07. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 7 (9:01) 08. Coppice Halifax - Kadro 8 (19:11) ...EARTH 40 in YEAR FOUR of the DEEP EARTH series... Marŝante antaŭen, sentante la difinon de la tero sub ni, ni nur nun konstatas, ke direktoj estas imagataj. Indikiloj de nur pasintaj, nunaj kaj estontaj. Paŝo antaŭen estas ankaŭ unu paŝo pli for. El ĉi tio aperas formo en la makulaj nigraj. released April 28, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live April 2019, at the White Pillar Workshop, using a Korg Volca Modular analog synthesizer, in tandem with a Boss RC-20 looper, a Korg KP-2 Kaoss Pad, a Digitech WH-4 & Synth Wah, a Pioneer SR202W spring reverb, a BBE Two Timer analog delay, a Synthrotek PT2399 delay and an Ibanez Phase Modulator, processed in realtime on a Vesta Fire MR10-B four-track cassette recorder. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number EARTH 40, and 40th in the Deep Earth catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Lake Busbee (12:30) 02. Coppice Halifax - Electric Plant (8:28) 03. Coppice Halifax - Bronze (18:35) 04. Coppice Halifax - Flower Field (6:23) 05. Coppice Halifax - Cmx I (8:50) 06. Coppice Halifax - Cmx II (10:56) 07. Coppice Halifax - Phantom Sun (6:17) 08. Coppice Halifax - Third Lake (4:16) 09. Coppice Halifax - Bronze II (8:25) 10. Coppice Halifax - Cmx III (4:55) 11. Coppice Halifax - Sea Smoke [83 Version] (8:00) 12. Coppice Halifax - Lake Busbee [Live In Cayce, February 2006] (8:48) 13. Coppice Halifax - Sea Smoke [DCO Excavation] (1:02:55) 1983, the debut release by Coppice Halifax, recorded in 2006, and issued in three distinctly different and limited editions, the latest of which was nine years ago in 2010, on a 120-minute cassette tape. Each iteration of 1983 expanded on the original four tracks, and this fourth reinstatement is no different, with a 60+ minute excavation of Sea Smoke, conjured from the crumbling towers of memory that 1983 resides in and laid to tape in the White Pillar Workshop, almost 600 miles away from Lake Busbee itself. When Sun Cast was nearing completion in 2018, after eight years of recording work, relocation, parenthood and studio changes, I became aware of the fate of Lake Busbee and the electric plant next to it, that I canonized as totemic representations of my work, just like the Columbia water tower or my father's home in rural Loris, both of which also graced many different covers across years. The plant was demolished, and the lake drained and converted into swampland, instilling in me a deep sense of loss. That place was a synaesthetic focus point for me - I'd visit it in lucid dreams, and from those experiences came the sounds of 1983. To my mind, 1983 IS that place, transmuted and distilled into the final remnant, a mnemonic artifact. So, I decided it was a perfect time to reissue 1983, one more time. 13 years after its creation, it remains a monument within the Halifaxian landscape, visible from just about any other plot in those overgrown acres and psychedelic waves. This is the first time the expanded 12-track material has been issued on CD-R, and as stated previously, it also includes a third disc, an offering at the temple, vaporized and chanted until the next time around. The ritual is over, the vision passed and the evidence etched into yet another milkwhite plastic galaxy maker. released May 16, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, 2006, except #13: Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, May 2019. Additional acoustic guitar on #4 by Blake Arambula. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Photography by Sarah Farmer www.flickr.com/photos/saramer This is Milieu Music number AD43, 43rd in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Linio 1 (15:53) 02. Coppice Halifax - Linio 2 (14:29) 03. Coppice Halifax - Linio 3 (22:30) Sugesto de profundo. Sistemo de linioj. Kontraŭlumigita, neparata, modesta. Ambivalenco. released May 31, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, May 2019, using a Korg Volca Beats drum machine, Korg Monologue monophonic analog synthesizer (in a custom microtuning) and a Sangean ATS-803A, in conjunction with Moog LPF/Ringmod, Digitech WH-4, BBE Two Timer, Alesis Quadraverb, Boss RV-3 and Pioneer SR202W. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to D.P. for the Sangean. This is Milieu Music number [EARTH 41], and 41st in the Deep Earth series. Photography & text by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Green Compost (34:06) 02. Coppice Halifax - Green Compost [Evaporated] (30:21) Green Compost is the recorded result of a near-generative process, transfiguring the recent album Green Anthelion (a beatless atmosphere of densely layered field recordings and sound design) into something resembling Halifaxian ambient techno. Similarities to other CH albums spring to mind, such as Cornucopiad, Eluvian II, Polysom, Quinth and Monument, in that it builds rhythmic forms out of recycled audio content, organic outdoor sounds and non-tonal textures. Initially drafted as a single release alongside Blue Compost, which utilizes the same production approach and re-generative ethos, Green Compost quickly became a universe of its own, manifesting in the color-thematic release you see presented here. released June 22, 2019 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded live at White Pillar, Spring 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX95A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Blue Compost (1:07:56) Blue Compost is the recorded result of a near-generative process, transfiguring the recent album Blue Anthelion (a beatless atmosphere of densely layered field recordings and sound design) into something resembling Halifaxian ambient techno. Similarities to other CH albums spring to mind, such as Cornucopiad, Eluvian II, Polysom, Quinth and Monument, in that it builds rhythmic forms out of recycled audio content, organic outdoor sounds and non-tonal textures. Initially drafted as a single release alongside Green Compost, which utilizes the same production approach and re-generative ethos, Blue Compost quickly became a universe of its own, manifesting in the color-thematic release you see presented here. released June 22, 2019 W/P by Coppice Halifax. Recorded live at White Pillar, Spring 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX95B ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Slow Earth Ritual (1:15:08) 02. Coppice Halifax - Slow Earth Ritual [Variant Transformation] (59:34) Slow Earth Ritual is a confluence of many different tributaries, running through the Halifaxian continent. It celebrates the hundredth release in the ABX subcatalog of post-Analog Botany recordings. It revisits, in sonic and photographic terms, the winding and tangential paths of Verdant Acre. It returns to the invocation of oceanic and forestial elements in the Coppice Halifax name itself. It is the culmination of a collaborative process with a close friend, confidante and longtime influence on the CH output, Stephen Hitchell of Echospace. With this release, Stephen and I agreed to start with the aural compost of the Verdant Acre series - a dense ambient techno monolith replete with shades of GAS, Pole, The Caretaker, Andrew Deutsch, Rod Modell and of course Hitchell himself. We met each other in the Acre, across foggy time and midwestern space, and it all felt like we'd been there before, somehow. Using his Variant vessel (which I've done two extensive remixes for in recent years) Hitchell brought the falling stars and cosmic cultivars with him to my sentimental estate. For my part, I excavated a surreal structure from deep under the black forest dirt, an Earthen temple fashioned from igneous stone, petrified wood and the bones of long perished woolly mammoths. Together, we transfigured the past into something that is not the past, the present or the future. Music that feels familiar, yet exists outside of time, suspending itself in an endless oscillation of vibration and rhythmic pulse. Unearthing these artifacts from past explorations with Variant is both an honor and a pleasure. It is worthy work that I feel will yield fruitful listening (and potentially subsequent crops) for years to come. Hitchell has unified the ocean of (Echo)space with my deification of unmapped vaporized forestry, both of us plunging lethargic and reckless into the frontier's long night. Slow Earth Ritual canonizes his creative work as a part of my own, and returns me to my own native soil in the process. released September 28, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger, except #2: Written by Brian Grainger / Produced & Remixed by Variant. Recorded at White Pillar + Echospace, date unknown. Mastered & engineered in Echospace by Stephen Hitchell. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX100. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Forest Satellite - Blue Wave (Cass Mix) (8:23) 02. Coppice Halifax - A Crested Blue Lion Upon Cymbalic Waves (13:20) 03. Forest Satellite - Sakura Bronze Petals (7:55) Three dreamy tracks of Ambient composed by newcomer Forest Satellite and friend of the label Coppice Halifax. released September 30, 2019 Written, Produced by artists credited ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Iced White (8:03) 02. Coppice Halifax - 333/444 (9:54) 03. Coppice Halifax - Refocus (4:45) ICED WHITE collects three different sessions that happened as sidetracked tangents while recording material for the fourth year of the Deep Earth series. The title track was recently issued at Cold Fiction Music, as a part of their annual Futur[e]cho compilation album, and sees its first physical format release here. All three cuts were live and improvised using a mostly-analog hardware setup, and were laid to tape on various dates between Spring and Autumn 2019. Further, "Refocus" was expanded on with "Refocus II", a deep excavation that fills more than an hour's runtime with minimal dub techno and warm isolationist drones: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/refocus-ii NOTE: ICED WHITE is available only on a 3" CD-R, which might not be compatible with anything but tray-based players. If you have any doubts about whether or not your system can play 3" CD-Rs, caution is advised. released October 22, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, Spring-Autumn 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX99 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 1.1 (9:42) 02. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 1.2 (10:11) 03. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 1.3 (10:06) 04. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 2.1 (12:21) 05. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 2.2 (11:57) 06. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 2.3 (14:09) 07. Coppice Halifax - Forgesita 3 (5:25) released December 11, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, December 2019, using Korg Volca Sample / Volca Kick / MS-20, Arturia Microfreak, Yamaha RX21L and a wide array of analog/digital FX. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text, photography & design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number EARTH 48, the 48th release in the Deep Earth catalog. www.milieu-music.com / www.analogbotany.com Special thanks to all of the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon (www.patreon.com/analogbotany). With their continued support, more music like this release can happen! At the present moment, the members of the Fan Club are: Burt T / Brian S / Jake P / Christ S / Damian H / Levi G / Arthur W / Joel B / Peter H-B / Rik J / Jose S / David P / Helge J / Peter C / Alan A / Alex G / Seth B / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / J.C. Bastos / Michael R / Juan D Many humble thanks to the subscribers of the Deep Earth series. Without them, this music might not exist, and if it did, you might not be able to hear it. Support deep electronic mining initiatives today: ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Auburn Botany [Live In The Workshop, December 1st, 2019] (1:06:27) AUBURN BOTANY is a live-in-studio performance that is partially a DJ set using CH tracks and partially a brand new work, emerging from the processing and dubbing work happening over/under the tracks themselves. Considering this, even the most stalwart CH listener will hear things they recognize alongside things they do not, making a set like this one an interesting trip for the trainspotters. Initially drafted as a mixing session for a podcast, AUBURN BOTANY very quickly became something more unique and interesting once it was set into motion. Very much akin to releases like ENDLESS ACRE and COMPOSTING TECHNIQUES FOR MORE FRUITFUL GARDENING, this set is filled with so many layers that, at any given moment, you're hearing between 2 and 5 different tracks playing in unison. A psychedelic dub techno experience with shades of deep house and bedroom braindance, the perfect thing to keep you warm during the cold months! released December 20, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, December 1st 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMLP25. www.milieu-music.com / www.analogbotany.com Special thanks to all of the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon (www.patreon.com/analogbotany). With their continued support, more music like this release can happen! At the present moment, the members of the Fan Club are: Burt T / Brian S / Jake P / Christ S / Damian H / Levi G / Arthur W / Joel B / Peter H-B / Rik J / Jose S / David P / Helge J / Peter C / Alan A / Alex G / Seth B / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / J.C. Bastos / Michael R / Juan D Many humble thanks to the subscribers of the Deep Earth series. Without them, this music might not exist, and if it did, you might not be able to hear it. Support deep electronic mining initiatives today: ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Winterhearth Monolith (1:08:35) It's been a wet Winter here this time around - not much snow, but lots of freezing cold rain. It's still enough to keep you bundled up, wanting to stay inside on grey day after grey day, thinking about sunshine while you drink coffee under fuzzy blankets. From early December, til early January, I managed to take some time away from the "work" side of this vocation, and focus on, among other things, fine-tuning my Chemex technique, making maps, reading mediocre late-sixties poetry and spending downtime with my family, ringing in those holidays (one right after the other) in the most low-key way possible. Of course, I also spent time in the studio, mostly reconfiguring gear placement, re-routing things to be less wire-nest and more efficient toolset. Somewhere in there, I sat down on one of these dreary days soaked in gray, and warmed up next to a hearth fire of analog drones, monosynth bass and a single drum machine, all humming in unison alongside a piezo recording of rainfall on glass windows, a subtle reminder of how nice it truly is to be inside, away from the elements. This recording went nameless for some time, a sort of fleeting fog that was more a feeling than something concrete, although if you had to make comparisons to past works, this would very much appeal to fans of the FERROLOG album or deeper things like REFLECTOR... more released January 30, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, December 2019 using a Yamaha QX21L, Korg MS-20 / Minilogue, Roland SH-32, Arturia Microbrute and an Akai S2800 sampler using the voices of Yamaha MR10 and Optimus SSM-1750 rhythm generators, in conjunction with a wide array of analog and digital FX units. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX96. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tigress (9:59) 02. Coppice Halifax - Suncoated (10:37) 03. Coppice Halifax - Port Map (9:00) 04. Coppice Halifax - Imperial Rust (12:05) 05. Coppice Halifax - Suncastle [Venice In Blurs] (15:38) 06. Coppice Halifax - Any Are (2:20) 07. Coppice Halifax - Night In Green (9:34) 08. Coppice Halifax - Euphrates (12:10) 09. Coppice Halifax - Ritual & Remembrance (5:44) 10. Coppice Halifax - Night In Blue (8:52) 11. Coppice Halifax - Soft Breath On Cracked Marble (20:26) In the latter half of 2019, a talented Finnish painter privately commissioned me to write and record an album that sounded like "High Hawaiian Fog at sunset" alongside a few other particular reference points, such as the Ocean Lion recordings. Tigress, a two-hour double-album, is what followed in the last months of the year, keeping me warm in the studio as the temperatures outside went from cool to colder and the leaves fell beneath the weight of Winter rainfall. I finally finished the work in January, and at the request of the patron whose support and initiative willed it into existence, I am issuing it publicly as well. Sonically, Tigress resembles the wave-stained shorelines and sunken orchestras of albums like High Hawaiian Fog and Ocean Lion, but is also designed to be much more dynamic and dense, with many different moving parts that initially do not reveal themselves in the sun-coated sea wash of melodic haze. Sun Cast, Swaying Palms and Pawleys Island are all close enough to be felt, if not heard, as well. Indeed, the ship has left port, the tide has come rushing back in, bringing with it artifacts from tragic wrecks and merfolk magicks hidden inside colorful shells, as the sun finally sets upon an orange sand island, and we stand beneath the gradually inkstained sky, hand in hand, watching the light sink beneath the surface, claimed once more by the longing of seafoam ghosts and beautiful sirens, dowsing the light in a thousand salty tears, dispersing it as glitter-crested waves that gently crash upon our knees. You and I both know there's never any going back, that nothing can ever be the sweet sameness of that oft-romanced before, that the swamp takes everything back eventually...but the rusting bells of memory call us just the same, heralding that hopeless search back to the softened lens of our nostalgic recall, chiming in perfect unison their distant hail, pulling us out onto the waves again like the lonesome sirens, for one more trip to those golden ruins beneath the empty sea. released February 14, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Privately commissioned by Anni Roenkae. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, 2019-2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Paintings courtesy of Anni Roenkae. Initial design by ABM&D / Final design and layout by Robert Trifu. Text companion written by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music number MMD052. © + (P) Milieu Music 2020. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0002 (2.1) (1:04:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0002 (2.2) (59:30) 03. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0002 (2.3) (1:08:55) 04. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0002 (2.4) (1:05:45) 05. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0002 (2.5) (1:06:08) 06. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0002 (2.6) (1:00:40) Premiering on the Deep Breakfast podcast series in Italy ( soundcloud.com/deepbreakfastseries/deep-breakfast-054-coppice-halifax ) are new longform recordings by Coppice Halifax, for/from a series of works titled Halifaxian Cantos. As the title might imply, these pieces represent the wordless prose of the Halifaxian continent, intimate and minimalistic devotionals sung to the seasons, the sea and the stars beyond them. Coppice Halifax has long maintained an ethos of acting as Aquarius the water-bearer, bringing forth decorative vessels of elemental splendor for both sustenance and reflection, and these Cantos have taken shape via this same approach, using a near-generative process that deifies and transmutes orchestral provenance into the almost infinite. A microcosmic study in ambient techno, drone music and process-driven synthesis, Halifaxian Cantos further explore and christen the unmapped lands of the Halifaxian landscape, offering a recorded output that is both tranquil and evocative in their wake. Longtime CH listeners will appreciate noticeable references to Verdant Acre, Reflector, Ferrolog, Dripping Earth and the now-numerous Arborist's Excavations in these works. Download contains 6 hours of audio plus a bonus desktop wallpaper image. released May 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Arranged, generated, processed and recorded at White Pillar, Summer-Autumn 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number BWV-UE 0002, second in the Halifaxian Cantos subcatalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Opal (Droned) (1:15:10) Originally recorded at Botany Bay between 2012-2013, this extended and dubbed out version of Opal (from Pacific Opal Hex) found a small release in Autumn 2019 as a bonus disc with a limited edition of the 8xCD Deep Works retrospective box set. With the pandemic now sweeping the globe and digital audio taking precedence over physical ritual out of sheer necessity, I have decided to offer Opal (Droned) as a digital release in the name of accessibility. It comes at an apt moment, as the Pacific Opal Hex album is also finally available on the CH Bandcamp platform, so between these two releases, there are now two full hours plus of tropical dubby mid-tempo deep listening. Both the P.O.H. album and this version of Opal exist within the same universe as Ocean Lion, High Hawaiian Fog and Tigress, so for listeners who enjoy those recordings, this is a trip well worth taking. released July 3, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2012-2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ASH0004B ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Silverine (15:34) 02. Coppice Halifax - Silverine [Mix II] (14:11) 03. Coppice Halifax - Silverine [Mix III] (17:17) 04. Coppice Halifax - Silverine [Mix IV] (19:28) SILVERINE came into existence in the same way things like RIVER TABLEAUX, RAFT, VALLEYFOAM and ICED WHITE did - drafted as sessions of deep techno destined for issuance at Cold Fiction's recurring Futur[e]cho compilation series. To date, CH has been a participant in all ten volumes of this series, and the tenth volume is what conjured SILVERINE from the dim lamps, cable nests and warm machines in the White Pillar Workshop earlier this year. This release contains the full SILVERINE session, with all four of the progressively deeper and more mutated versions of the cut, filling out sixty-six minutes of dub techno that feels like it belongs somewhere in the spectrum of sound between VERDANT ACRE, URCEOLATMOSPHERION and LEAF CLOAK. Perceptive listeners will recognize certain production tricks and even palette selections that were utilized in the SILVERINE session, such as the "burnt chord" sound that originated with LEAF CLOAK. SUPPORT COLD FICTION'S COMPILATION HERE, WHICH INCLUDES MIX #1 OF SILVERINE: cfmlabel.bandcamp.com/album/futur-e-cho-2020 released September 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, April 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX112 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Sacral Phase I (1:08:39) 02. Coppice Halifax - Sacral Phase II (1:02:21) SACRAL PHASES consists of two beatless pieces that manifested peripherally during the SILHOUETTES sessions earlier in the Summer. They reflect both the atmospheric texture of SILHOUETTES and the melodic provenance of STATUETTES, the latter being transfigured through my generative process to create the former. These two recordings were included only on a strictly limited edition of 8 copies (four numbered, and four 'artist print' copies) of the 12xCD-R deluxe boxed variant of SILHOUETTES, and now that this edition is sold out, I felt it was only fair to make SACRAL PHASES available publicly, since I am never interested in deliberately keeping material hard to obtain. Musically, they are deeply calming pieces that I find work well on their own, outside of being appended to SILHOUETTES, and recall aspects of Milieu's ongoing VIBRATELEPATHOS series ((( vibratelepathos.bandcamp.com ))) in how they were created as well as their sonic personalities. NOTE: If you are one of the eight owners of the 12xCD-R SILHOUETTES set, please only purchase this release if you absolutely must own it. I am planning, subsequent to the SACRAL PHASES release, to send all eight of you free download codes to add this release to your collections. Your continued support is appreciated. released December 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, Summer 2020, using Milieu's STATUETTES albums as provenance, laid to tape tangentially during the SILHOUETTES sessions. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX116A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Winter Arch (21:43) 02. Coppice Halifax - White Drum (21:54) Winter is a severe season, at least much more so than it was (or wasn't at all) in the subtropics of South Carolina. I often feel as if I've inherited the seasons themselves, living here in Ohio, and snow falling never fails to make me feel like I'm living in a fantasy world. Reeling from the joy of looking out of my windows and seeing blankets of white, I took the occasion to jam out some equally joyous and frenetic Halifaxian dance tracks. These two pieces manifested as Winter Arch and White Drum, and felt like the Winter answer to Autumn's Ferine Alembix, in how raw and huge they came out on the tape. They were a lot of fun, start to finish, and I didn't want to obsess too heavily over them, preferring instead to simply fire them off for Bandcamp Friday, mixer to table, smoke em if you've got em. These are electric and alive sessions, and hopefully convey some of the pent-up energy and excitement that I've been saving for live performances that could presumably happen after the pandemic recedes, and like Ferine Alembix, the grittiness and compressor-abuse present in these mixes recalls a very classic Coppice Halifax aesthetic, one I feel completely comfortable with whenever the occasion permits it. If there's been one good thing about staying inside for so long with this pandemic going around, it is that I have been justified in falling down my own creative rabbit hole even further, by virtue of having nowhere else to go anyway...so setting up elaborate roller coaster rides like these just to zoom through them over and over again all by myself isn't so much a depressing prospect as an immensely enthralling one. As my wife is often fond of quoting: "Can't go mad, ain't got time" released February 5, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, February 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX115E. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Auroral Phase I (1:06:36) 02. Coppice Halifax - Auroral Phase II (1:05:29) AURORAL PHASES consists of two beatless pieces that manifested peripherally during the SILHOUETTES sessions earlier in the Summer. They reflect both the atmospheric texture of SILHOUETTES and the melodic provenance of STATUETTES, the latter being transfigured through my generative process to create the former. These two recordings were included only on a strictly limited edition of 8 copies (four numbered, and four 'artist print' copies) of the 12xCD-R deluxe boxed variant of SILHOUETTES II, and now that this edition is sold out, I felt it was only fair to make AURORAL PHASES available publicly, since I am never interested in deliberately keeping material hard to obtain. Musically, they are deeply calming pieces that I find work well on their own, outside of being appended to SILHOUETTES, and recall aspects of Milieu's ongoing VIBRATELEPATHOS series ((( vibratelepathos.bandcamp.com ))) in how they were created as well as their sonic personalities. NOTE: If you are one of the eight owners of the 12xCD-R SILHOUETTES II set, please only purchase this release if you absolutely must own it. I am planning, subsequent to the AURORAL PHASES release, to send all eight of you free download codes to add this release to your collections. Your continued support is appreciated. released February 5, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, Summer 2020, using Milieu's STATUETTES albums as provenance, laid to tape tangentially during the SILHOUETTES sessions. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX116B ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0003 (3.1) (52:38) 02. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0003 (3.2) (54:50) 03. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0003 (3.3) (53:04) 04. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0003 (3.4) (52:23) 05. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0003 (3.5) (1:02:08) 06. Coppice Halifax - BWV-UE0003 (3.6) (55:40) Premiering on the Deep Breakfast podcast series in Italy ( soundcloud.com/deepbreakfastseries/deep-breakfast-054-coppice-halifax ) are new longform recordings by Coppice Halifax, for/from a series of works titled Halifaxian Cantos. As the title might imply, these pieces represent the wordless prose of the Halifaxian continent, intimate and minimalistic devotionals sung to the seasons, the sea and the stars beyond them. Coppice Halifax has long maintained an ethos of acting as Aquarius the water-bearer, bringing forth decorative vessels of elemental splendor for both sustenance and reflection, and these Cantos have taken shape via this same approach, using a near-generative process that deifies and transmutes orchestral provenance into the almost infinite. A microcosmic study in ambient techno, drone music and process-driven synthesis, Halifaxian Cantos further explore and christen the unmapped lands of the Halifaxian landscape, offering a recorded output that is both tranquil and evocative in their wake. Longtime CH listeners will appreciate noticeable references to Verdant Acre, Reflector, Ferrolog, Dripping Earth and the now-numerous Arborist's Excavations in these works. N.B. (3/3/21): This third volume of the Cantos continues the path charted by the first two, and in some ways, diverges a bit into Wagnerian abyssals that feel at times excessively dark and, only moments later, triumphant and beautiful. This may yet be a more divisive volume of the series, but much like things such as Verdant Acre or Dripping Earth before it, Halifaxian Cantos reflects the asymmetry and organic dissonance commonly found in the natural world, by using a process that attempts to transfigure existing compositions from Bach with a human touch, somewhere buried beneath all of the automation and generative effects. What this means is that, at a molecular level, all of the joy, the sadness and everything in between that exists within Bach's work is here amplified and elongated considerably, to be illustrated by massively deep trenches of isolation and depression, and unfathomably high peaks of white mountaintops kissed by sunshine, and titanic waves that carry us back and forth between the two on the currents of time and space. released March 5, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Arranged, generated, processed and recorded at White Pillar, Winter 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number BWV-UE 0003, third in the Halifaxian Cantos subcatalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Avon (7:00) 02. Coppice Halifax - Portsmouth (10:15) 03. Coppice Halifax - Buxton (10:30) 04. Coppice Halifax - Rodanthe (6:42) 05. Coppice Halifax - Salvo (11:00) 06. Coppice Halifax - Salter Path (9:59) 07. Coppice Halifax - Yaupon (9:08) Coastal Reveries was the first of its kind - a privately commissioned work, drafted by Dylan Fisher, a multidisciplinary visual artist in New York, in 2012 - and until now, it has remained unreleased. Although details are foggy, since my daughter was born in April of that same year, I do recall Fisher asking me to create something with a detailed level of specificity in mind. He asked for a recording that could inhabit similar soundworlds as High Hawaiian Fog, Ocean Lion and perhaps other map-points like Verdant Acre - all of these, moments within my catalog that seem to resurface on a regular basis - and I did my damnedest at that moment in time to revisit those spaces, rather than attempt to recreate them. In truth, I find the act of remaking not just tedious, but impossible, for any creative mind that is truly inspired, and especially my own, which seems to thrive on tangents, peripheries, wandering exploration...the act of doing has always been far more rewarding for me than any level of familiarity or nostalgia one might expect to come along with re-approaching prior ideas. So, I'm certain that my acceptance of Fisher's commission came along with such a caveat, that I may not be able to fully find my way back the way I came, and that while I could almost guarantee that the resultant recordings would resemble aspects of the things he'd named, they would likely diverge from those albums just as much. So, off to work I went, and again, memory being unreliable, I want to say I worked on it all through that Summer and Autumn, because one way or another, I'd finished the album by December, and delivered it to Fisher in both physical and digital capacities, with a signed and dated certificate of authenticity, should he ever decide to sell his copy. The sessions remain a blur for me, and all I can really say with certainty now about them is that I was sampling a vinyl box set of Mantovani material primarily, echoing the orchestral sampling present on High Hawaiian Fog, although the provenance for those tracks varied from Delius and Dvorak to Lee Hazlewood, far less singular and far more experimental on a foundational level. For Coastal Reveries, I wanted something that felt a bit more romantic, 1960s exotica, and Mediterranean honeymoon eloping, rather than Atlantic/southern American nautical fantasy. The latter still managed to inform the vantage point of the recordings, however, with all seven tracks named for shorelines in the Carolinas - my way of acknowledging that this entire thing was a vision of longing for and imagining those European waves and ports, channeling them more as a voyeuristic conjurer rather than a seasoned traveler. By the time I'd completed the recordings, I felt genuinely as if this was a Halifaxian album for lovers, a seafoamed score for beached dalliances beneath fluffy white clouds, no doubt filled with the harp-strums of Cupid...these Coastal Reveries would be manifest in both mythical love and animal lust. To accentuate this approach, I penned a modest amount of copy to accompany the record, which was more or less a prosaic scene of sex on the beach, albeit surrealistic and abstract in many of the same ways my writing remains today. After a few years, Fisher gave me his blessing to publicly release Coastal Reveries, and plans were made to issue it at Wil Ru Records in Portland, the very same label that brought High Hawaiian Fog to the wider world, but soon after this, WR fell out of the business of issuing new music, and Coastal Reveries was shelved indefinitely. Today, almost nine years later, Reveries has been remastered from the original session tapes, and given a beautiful new visual design by Eric Adrian Lee, a name many listeners will already be familiar with from his work on High Hawaiian Fog, Sun Cast, Summer's Parting Ways and many more albums that are immensely important to me for personal reasons. Eric is a master, perhaps even THE master, of depicting scenes of romance, both bawdy and pastoral, and conveying this oceanic longing through the lens of his lush visual compositions. Lee's design work for Reveries is the perfect companion to the music, and I hope my prose (reprinted on the inner gatefold) lends itself favorably to the listening experience also. So, as part of my celebration of my 38th year on this mad Earth, where truth continues to be even more surrealistic than the fictions I summon, I am more than happy to offer you Coastal Reveries, another chapter in the subtropical odyssey I've apparently been writing, not endless, but certainly without an ending in sight or mind. This music would appeal to fans of High Hawaiian Fog, Ocean Lion, Tigress and Sun Cast, but also maintains distinct connections to recordings like Verdant Acre, My Earths and even more modern excursions like Dripping Earth and Silhouettes. Included with your purchase are both indexed and seamless presentations of the album, and following this release will be a few others that are Coastal Reveries-adjacent, from June onward. "There's only one thing you can do with a girl like this. Walk naked into the sea together as the sun sets. Make love once... Then die." -Mick Travis, 1968 released May 17, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2012. Commissioned by Dylan Fisher. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at the White Pillar Workshop, 2021. Text accompaniments by ABM&D, except the Mick Travis quote, written by Lindsay Anderson. Design and photography by Eric Adrian Lee. Printing and duplication by Atomic Disc. This is Milieu Music number MMD057. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3 (11:48) 02. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Night Window] (9:03) 03. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3A (8:54) 04. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Spring Blend] (7:47) 05. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 3B (8:36) 06. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Rebuild] (11:55) 07. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Departure] (7:54) 08. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Overgrowth / IK5 Version] (13:44) 09. Coppice Halifax - Dusk (3:52) 10. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Overgrowth] (13:44) 11. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Spring Dub] (5:46) 12. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Live At Foxhill, October 2010] (7:10) 13. Coppice Halifax - Dusk 2 (11:20) 14. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Overgrowth 2] (7:07) 15. Coppice Halifax - Dusk [Excavation] (31:03) DUSK VERSIONS was originally recorded during the same sessions in 2010 undertaken for material that was issued on split releases with Axs and Ohrwert at the now-defunct Other Heights label in 2011. At the time, it was an exercise in finality and closure, seeking to simmer down the oft-revisited Analog Botany series cut "Dusk" and solidify it into a night ritual of subdued bass, dub rhythms and softened chords reverberating in digital spaces large and small. Using classic dub compilation albums such as Echospace's Grandbend and Vantage Isle as a partial template, "Dusk" was explored and transfigured in every possible way, resulting in a tableaux of sonic matter that orbited a single setting sun, but never presented it directly or clearly. These were other peripheral dusks, sunsets on other worlds, in other times, reachable only through careful navigation with a key in the shape of a flat white circle. Today, ten years later, DUSK VERSIONS is again an exercise in closure, this time having to unexpectedly handle this reissue as some kind of sendoff for my late canine Charly, who was perfectly suited to his portrait on the album cover, taken with my Holga CFN120 camera in the golden hour, in the living room of my old place across the street from the Columbia water tower. I'd have no idea that the year DUSK VERSIONS would celebrate a 10th anniversary, Charly would himself pass on after a seven-year battle with various health problems. This expanded reissue is subsequently being dedicated to his memory - long may he roam the windy fields of the distant planets that DUSK VERSIONS conveys, chasing after cats and squirrels until he contentedly passes out beneath the warmest blanketing sunbeam. Bereavement aside, I would like to also highlight how happy I am with this particular remaster and reissue, among the many others that have slowly come to celebrate their tenth (or later) birthdays. I'm not quite sure what makes it so special to me, but I can confidently state that this is the best DUSK VERSIONS has ever sounded. Perhaps it's just down to the decade of dubbing and mastering I've since done, all the trials and all the errors charting a path forward, for better and for worse, into whatever part of my peculiar artistic journey I currently reside. It is my sincere hope that DUSK VERSIONS provides you with many more nightly rituals, with or without substances of your choosing, and I raise a sip of whisky to Charly and ask you to join me in our happy farewell of another long and arduous year. Perhaps I'll see you around another sun, setting on another bedroom carpet, in another ten years. For the trainspotters, extra care has been taken to include all relevant versions of "Dusk" that are not themselves remixes by other producers (there are several by Ohrwert, Grad_U, Axs, Quantic, Zzzzra and others omitted here - these mixes are included on the still available Spring Blend album: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/spring-blend ). Here you shall find a remastered set of the original two "Dusk" tracks from Analog Botany 12, the entire six-track Dusk Versions album that was originally published at Recycled Plastics, both takes of Spring Blend (which originated from the same sessions), the bonus 3" EP of "Dusk" variations included in some copies of the Analog Botany 13x3" box set (including the extended cut of "Overgrowth" in both beatless and original mixes), and closing the double-disc affair is a brand new half-hour "Excavation" of "Dusk" - revisiting the original source materials and tape loops with modern hands, ears and equipment. released November 5, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Spring-Summer 2010, except #15 remixed and produced November 2021 at White Pillar Workshop. Remastered at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2021. Photograph taken by Brian at Rolling Knoll, 2010, using a Holga CFN120 modified to shoot on 35mm color film. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD59, 59th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tributary 2 [Quartz] (58:24) Following the completion of the nine phases in the ASTRAL SALONS series, it felt strange to run a monthly series for only three-quarters of the year, when all prior monthly serials have been a full 12 month run. So, the idea was drafted earlier in the Spring to finish out the series with three extended encore releases, each a full album-length session of Halifaxian deep listening that would contrast against the more melodic and densely-designed EPs with a more minimalistic approach. With this in mind, I'm happy to publish TRIBUTARY TWO of THREE in the epilogue of ASTRAL SALONS. This volume, QUARTZ PHASE, echoes the previous phase (COBALT) in that it recalls the prior season within a piece recorded following its passing. Here, QUARTZ PHASE utilizes a field recording of an intense thunderstorm in June (following the touchdown of a tornado nearby) to conjure up the Summer heat and humidity alongside a pulsing dub rhythm, rainsoaked chords and splashy percussion. Topical (some may say obvious) influences on QUARTZ PHASE are Pub's classics "Summer" and "Lunch" as well as Deepchord's varied and prolific 12"s on Soma, all channeled through a very Halifaxian landscape, painted with raw elements like yellow sunshine, blue rainwater and red electricity. A Summer blanket of deep techno and ambient dub to curl up with as the Autumn blows its leafy wind through the valley, happy to be remembered in keeping the warmer weather at a comfortable distance. released November 5, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2021, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and processing path in conjunction with a Korg ES-1 digital sampler and an Arturia Microbrute monophonic analog synthesizer. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D using expired Polaroid film shot during the 2017 solar eclipse. This is Milieu Music number PHASE 11. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - UT1 [A²] (16:39) 02. Coppice Halifax - UT2 [K²] (18:07) 03. Coppice Halifax - UT3 [M²] (19:44) 04. Coppice Halifax - UT4 [Y²] (18:36) 05. Coppice Halifax - Üllcha [K³] (18:54) 06. Coppice Halifax - Aphros [Y³] (17:40) 07. Coppice Halifax - Nehuen [A³] (21:06) 08. Coppice Halifax - Crux [M³] (20:28) REFLECTOR was originally issued in two limited editions at the now-defunct French label Entropy - the first edition was a blue paint-spattered disc held inside a tall and thin silver case, and the second edition came in a more "standardized" digipak with a pop-out feature that ejected the disc when you opened the gatefold - and since 2012 or thereabouts, it has remained out of print. In that time, I've been told by a good many people that REFLECTOR is a favorite of theirs from the Halifaxian continent, and although I myself can't say I share that level of enthusiasm about it, I have always acknowledged how singular it felt within that landscape. REFLECTOR began as nothing more than extended minimalist versions of the four tracks on RADIANS, which was scheduled for release at several different labels before ending up published at Recycled Plastics, and the focus of the session was to reduce the RADIANS tracks down to their barest of elements and reiterate their tonal-matter across a very simple and restrained path. At the time, I was doing this because I felt that RADIANS could have been better, although I enjoyed those tracks enough to leave them be and instead attempting fully separate second passes with the source material. From the molecular level upward, REFLECTOR is named such simply because it reflected its lineage in RADIANS while clearly inhabiting a different space. So, what did I change, in my transition from the session elements that built RADIANS, to the drastically altered monoliths of REFLECTOR? To begin, chordal synth patches were bounced through several generations of tape degradation, before being re-filtered themselves to bring out new contours and overtones. Drums were sampled at intentionally low bitrates and rendered down to mono. Bass elements were migrated into the session in a more pure sine-tone fashion, but were hardly used at all in the final work (only the fourth and final track contains a proper bassline at all). Reduce, refine, reshape, reduce again was more or less the working methodology, and in the end, the resultant four tracks resembled a few different shades of CH releases yet to come - Whitehope's multiple iterations, the Earthworks albums and the Autochromata series all spring to mind - while also recalling prior droned-out albums like Ocean Lion, Pacific Opal Hex and Winter Blurring. It felt almost immediately as if it were the missing junction point between many different poles of my work, while still itself remaining hard to define. Ten years after, it's an interesting note to leave the 2021 year on - almost a last-minute ceremony to schedule before the next tide sweeps these miserable months away. I find my relationship with REFLECTOR is even more alienated than ever, with the original tracks sounding almost completely different from how my mind remembers their sound. Until I sat down to work on remastering it this year, I hadn't listened to REFLECTOR in a few years. I remember it being very loop-fixated and hypnotically hovering through all the bass work, but the actual shape and pacing and temperature of the whole thing feels utterly unrecognizable to me. You'd think this sensation would happen more often with my back catalog, given how much of it there is now, but to be honest with you, REFLECTOR feels as unique in my mind now as it did then. For the occasion of this 10th anniversary celebration, I've revisited REFLECTOR not just for a new-coat-of-paint remaster, but to put my hands back down into the soil and see what I might build using modern tools and my current production habits. A single session was held for every track on REFLECTOR, completing the triptych of this material now manifesting in the form of three different four-track albums, from RADIANS to REFLECTOR to RELICT, a full reimagining of these four stellar bodies using only the original source materials that built REFLECTOR a decade ago. RELICT bridges the distance between RADIANS' vocoder chord and dub-spatter techno and REFLECTOR's droned out loop-pastures, with melodic patches of polymetrically sequenced chords over a bed of warm bass, kick drum anchors and resonator drones. The RELICT session, as many modern CH sessions do, yielded more new curiosities than resolutions, so a branching release from this point of origin with RELICT will follow at some point in 2022. For now, both REFLECTOR and RELICT offer a look in both directions - flawed recall of the past and hopeful estimation of the future - and together they summarize many of my current emotions and considerations about the 2021 year, and the new era of Milieu Music that is soon to follow. released December 3, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011 (#1-4) and White Pillar Workshop, 2021 (#5-8). All material mastered/remastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, White Pillar 2021. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD60, 60th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Tributary 3 [Vermilion] (1:05:48) Following the completion of the nine phases in the ASTRAL SALONS series, it felt strange to run a monthly series for only three-quarters of the year, when all prior monthly serials have been a full 12 month run. So, the idea was drafted earlier in the Spring to finish out the series with three extended encore releases, each a full album-length session of Halifaxian deep listening that would contrast against the more melodic and densely-designed EPs with a more minimalistic approach. With this in mind, I'm happy to publish TRIBUTARY THREE of THREE in the epilogue of ASTRAL SALONS. This volume, VERMILION PHASE, echoes the previous two phases (COBALT/QUARTZ) in that it recalls the prior season within a piece recorded following its passing. Here, VERMILION PHASE utilizes a field recording of leaves blown by the wind during the first week Autumn here in the valley, reflecting on the decline of a busy year as it descends into frozen stillness. The tributaries that have run across the Halifaxian map for the last twelve months have accumulated into a wise and untamed river, terminating here and now at our feet, their tenuous streams and blue longing almost unrecognizable in this rush of white noise and weathered Earth. Musically brimming with melodic passages and sweeping chordal arcs, VERMILION feels much like an extended reprise of EXTEMPORAL PHASE, especially given the prominent use of similar FM synthesizers to create bass and lead sounds. Bubbling over with references to map points all over the Halifaxian continent, from Solus to Ocean Lion, the recent Woven triptych and even the Analog Botany series, VERMILION is filled with a palpable sense of resolution and resolve. From here to who-knows-where: an ASTRAL SALONS collection with or without bonus material may or may not yet be issued in '22. released December 3, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at the White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2021, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and processing path in conjunction with Yamaha TX81Z, Roland Juno 106 + SH-32, Arturia Microbrute + Microfreak, Korg MS-20, ARP Odyssey and Behringer Blue Marvin synthesizers, and Korg Volca + ES-1 samplers. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D using expired Polaroid film shot during the 2017 solar eclipse. This is Milieu Music number PHASE 12. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - By A River (34:34) released January 13, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, January 13th 2022 using 4x Aeolian-tuned Euclidean sequencers, two sinewaves from self-oscillating low-pass filters, a granular synthesizer and a digital tape organ tuned to whole tone, supplemented by a sampled kick drum from a Yamaha MR-10 drum machine and a sampled bass from an Arturia Microfreak. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, 2021. Text and design by ABM&D, recalling 843. This is Milieu Music number ABX121. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Autochromata IV (51:06) Autochromata IV follows three volumes of dense minimal techno and generatively processed drone music, the last of which was issued five years ago, during the Summer of 2017. As a series, Autochromata was always designed to remain open-ended, and focus on deliberate use of lossy file conversions, low-bitrate audio and heavily artifacted sound, often culled from other studio sessions and reprocessed into a Halifaxian shape, draped over techno rhythms and sub bass. This fourth iteration continues on that path, with fifty minutes of deep dubby techno pulses that phase in and out of focus beneath layers of tape-eroded ambience and heavily weathered FM synthesizers. In many ways, Autochromata IV also directly picks up where the recently completed Astral Salons series finished its work, while also recalling much earlier CH sessions such as Cornucopiad or Earthworks. released February 4, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, Summer-Winter 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, February 2022. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number ABX122. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Pulverizer (23:54) PULVERIZER is, perhaps like BY A RIVER before it, a psychedelic ambient techno session that exists purely in the wake of the ASTRAL SALONS series. A fully polymetric composition, built out of a revolving set of rhythms, melodic passages and basslines that never overlap in quite the same way, due to their differing bar lengths. Techno has always been defined by hypnotic (and even surrealistic) sound experiences, and I feel that reconsidering the fundamentals of the structures and tropes of the genre itself, at the molecular level, is a way forward into new and vivid lands. It is my interest to further explore and develop polymetric forms within the techno template as a working method, and see where these near-generative systems take the music as they become more and more involved. Musically, PULVERIZER began with raw samples from a piezoelectric microphone, held with rubber bands to an aluminum grinder for marijuana plantmatter. In the stoner community, it is a popular practice to place a coin inside the chamber that holds the ground up flower, and shake it vigorously, pushing the trichomes (small THC-concentrated deposits in the leaves) through a secondary screen, into a lower chamber that collects them into a powdery sticky substance called kief. My grandfather, born to Italian immigrants in New York, collected many different foreign coins when he was enlisted in the service, in WWII, and when I was a small boy he gave me a cigar box filled with them. I picked out a Franc from 1932 and cleaned it up for use in my aluminum grinder, and almost immediately hatched the idea to record the pings with a piezo, and use them as trigger sources within my modular system. What you hear then, is a pasture of dub chords, generated with the voice of a vocoder, and triggered by these impulses from the 1932 Franc. With this sonic bed laid before me, I went to work shaping more melodies, bass, rhythms and so on, once again finding the statue inside the stone, feeling as if I was not creating or constructing, but merely locating existing peripheries within these triggered chords. All of the rhythms, besides two drum breaks that enter in the second half, are built with vintage Yamaha, Korg and Roland drum machines (Yammy RX11, RX21L, Korg KPR77, Roland TR505) and most of the overlaid lead sections were made using Yamaha TX81Z and Korg Volca FM synthesizers, while the arpeggiator in the ending is from a Roland SH-32 digital polysynth. The entire session was dubbed and mixed while stoned on the same kief that the triggers originated from, but mastered and finalized while sober (because I'm still not yet solid enough to fully complete the equation while under the influence). While it remains my preference to work sober, and only check mixes for changes while under any chemical influence, PULVERIZER could be seen as a small exception to this ethos, as it was designed from top to bottom in anticipation of the 4/20 stoner's holiday. Whether or not you're a weed geek like I am shouldn't matter, as the only real point of celebrating marijuana on a calendar date is to hopefully draw attention to the beneficial nature of finding something that works for you as an individual, and perhaps normalizing it just a little bit more. With medicinal and recreational usage, as well as full decriminalization, we can embrace something more natural and beneficial, with a slight bend toward psychedelic experiences, serving to jailbreak a bit of empathy in our baby animal brains, and maybe even leave behind more harmful vices like alcohol, nicotine and pharmaceuticals. However you get through the night, that's up to you - I hope PULVERIZER and the wider Coppice Halifax catalog enriches your passage. released April 20, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, April 2022 using a Crank Sturgeon piezoelectric microphone, a Higher Standards Aerodynamic aluminum grinder, an Arturia Microfreak, Yamaha RX11 / RX21L / TX81Z, Korg Volca FM / KPR77 and Roland SH-32 / TR505 in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and generative processing path, and two DAWs. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Cover design by ABM&D using a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, 1510. This is Milieu Music number ABX421. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All heights convected. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - [RXØ 46] (26:40) 02. Coppice Halifax - [RXØ 47] (26:55) 03. Coppice Halifax - [RXØ 48] (25:34) The first set of Pharmlands recordings transfigured material recorded for the third year of the Workingman's Drone series - huge and sustained walls of chordal sound - and set them to drift through various processing paths, alongside a sampler (providing variable rhythmic voices) and a bass monosynth. Pharmlands bridge the gap between deep techno and endless drone music, and this approach is once again in motion, this time utilizing the fourth year of Workingman's Drone sessions as provenance, mulching it into Halifaxian compost and seeing what blooms upon the landscape. Pharmlands II will be issued in four separate volumes, one per month, from February to May 2022. These recordings are built in a similar fashion as the Ferine Alembix EPs, as well as being partially informed by the Astral Salons and Static Pharming series. Thick, forestial dub techno overgrowths, cutting a visible path through the snow, and into the inevitable green Spring that will soon follow. released May 6, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April-May 2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number RXØ2.4. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Antidote (54:34) Following the extensive overdubs necessary to complete PULVERIZER for an April 20th release date, curiosity won out (as it always does) and I decided to approach the various dubbed sections like a sandbox to play in, and with only some slight adjustments to the same machines used for the rhythms and bass, a completely new piece of music materialized. ANTIDOTE is a fiftyfive-minute dub out, filled with several layers of chordal synthesizer structures, foggy melodic composition and polymetric drum and bass programming. Recalling prior recordings such as FERROLOG or even aspects of the OCEAN LION series, ANTIDOTE seems to inhabit familiar terrain in the Halifaxian acreage, while still possessing arrangement, mixing and processing traits that set it apart from anything that may have come before it. Initially, the intent was to attach ANTIDOTE to PULVERIZER, as a more ambient "come down" after the psychedelic peaks of PULVERIZER, but after some consideration, the decision was made to keep the two separate, to not only outline their differences rather than their similarities, but to let each stand more singularly alone in the catalog. With all things in my creative process, there are analogs to every moment, and while the versions and variations are never the same as their original counterparts, it is fascinating to examine the many tributaries that diverge from only a handful of ideas. It is as if time of day, temperature and barometric pressure are themselves enough elemental force to influence what may be derived from the same hands, acting on the same ideas, with the same tools. The more I learn, the less I know. released May 6, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, April 2022 using a Crank Sturgeon piezoelectric microphone, a Higher Standards Aerodynamic aluminum grinder, an Arturia Microfreak, Yamaha RX11 / RX21L / TX81Z, Korg Volca FM / KPR77 and Roland SH-32 / TR505 in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and generative processing path, and two DAWs. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Cover design by ABM&D using a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, 1528-1530. This is Milieu Music number ABX126. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All heights convected. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - River Mural I (10:31) 02. Coppice Halifax - River Mural II (7:33) 03. Coppice Halifax - River Mural III (12:34) 04. Coppice Halifax - River Mural IV (11:08) 05. Coppice Halifax - River Mural V (12:32) River Mural began as an unexpected session of chordal dub forms, emanating from Behringer's reproduction of the Blue Marvin ARP 2600 analog synthesizer (operating alongside my R-EW modular system), and seven takes were recorded, each somewhat similar in terms of the patching, but distinct enough from each other to represent variations. From here, I migrated the sessions into my DAW for finer detailing and overdub work - initially planned as some basslines and drum machine programming, perhaps some FX and filtering - and very quickly, the album that sits before you now, the *real* River Mural, coalesced into being. River Mural is something I'm proud of having done, but not for any of the usual reasons. Having just recently completed what can only be described as a months-long gauntlet of intense and exhausting composition work for The Flower to Disappear, I was certain that, as before, I'd need some time away from composed music again before being able to sit down and write anything worthwhile. Usually, this is where things like the Deep Earth and Vibratelepathos series are essential for me to explore generative and unorthodox ideas, recharging my creative batteries, so to speak, and once I've spent enough time in that method of working, I get the itch all over again, and dive back into something more programmatic and composed. River Mural defies this notion completely, being completed, start to finish, in less than one week, and so close on the heels of The Flower to Disappear, which was released on June 23rd, only two months ago. It is because of recordings like this, which come together seemingly on their own, and fast, that I am often riddled with second-guesses and doubts, asking myself whether or not I am truly happy with something, or if I'm only momentarily satisfied, and yet somehow, River Mural feels more accomplished and defined, even considering those things. I cannot quite explain what I feel so connected to in these pieces. They feel as if they were made reactively, me going in to find the relative keys and possible melodic motifs that would harmonically work with the ARP sessions, and instead of finding something more dub techno, I found these gorgeous melodic developments, which now only serve to cast even more uncertainty on the already deeply held sense that I am not actually *making* anything, but rather, *finding* it. The title is a multifaceted one, referring topically to a mural painted on the side of a white brick building next to the Waccamaw river in Conway, South Carolina, which I passed by most every day I lived there growing up, becoming less and less the thing that it actually was - a painting of a steamboat on a building wall - and more and more some intangible piece of the fabric that made up the substance of my entire world...as much a part of the atmosphere as the temperature, or the river itself. Thematically, the name refers to my current philosophical outlook regarding creative work (and for the deep divers among you, I've penned an essay about that here: weltlandschaft.bandcamp.com/album/heaven-is-a-glass-forever-machine ) which, in summary, posits that no creative thought can ever be considered finished, that the creative act is an impulsive act of expression undertaken simply for the joy (or other emotional response) of doing so, and that in considering this, I can be free to express myself outside of any external constructs such as public expectations, format limitations and so on. So, the River Mural is just that - an exploration of something to what seemed to be its logical terminus, only to find that where I ended up was somewhere entirely other than where I set out to go. This is so often the nature of the creative act, especially my own numerous tangents within it, and as I have continued down this path beside the river, I have become more and more content with things simply being what they already are, not pushing too hard, or trying to say something "profound" every time I hit the record button. The profundity is in the act of doing it at all, the recording is simply a document of that process having come to pass. And, as is also my usual with these passages of copy, I end up discussing so many facets of what precipitated the recordings, and hardly pay any attention to what those recordings actually sound like. The surrealism of that element is yet another part of what makes River Mural feel unique - like Tigress, Pink Acre and Milkwhite Plastic Galaxy Maker before it, River Mural feels in parts that it is not a Coppice Halifax album at all, but rather, a Milieu album. I contemplated issuing it as I did Sun Cast - billing it as Milieu & Coppice Halifax - but in the end, it came down to percentages, and I think the greater percentage of what's here resembles CH more, but as I said above, these things can only ever be what they already are, and what they are is music made by the same one mind, two ears, two hands, two eyes, regardless of whatever organizational dividers I choose to place upon it. Perhaps, one day, there will be no escaping this, and I will simply issue all the things I record under my birthname and let aliases be damned. For now, know that I am very aware of the in-between-worlds nature of River Mural, and I enjoy that aspect of it very much. In this way, putting the word "mural" into the title is appropriate, because it genuinely feels like the Conway mural of my youth, something more than what actuality would imply, a part of an ambient world where the only meanings and definitions that exist are those that I place emphasis on, and so that white brick wall, decorated in eroded paint by some artist whose name I still today do not know, could be all that remains now of that small town by the river, the rest of the real world simply vaporized in a flash of redundancy, cast into the sunny river waters like carefree stones, Earth to Earth, as it always is. released September 2, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, August 2022, using the Blue Marvin ARP 2600, the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and two DAWs. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Photography by Velasca Torres. This is Milieu Music number Milieu Music Distributed 69. © + (P) All nights preserved ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. COAL - The Dreaming Eye, Buried in the Rainsoaked Valley [Coppice Halifax Excavation] (53:18) Unearthed in the wet Spring of 2019, before the world changed, using only composted sound-material from COAL's album 'Winter in the Prismatic Eye', this extended CH remix was published and available for only a brief moment in time, redacted from the internet when Boiler Room Sound ceased operations. The Dreaming Eye waited, buried under the layers of detritus in the valley, watching nothing, feeling even less, never closed but forever asleep in the comatose thrall of some other, darker universe. Perhaps, in its speechless wordless mind, it knew what was to come, and remained inert, knowing that when the world moved on, it would be found and reclaimed, migrated here like some alien jewel that transfixed the gaze of hapless travelers, so weary from all the running, so willing to lie down and rest in the black washes of sedative, emanating from this infernal artifact. This recording comes recommended to listeners who enjoyed Verdant Acre, Slow Earth Ritual and any number of the earlier CH canon of heavy dub and surrealistic textural weather. released October 7, 2022 Written by COAL / Remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax. Realized at the White Pillar Workshop, April 2019, using only source material harvested from COAL's full-length recording 'Winter in the Prismatic Eye'. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Photography by Velasca Torres. This is Milieu Music number ABX127. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP & COAL 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Bluedram [Rust Flex] (8:09) 02. Specta Ciera - Star Patterns [Coppice Halifax Assemblage] (10:02) 03. Foamek - Avalon [Dripping Lawn Cmx] (17:55) 04. Substak - Index 1.6 [Coppice Halifax Triadic Phaseout] (8:26) 05. Arbee - Chaine [Coppice Halifax Mix] (9:26) 06. Dérive Dub - Notte 3 [Coppice Halifax Lunar Debris] (11:33) Somewhat surprisingly, it has already been four and a half years since the twelfth volume in the Cmx series was issued. For one reason (or several), I've been preoccupied enough with other albums and projects that continuing this archival thread of remix collections slipped away from me. With Autumn's leafy breeze now fully within the lungs of the valley, I could not be happier to sit down and assemble another compilation of Coppice mixes, so here's what Cmx thirteen contains: Opening the album, as is the usual Cmx custom, is an original cut - the 'Rust Flex' mix of Appleblue Dram, a hardware live set from May 2018 (see: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/appleblue-dram ) which was originally issued at Arctic Dub in Portugal on a 2019 compilation. This mix and master of the track has never been released up to now, with the Arctic Dub compilation having been mastered by the label at the time. Trainspotters will note a *lot* more low end is present in this version. Next is a ten-minute dub techno space-out I constructed for Specta Ciera (aka Drexon Field) for his superb Terrain Scan LP issued at Recycled Plastics in 2019. This mix was built using sampled sections from all over the Terrain Scan album, but primarily used melodic information from 'Star Sector' and 'Pattern Scanner', and echoes the kind of post-Analog Botany dub I was making in 18 and 19. Until now, it has only been made available as a bonus track on the Terrain Scan CD-R. At number three, we have the inimitable Foamek, with one of two mixes I made for his totally essential On Doing/Being Ordinary companion disc, Avalon (Remixes). My 'Dripping Lawn' mix is the longest track presented here, at nearly 18 minutes, and careens through late-night coastline cruises with neon highs and shadowy lows, recontextualizing Foamek's vocal samples into a DX-like space chorus, and running a Kompakt-inspired bassline beneath the proceedings. Fourth is the heaviest and most aggressive of the six tracks offered here, my 'Triadic Phaseout' of Substak's 'Index', which nearly resembles something like Bike more than a CH cut, but I'm sure I had my reasons in Summer 2018. This one was a disc-exclusive cut for the CD-R edition of Index, although it made a brief appearance on one of the Conference Call compilations at RP after the fact. Lots of polymeter that amounts to an almost drum and bass rave up, thick and angular with plenty of DSP warping and break chopping. After the romp of the Substak mix, it felt pertinent to pull the intensity back a bit and my remix of Arbee's 'Chaine' more than accomplishes this need. Originally issued on Polysemie III, at Unknown Tone Records in early 2020, this version of the remix is my own master, previously unreleased. Filled with warbling tape spool effects and low-bit Akai sampler sounding passages of bass and synth, this mix recalls my perennial influences from Mille Plateaux atmospherics and early Vladislav Delay records. A lovely off-grid spattering of noise and melody that dovetails the album beautifully into the spacious closer... And closing the set is my 'Lunar Debris' mix for Dérive Dub (aka Dimitar Dodovsky) on his Notte Variations album at Recycled Plastics, in early 2019. Like tracks #2 and 4, this mix was also a disc-exclusive bonus cut on the CD-R edition of Notte Variations, and has remained offline until now. A breezy night-time dub with elemental textures woven throughout, taking influence from all the Echospace material I was listening to almost constantly at the time, specifically Phase 90 and Variant. released November 4, 2022 #1 W/P by Brian Grainger. #2-6 Written by the credited artists / Produced & remixed by Coppice Halifax, 2018-2019. All tracks mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML178. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP + the credited artists 2022. Published with gracious thanks to Dave, Devin, Jake, Kostas, Mathieu and Dimitar. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Valley in Repose [Live October 29, 2021] (1:42:10) Recorded live on the evening of October 29, 2021 at the White Pillar Workshop, for the occasion of the Pawleys Island 10th anniversary listening party, Valley in Repose used the R-EW Audioholistics modular system (alongside a few other synthesizers) to transfigure tape loops from the Pawleys/Inland by Night composition 'Barefoot Stargazer' into an extended reprise, a ghostly echo of a decade past that wakes up in the bottom of the leafy ravine, still remembering the cloudy treelines in a blue dream, and burns itself up in the rays of the dawning sun. A slightly remastered video recording of the original live-in-studio broadcast has been uploaded and is available to watch here: Valley in Repose is also included in the expanded 10th anniversary reissue of Inland by Night, and has been made available physically on an extremely small print run of 10 copies, available only with the Inland by Night 10th anniversary reissue CD, as a limited edition set: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/inland-by-night-10th-anniversary-expanded-reissue released November 4, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Originally broadcast live on October 29, 2021, at the White Pillar Workshop, following the listening party for Pawleys Island's 10th anniversary. Recorded using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system in conjunction with the following supplemental instruments: Arturia Keystep Pro and Microbrute, Blue Marvin ARP 2600, Behringer MS-1, Alesis Quadraverb and other outboard FX devices. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, October-November 2022. This is Milieu Music Distributed 22R. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D with assistance from Atoll Intercom Systems. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast I (7:55) 02. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast II (7:15) 03. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast III (7:03) 04. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast IV (4:50) 05. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast V (12:07) 06. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast (Rebuild) (6:28) 07. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast (Reduced I) (0:58) 08. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast (Reduced II) (3:42) 09. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast (Reduced III) (3:17) 10. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast (Reduced IV) (3:36) 11. Coppice Halifax - Cedar Mast (Reduced V) (8:40) 12. Coppice Halifax - CMR Pillar Excavation (39:40) Arriving slightly delayed (laid...laid...laid...perfect for a dub album) for it's tenth anniversary celebration is CEDAR MAST, an album of minimalistic techno that was built using only samples of the Sega Dreamcast's boot menu and a Korg sampler, aided in part by samples of archaic drum machines like Mattel's Synsonics and Yamaha's MR-10. CEDAR MAST conveys a set of straightforward dry techno mixes that bubble with white noise and the watery washes of Dreamcast samples. These tracks exist on the rim of monochromaticism, echoing both the ANALOG BOTANY sessions that preceded them and the LEAF CLOAK sessions that would follow. Alongside the five original tracks, I've also included the "Rebuild" that opened the CEDAR MIXES collection of reworks - a non-album cut that was fashioned using only the loops and materials offered to other artists who were invited to participate. For the second half, CEDAR MAST REDUCED mutates the material into something more experimental and Chain Reaction-inspired, which provided a precursory look at the sound of DEEP EARTH, still yet to come at the time. This second disc has been augmented with a 2022 EXCAVATION, a new nearly hour-long session of soft-focus dub, created using the same machines and samples as the original album, a decade later. There is a surprising amount of vagueness I feel now, with regard to adding anything prosaic to the topic of CEDAR MAST. Any sentiment I could think to express is very clearly and fully articulated somewhere in the dense surrealism of the music, and what initially began as a proof-of-concept experiment with sampling and already-outdated video game consoles in mind clearly navigated itself into many different atmospheres both above and below the forests and seashores of the Halifaxian continent. CEDAR MAST resembles many different facets of my work through the years, and so it feels that much more elementally a part of my creative landscape, rather than something that might occupy it. Revisiting material from a decade ago has become, somewhat comically, a predictable exercise, although it is not without a fair share of challenges, all of which I am willing to forge a new path through in order to hopefully reinstate something in its best possible iteration, and maybe, if I'm lucky, rediscover what possessed me to do these things in the first place. CEDAR MAST is an anomalous ship in a nonlinear sea, and I've done my very best to update and maintain it in order to see it off for another ten years - perhaps when that time has passed, we will see if I have succeeded. N.B. - A very limited edition of 10 copies of the 2xCD-R reissue has been made available for the occasion, first come first serve as always. If you've missed out, and you really can't live with yourself, please get in touch in all the usual ways and I'll see what I can do. released March 3, 2023 Written & Produced by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer-Autumn 2012 (1.01-1.06, 2.01-2.05) using a Korg ES-1 sampler and the boot sounds of a Sega Dreamcast gaming console. 2.06 recorded at White Pillar, Autumn 2022. All material remastered by The Analog Botanist, Autumn 2022. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD63, issue #63 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. © + (P) 2023 Oscillog ASCAP. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 4.1 (11:29) 02. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 4.2 (18:35) 03. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 4.3 (15:55) 04. Coppice Halifax - Ocean Lion 4.4 (23:04) Where to begin? For myself, and many of you, the words "Ocean Lion" conjure up a world of sound and texture that feels distinct from many of my other recordings. The project began in the Spring of 2008, as the first two tracks on what would become the first Ocean Lion album, recorded as a birthday gift for my friend Erik, whose music remains an important influence on my own. In the time since then, I've recorded two more volumes under the heading, the second being more of a Pawleys Island-adjacent dub techno outing, and the third being a triptych of beatless ambient excursions, which is already almost seven years behind me, unbelievably. I always knew I'd return to Ocean Lion, that I envisioned it from the start as a four-volume run, inspired by the then-canon of Wolfgang Voigt's first four GAS albums, but I never could quite grasp the where and when of those visitations, with Ocean Lion material surfacing and receding like the tide itself, ignorant of my desires, blind to any time passing at all. It is with this notion in mind that Ocean Lion IV arrived - I fondly think of it less as me diving into the sea, and more that I've been pulled beneath the waves by the undertow and displaced into its permanent blue kingdoms. Several friends and listeners brought Ocean Lion into our conversations, unbeknownst to one another, and as always, the universe never fails to communicate to me what I ought to be doing, so here I am again, standing on this shore, exhausted. I've brought with me four ornate bottles this time, filled with the seduction of purple liquors retrieved from fabled shipwrecks, equal parts melancholic longing, faded memory and the sweet poison of nostalgia. These I have poured for myself across two weeks of brain-fried evenings, sitting in my studio, consumed by the stress of the modern world and my forever changing placement within it. I can no longer tell whether or not these things are for me, or if I've simply been compelled to bring them up to the surface again for some other reason yet to be discovered. Ocean Lion, as ever, simply is. Looking back at the series up to this point, it's almost unrecognizable now, with IV bearing so many different feelings and atmospheres that once again, what I think of as Ocean Lion is changing even when I cannot detect it. I found myself asking questions like "Can a Coppice Halifax album have so many guitars?" and "Am I content with this being the end of this series?" I think of Sun Cast, and things like Pawleys Island or River Mural before and after it, and realize that I have long ago made my peace with the fact that my work is one big Venn diagram that overlaps in gradient percentages with itself, that lines and boundaries change, or have been revealed to be absent to begin with. The dubby basslines from the first album have returned, covered in distorted guitar barnacles and coral shapes, while the subdued motorik rhythms have floated fully to the surface, sunburnt and waterlogged like chunks of driftwood. Like pinhole stars in an ink-black sky, notes of synthesizers and samplers have pointillistically scattered and coalesced into polymetric arrangements, ornately decorating the frothing sea like a glittering crown. By the end, we're left with a plaintive strum on ten bronze strings, wavering across the breeze like an echo of a lost love, somewhere off the coast of the nearest strand's doomed civilization. The clouds part and the waves calm, just enough for the sad sunshine to peek through and remind us of all the wonderful things we used to know, all the curious thoughts we used to ponder, before draping an overcast shroud across us once again in this cosmic evening, weighing heavily upon us with that abyssal gravity, as we sink again beneath the tidal pull, alone and together all at once, desperate and displeased with whoever we are. But is this the end? Artistically, it is up to me to decide, but I have to be honest with you, as I often am, and candidly admit that even I don't know. This line of work is not as obvious as others, with the linearity and completeness that so many other vocations offer. Instead I'm left with the turn of a page, and another empty new one, and sometimes the book sits there accumulating dust for years while I am off in other pursuits, while other times, I already know what I will write before I begin. For now, let's just enjoy this small golden hour together before the sun sets, and we'll say that we'd like to see each other again, even if we don't completely know that it will happen. The green hills of tomorrow are always alive with nascent unspoken wisdoms, unaware that they too will become the empty valleys of memory, so perhaps we'll find ourselves there, or perhaps we won't. released April 7, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, March-April 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Zwei Kreise, used with gracious permission. Text by Brian. Package design and assembly by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music Distributed number 083. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() ![]() 01. Milieu - Lazy Days on Our Hillside (4:23) 02. Milieu - Parasol (6:58) 03. Milieu - Seventeen Twelve (0:43) 04. Milieu - Rooms Within Rooms (4:34) 05. Milieu - Blue Bath (6:59) 06. Milieu - Inline Track (3:48) 07. Milieu - Statuettes (6:37) 08. Milieu - Trapezoid Sing (5:19) 09. Milieu - The Last Song We Found (1:25) 10. Milieu - Slow Lid Close (7:31) 11. Milieu - Laine (5:26) 12. Milieu - Narthex (7:13) 13. Milieu - Numbers Drop (4:18) 14. Milieu - Universes Inside You (1:24) 15. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts (3:56) 16. Milieu - Hidden Paths (7:54) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Daisy Scrapbook (4:18) 02. Milieu - Found My Rubix Cube (3:56) 03. Milieu - Go Divers (2:11) 04. Milieu - Stained Brown Pages (3:46) 05. Milieu - Bridge One (2:36) 06. Milieu - Summer Vacation (5:38) 07. Milieu - Petals (4:01) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sleeep Mmx (1:19:19) Originally released as a promotional digital mix (in low-bitrate MP3 format) for the Milieu Mailing List in 2005, Sleeep Mmx has become a scarce remnant of those early days in the Milieu catalogue. It remains the sole appearance of several pieces of music, recorded with and without other musicians in the pre-Milieu years, and is presented as a seamless mix meant for dozing or reading to. Here, dredged up from over a decade of slumber on dust-caked CD-Rs, it's finally made once again available, complete with a high-resolution scan of the only physical copy ever produced, and sourced from the original masters. A fascinating tableau of Milieu tracks you know, alongside many tracks you probably don't. released April 19, 2005 W/P by Brian Grainger, except 31:54-43:54 and 61:05-62:53 (W/P by Brian Grainger & Ben Ellenburg). Mixed by Milieu at Foxhill, 2005. This is Milieu Music number MML003. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Cirrus (0:35) 02. Milieu - Nimbus (7:20) 03. Milieu - Pileus (11:36) 04. Milieu - Contrail (9:24) 05. Milieu - Tropos (9:20) One of the earliest Milieu EPs released, Three Tone Quintet was originally issued for free download in a measly 128 kbps MP3 format at the weblabel Newform8. Since then, it has been made available in limited quantity on CD-R but never until now has it seen a lossless release. Comprised of five tracks named for clouds, Three Tone Quintet is spacious house-influenced dance music, inspired by Juan Atkins' Infiniti material, Underworld and AFX. released May 11, 2005 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 1712FHC, 2004-2005. Original artwork by Luke Hazard, new artwork photographed and assembled by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR007. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Lazer Rinq (3:48) 02. Milieu - Blueskies Found (1:36) 03. Milieu - Sunshine People (4:14) 04. Milieu - Northern Lights (3:22) 05. Milieu - Magic Marker (3:03) 06. Milieu - Orange Evening Windows (3:31) 07. Milieu - Floating Riverbed (2:10) 08. Milieu - Trip, To (4:11) 09. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts (3:52) 10. Milieu - Forest (7:05) 11. Milieu - Carnival Rides Til Sunset (4:48) 12. Milieu - Trainsong (3:43) 13. Milieu - Trapezoid Sing (5:21) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Morning in the Base of the Ravine (1:51) 02. Milieu - Yellow Hymn (4:31) 03. Milieu - Desert Wind (1:06) 04. Milieu - Where Mountains Once Stood (3:53) 05. Milieu - Obelisk (1:05) 06. Milieu - Pillars (1:59) 07. Milieu - Fossil Hum (3:48) 08. Milieu - The Visitors (1:48) 09. Milieu - Desert Drone (4:41) 10. Milieu - [Untitled CD Bonus Track] (4:05) released August 1, 2005 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - From The Rooftops (3:46) 02. Milieu - Old Fives (1:22) 03. Milieu - Little Elm [Electric] (3:58) 04. Milieu - Waterfalls [Dialer] (3:18) 05. Milieu - Original Dromeda (1:32) 06. Milieu - Wandering Far (5:20) 07. Milieu - Original Yellowfather (8:46) 08. Milieu - Little Elm [Dialer] (3:28) Originally released in 2006 on a limited edition of 200 CD-Rs in hand-stamped paper sleeves. This is a collection of outtakes and alternate versions of songs from the Night Currents sessions, and is considered the definitive "sister" release to Night Currents. released January 1, 2006 This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR011. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Klip (1:39) 02. Milieu - Kickdrum Klock (3:23) 03. Milieu - Bent Appletrees (4:09) 04. Milieu - Blankets Of Stems (1:01) 05. Milieu - Kellychord (3:44) 06. Milieu - Collins Park (5:54) 07. Milieu - Submerged Islands (4:34) 08. Milieu - Kontour (3:59) 09. Milieu - Ithex (6:28) 10. Milieu - Kellygreen (0:54) 11. Milieu - Trapdoor Revolver (4:57) 12. Milieu - Kontour [Rinse] (4:28) 13. Milieu - Panel Fold And Crate (6:10) The first of six volumes of outtakes, alternate versions and demos from various Milieu recording sessions throughout the years. Originally released as a free 192 KBPS download at Decisive Sound in 2006, this is the first time this material has been made available in a high-quality/lossless digital format. Musically it could be considered a distant relative to 2010's Bell'n Dither album, with several tracks focusing on detailed drum programming and playful bittersweet melodies. released May 10, 2006 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 1027PDS/1712FHC/114RKD from 2003-2006. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Threw Ourselves Into The Sun (6:08) 02. Milieu - Rain Metre (3:19) 03. Milieu - Saltwater (5:11) 04. Milieu - Charcoal (5:14) 05. Milieu - Schoolbells (5:30) 06. ENV(itre) - Salecareal (4:00) 07. ENV(itre) - Oaetometq (3:34) 08. ENV(itre) - Loyr Vacn (4:51) 09. ENV(itre) - Cipramil (4:14) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() CD1 Beyond The Sea Lies The Stars 01. Milieu - The Singsong Waters Of An Endless Sea (21:16) 02. Milieu - Vibrant Shores, Horizons (8:40) 03. Milieu - Cosmos (25:48) 04. Milieu - Falling Slowly Through The Infinite (4:28) CD2 Beyond The Stars Lies The Sea 01. Milieu - christening the ships at port (18:33) 02. Milieu - inside the majestic hand of god (15:42) 03. Milieu - the zenith and the gates (9:51) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 REM GENRE Ambient Electronica; DSP ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 REM GENRE "Ambient Electronica" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Blue Islands (1:36) 02. Milieu - Cloud Counting (5:25) 03. Milieu - Raindrops (1:16) 04. Milieu - Six Fourteen Revisited (3:36) 05. Milieu - Public Parks In The 1980s (2:29) 06. Milieu - Sky Blue Dreamboat (0:40) 07. Milieu - Honeysuckles (7:24) 08. Milieu - Many Calm Streams (1:12) 09. Milieu - Three Maps (4:48) 10. Milieu - Daydream In The Grass (3:12) 11. Milieu - Susanna Hears (3:23) 12. Milieu - Foggy Monday Morning (2:24) 13. Milieu - Surrounds (1:46) 14. Milieu - A Thousand Hands (3:05) 15. Milieu - Vanishing Point (7:12) 16. Milieu - Over Hills (3:10) 17. Milieu - Watching The Sun Rise From The Bottom Of The Sea (2:00) 18. Milieu - Sun-Day (7:41) 19. Milieu - Asleep Under The Moon (1:51) 20. Milieu - The Singing Pond (5:31) 21. Milieu - Night Closes Us In (1:55) 22. Milieu - Infinite Stairs (8:18) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Journey by Heliodrome (7:59) 02. Milieu - Seashell Breeze (1:35) 03. Milieu - Path to Tower (4:08) 04. Milieu - Fortyseven (3:44) 05. Milieu - Hands Clapping, Time Reversing (7:30) 06. Milieu - Dromeda Three (1:56) 07. Milieu - Sad Yellow Father (4:42) 08. Milieu - Slumber Notes (2:44) 09. Milieu - Shoreline Drones (4:37) 10. Milieu - She Is Hallway (4:01) 11. Milieu - Counting Fives (1:41) 12. Milieu - Golden Madison (3:42) 13. Milieu - Waves of Permanent Blue, Fields of Endless Green (6:11) 14. Milieu - Xanadu (24:53) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM GENRE "Experimental" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Echo Spectrum (Album Version) (5:24) 02. Milieu - Little Marble Eyes (3:51) 03. Milieu - B (4:55) 04. Milieu - Pavilion Nights (4:53) 05. Milieu - Peak Overlook (2:04) 06. Milieu - Appletree Theme (3:45) 07. Milieu - Bicycle Day (4:15) 08. Milieu - Boulevard Haze (Album Version) (4:58) 09. Milieu - Pinwheel Carousels (4:42) 10. Milieu - Naomi (4:48) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 Informations from INQUIRY command:
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Milieu - Airplane Song (3:07) 02. Milieu - Singing Stones (1:36) 03. Milieu - Orange Peel Downers (2:55) 04. Milieu - Daisy (2:06) 05. Milieu - The Buried Ship (7:10) 06. Milieu - Box Chime (1:39) 07. Milieu - Broadcast In Rays Of Sunlight (2:01) 08. Milieu - Oak Feather Panels (3:24) 09. Milieu - Dry L.S.F. Station (7:05) 10. Milieu - Seashell Breeze (1:53) 11. Milieu - Slumber Notes (2:57) 12. Milieu - Xanadu (26:55) Ambient overdub-free improvisations recorded during the first three months of Brian and Sophia's move into 114RKD in 2005. Created using only minimal equipment including a Casio keyboard, boombox tape recorder, a small amp, a Radioshack microphone and a delay box. Recording for the album ended with the closing track "Xanadu", improvised live over Independence Day fireworks. Originally released on a limited CD-R edition at Milieu Music in 2005 with no catalog number designate, and then issued as a free download at Rope Swing Cities in 2007. Additionally, the tracks "Seashell Breeze", "Slumber Notes" and "Xanadu" appeared in edited forms on the 2006 album Night Currents at U-Cover. Available here for the first time ever in FLAC format. released August 12, 2007 W/P by Brian Grainger, except "Daisy" written by R. DeLeo. Recorded at 114RKD, May-July 2005, except source cassette for "Daisy" recorded 1998. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - As Summer Blooms (2:57) 02. Milieu - Thrum (4:17) 03. Milieu - Elep (3:37) 04. Milieu - Cumulus Drones (3:31) 05. Milieu - Auburn Morning Winds (5:05) 06. Milieu - Hidden Paths (4:37) 07. Milieu - Biketrail 2 (4:28) 08. Milieu - Glasshill (Gravel Bank) (4:43) 09. Milieu - Blackwood Moth (6:10) 10. Milieu - Lazer Rinq (3:26) 11. Milieu - Pileus (Infinite Edit) (6:47) 12. Milieu - Sway Blue Waters (8:40) 13. Milieu - Forest (Fast Edit) (3:21) 14. Milieu - Snowhill (2:10) 15. Milieu - Rain Metre (Acid Edit) (3:13) 16. Milieu - Smokestacks (3:18) 17. Milieu - Narthex (7:29) Digital reissue of the limited edition version of Remodelled, originally released in a handmade 4x3" CD-R set at Boltfish Recordings (UK) in 2007, in a pressing run of 50 copies. A secondary, single-CD-R version of the album was also made available on a slightly larger pressing, but the 4x3" version featured two additional tracks (Rain Metre [Acid Edit] and Smokestacks), as well as an alternate track sequencing (the album was split into four EPs) unique to the four different "sides". Both versions have been out of print for years. Musically, this album consists of alternate versions of tracks from other Milieu (and Parallax) releases up to that point. While recording for any one album, it wasn't uncommon for me to lay down multiple "takes" of a song, and in the case of Remodelled, many cases show that these are versions only in name and mood, but otherwise are completely different tracks, thus my choice to use the term "remodel" and not "remix". A1. As Summer Blooms Original version appears on Songs We Found In The Sand. A2. Thrum Original version by Parallax. Appears on Blisschord. A3. Elep Original version appears on Songs We Found In The Sand. A4. Cumulus Drones Original version appears on Simple Stations Repeat. A5. Auburn Morning Winds Original version (Orange Evening Windows) appears on Slow Lid Close. B1. Hidden Paths Original version appears on Songs We Found In The Sand, and again later on Aurora Borealis. B2. Biketrail 2 Original version (Motorbike Trail) appears on Stray Trains. B3. Glasshill [Gravel Bank] Original version (Glasshill) appears on Our Blue Rainbow. B4. Blackwood Moth Original version (Kieran Moth) appears on Our Blue Rainbow. C1. Lazer Rinq Original version appears on Slow Lid Close. C2. Pileus [Infinite Edit] Original version (Pileus) appears on Three Tone Quintet. This version previously appeared on the Experimedia compilation The Rhythm Method. C3. Sway Blue Waters Original version (Sway Leaf) appears on In Hills Made Of Clouds. This version previously appeared on the Decisive Sound compilation Re:automation 2.0. D1. Forest [Fast Edit] Original version (Forest) appears on Slow Lid Close. D2. Snowhill Original version (Sandhill) by Parallax. Appears on Blisschord. D3. Rain Metre [Acid Edit] Original version (Rain Metre) appears on The Tandem Series 5 split release with ENV(itre), and later on the reissue of New Drugs For Nuclear Families Of The Seventies. D4. Smokestacks Original version appears on Stray Trains. D5. Narthex Original version appears on Aurora Borealis. released April 26, 2007 Recorded during various sessions between 2004-2006 at 1027PDS, 1712FHC and 114RKD. All songs W/P by Brian Grainger. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Theme (1:58) 02. Milieu - Greenscreen Boredoms (3:50) 03. Milieu - Top Bunk Breaks (1:08) 04. Milieu - Nights Alone In The Attic (5:02) 05. Milieu - Blank Disk (3:14) 06. Milieu - Sunroof Cruiser (3:35) 07. Milieu - First Time Leaving (0:36) 08. Milieu - Bulb Dub (2:32) 09. Milieu - Sinewave Sentinel (5:01) 10. Milieu - The Drive Home (4:27) 11. Milieu - Greenscreen Boredoms [A+100 Mix] (2:29) 12. Milieu - Nights Alone In The Attic [Thisket Mix] (5:42) released May 8, 2007 This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR002 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() CD1 01. Milieu - Brother, Movement One (11:03) 02. Milieu - Six Fourteen (4:48) 03. Milieu - Another Space Calling (10:36) 04. Milieu - In the Absence of All Light (4:48) 05. Milieu - Leaves Turn to Rust (9:40) 06. Milieu - Midnight Air (5:12) 07. Milieu - Movement Two (8:32) 08. Milieu - A September Memory (5:53) 09. Milieu - Like Dirt in Children's Hands (6:17) 10. Milieu - Cul de Sac (11:36) CD2 01. Milieu - Abandoned Lot Nextdoor (4:47) 02. Milieu - Dream From Above Houses (11:53) 03. Milieu - Movement Three (5:54) 04. Milieu - Wind Moves Through the Woods (3:05) 05. Milieu - Rows of Fences (4:43) 06. Milieu - In the Spiral Tree (7:59) 07. Milieu - The Bells Ring Electric in the Night (6:35) 08. Milieu - Onward, Black Spring (3:58) 09. Milieu - Long Walks Home (14:55) 10. Milieu - An Ending (6:50) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Unknown ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Unknown ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Morning Beacon (4:34) 02. Milieu - We Live In The Trees (4:05) 03. Milieu - Long Droned Summer (7:22) 04. Milieu - Sandal Weave (5:54) 05. Milieu - Woodland Beacon (1:11) 06. Milieu - The Earth As Our Pillow (6:00) 07. Milieu - Canopy (4:34) 08. Milieu - Stone Chapel / Statuettes 2 (14:24) 09. Milieu - Stretched Across The Sky (3:38) 10. Milieu - Midnight Beacon (2:24) 11. Milieu - Oceans (7:05) 12. Milieu - Untitled Bonus Track (15:40) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Auroral [Sarcophagus Mix By EOD] (4:56) 02. Milieu - Mellow U [Covered By Brian Ellis] (4:53) 03. Milieu - Kieran Moth [Naphthalene Mix By Wisp] (6:15) 04. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn [Devils Vanish Mix By Ourson] (7:08) 05. Milieu - Days Behind [Am-Boy Mix] (4:34) 06. Milieu - Tiffany Lane [Photophob Mix] (6:34) 07. Milieu - Alvin Sparks [1983 Rebuild By Coppice Halifax] (6:12) 08. Milieu - Blue Rainbow [Eluder Mix] (4:34) 09. Milieu - Starview [David Tagg Mix] (8:28) 10. Milieu - For Katie Asleep On The Bus [Lucid Scape Mix By Dissolved] (4:17) 11. Milieu - Glasshill [Mrs Jynx Mix] (5:14) 12. Milieu - Rainy Daylight [Grexed By Adam Pacione] (12:06) 13. Milieu - Starview [Hidden Mix] (4:42) A diverse but engaging collection of remixes for the Our Blue Rainbow album, originally released at Expanding Electronic Diversity in 2007 on a limited edition pressing of 100 copies. Featuring stellar productions by EOD (030303), Wisp (Rephlex), Mrs Jynx (Planet Mu), Am-Boy (Attacknine), Brian Ellis (Benbecula), Ourson (Earstroke), David Tagg (Install), Eluder (Infraction), Coppice Halifax (Milieu Music), Photophob, Dissolved and Adam Pacione. released November 12, 2007 All remixes produced by the credited artists. Written by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR026. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Cropduster (4:25) 02. Milieu - 100 Burnt Acres (3:40) 03. Milieu - Jacket Holograph (Smoking Neon Mix) (4:30) 04. Milieu - Summer Friends (Mrs Jynx Remix) (5:28) 05. Milieu - Boulevard Haze (Remodelled) (5:55) Notes Limited edition of 50 copies. Features alternate mixes of two songs that appeared later in their original versions on the Colortone album. ![]() X Lossless Decoder version 20090320 (105.1) TITLE "Cropduster" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Jacket Holograph [Live Edit] (4:20) 02. Milieu - Shade Loop (0:58) 03. Milieu - Jacket Holograph [Ten And Tracer Remix] (4:43) 04. Milieu - Blue White Nights (4:08) 05. Milieu - Solar Window (3:51) 06. Milieu - Fortyfive Loop (1:04) 07. Milieu - Holograph Dub (4:50) The second of two singles for the Colortone album. Originally issued on a limited edition 3" CD-R run of 100 copies, now out of print. The version of the title track is a different mix than the one that appears on Colortone. released April 18, 2008 This is Milieu Music number MML018. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Albatrosses (4:33) 02. Milieu - Counting Lights (5:18) 03. Milieu - Calico Fountain Melange [Mixed By Kernel32] (1:09:23) A "maxi-single" (remember those?) containing two outtakes from Aurora Borealis and Night Currents, and a massive hour-long DJ mix by Kernel32, featuring over 40 different Milieu songs, all layered together and interwoven to produce a true melange of new sounds and colors. Originally issued in 2008 on a small CD-R run of 50 copies, and long since out of print. Available here for the first time ever in a digital format. released June 26, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Albatrosses recorded at Foxhill, 2005. Counting Lights recorded at 114RKD, 2005. Special thanks to Kernel32 for the DJ mix and the kindness and consideration in allowing his efforts to be reproduced here. This is Milieu Music number MML027. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Blue Bath [Water Organ Dub] (5:08) 02. Milieu - Glasshill [Lazy Passenger Dub] (4:21) 03. Milieu - Night Flight (3:50) 04. Milieu - Mmx 3 (5:31) 05. Milieu - Airbus (5:59) 06. Milieu - Mmx 4 (5:56) 07. Milieu - Bikerider (2:42) 08. Milieu - Paperbacks (3:33) 09. Milieu - Blisschord (14:47) 10. Milieu - Untitled (2:57) A collection of three out of print and previously limited edition Milieu EPs: Dub Mmx (MML006), Three Space Songs (MML008) and Muted Travels (MML012). Released on a limited edition of 100 copies in clear plastic sleeves with inkstamped cardstock inserts. The original version of "Blue Bath" appears on the album Aurora Borealis. The original version of "Glasshill" appears on the album Our Blue Rainbow. "Mmx 3" and "Mmx 4" are remixes of unnamed artists. released July 24, 2008 This is Milieu Music number MML028. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mirage (2:52) 02. Milieu - Rope Nest (6:45) 03. Milieu - Sieve (4:13) 04. Milieu - Written on Driftwood (11:11) 05. Milieu - Pollen Cabin Poetry (5:25) 06. Milieu - Winter Decay (3:17) 07. Milieu - The Decomposition of Memory (5:44) 08. Milieu - A Night Walk Clearing (3:56) 09. Milieu - Muted Travels (3:52) 10. Milieu - Burnt Rust (2:15) 11. Milieu - A Warm Wooden Hollow (6:57) 12. Milieu - Inside the Sun (18:15) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM DATE 2008 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Woodgrain Elegiac (5:15) 02. Milieu - Antique Sunlight (5:28) 03. Milieu - Grandfather Clock (13:06) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM DATE 2008 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (4:38) 02. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (5:24) 03. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (3:13) 04. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (10:23) 05. Milieu - Imagined Histories (7:57) 06. Milieu - Imagined Histories (9:49) 07. Milieu - Sand Dunes (10:49) 08. Milieu - Sand Dunes (10:19) released April 12, 2009 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() CD1 01. Milieu - Meander (8:45) 02. Milieu - Pink Leaves (14:38) 03. Milieu - Asteroid Beats (4:05) 04. Milieu - Petal Pool (4:38) 05. Milieu - Halfspeed Capsule Growth (10:45) 06. Milieu - Euflorian (4:32) 07. Milieu - Open (15:36) 08. Milieu - Spheric Residuals (6:58) 09. Milieu - (mystery) (9:32) CD2 01. Milieu - Anterior Sweep (2:02) 02. Milieu - Empty Space (10:45) 03. Milieu - Burnt Dusk [reduction] (9:45) 04. Milieu - Ghost Signals (11:20) 05. Milieu - Floral Piano (9:06) 06. Milieu - Airjet Yellow (14:03) 07. Milieu - Softwhite [reduction] (9:36) 08. Milieu - One Hundred Fathoms (9:35) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM GENRE Ambient ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Summer Honey (5:22) 02. Milieu - Plume Train (3:55) 03. Milieu - Space Piano (0:50) 04. Milieu - Boulevard Haze (4:55) 05. Milieu - Luke's Rusty Drum (4:36) 06. Milieu - Daughter (3:47) 07. Milieu - Dionysus in Reds (3:29) 08. Milieu - Easily Along (1:49) 09. Milieu - Alice Flagg (4:48) 10. Milieu - Echo Spectrum (5:24) 11. Milieu - Tropic Casanova (3:13) 12. Milieu - Family Opium (5:10) 13. Milieu - Prismatic Outro Tape (3:23) 14. Milieu - Threw Ourselves Into The Sun (6:08) 15. Milieu - Rain Metre (3:17) 16. Milieu - Rusty Drum Reprise (2:26) 17. Milieu - Saltwater (5:07) 18. Milieu - Charcoal (4:58) 19. Milieu - Epigraph Loop (1:36) 20. Milieu - Schoolbells (5:29) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Unknown ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - In Blue Fields (9:31) 02. Milieu - Phosphene Weather (10:14) 03. Milieu - Aboir (16:57) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Waverider (5:30) 02. Milieu - Bluish Loop (1:00) 03. Milieu - Darkwood Incense Perfume (2:22) 04. Milieu - Crptabus (5:27) 05. Milieu - Soft Island Amb (1:29) 06. Milieu - Smokey Beard (2:22) 07. Milieu - Low Tide Glitter (2:44) released February 24, 2009 This is Milieu Music number MML054. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Dialogue Five (20:57) An extended piece from the Brittle Paper Cathedrals recording sessions, Dialogue Five offers twenty minutes of drones at dusk, bathed in setting sunlight, tape hiss and open sky reverbs. Currently out of print and unavailable on any physical format! released May 5, 2009 W/P by Brian Grainger. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sadleaves (4:30) 02. Milieu - Borealis Theme (5:04) 03. Milieu - Ultraviolet Impressions (5:56) 04. Milieu - Tropical Sleeper (6:34) 05. Milieu - Night Divers (5:39) 06. Milieu - Soft Island (4:57) 07. Milieu - Azurine Drowned (6:12) 08. Milieu - Hyperaccelerated Exploding Sun (4:21) 09. Milieu - Blue Drugs (4:13) 10. Milieu - Swaying Palms (3:00) 11. Milieu - Marshland Canopy (5:19) 12. Milieu - Endless Perfect Echo (6:47) 13. Milieu - [Hidden Track] (3:48) released August 28, 2009 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Translucent Forestation (21:00) A new 3" CD-R EP containing one long track from the recording sessions for to-be-released Milieu album. Recorded in spring, left to settle on a cassette, then fixed up in summertime. Musically similar to something like Of The Apple or the upcoming Phosphene Weather LP, this piece has lots of deep humming bass, raindrop-organ lines and sweeping dusky chords. Perfect for a cool night with the windows open and a cat napping on your lap. released October 21, 2009 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, Spring 2009. This is Milieu Music number MML065. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Softwhite (28:00) 02. Milieu - Burnt Dusk (32:05) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Soundtrack ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Amtrac [Version] (3:43) 02. Milieu - Archeocyathid [Version] (3:37) 03. Milieu - The Light In The Lake [Version] (3:58) 04. Milieu - Golden Hill [Version] (4:58) 05. Milieu - Afterschool Trak [Version] (4:21) Originally issued on a limited edition of 16 numbered copies. Included as a promotional bonus 3" CD-R with the first 16 orders of the Milieu album Bell'n Dither. released May 1, 2010 This is Milieu Music catalog number MMLP07 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Honeymaples (4:33) 02. Milieu - Dithering (1:06) 03. Milieu - Wobbley Charley (3:38) 04. Milieu - Amtrac (4:11) 05. Milieu - Tigertail (5:30) 06. Milieu - Windy Fields Roadracer (5:23) 07. Milieu - Archeocyathid (4:09) 08. Milieu - Golden Hill (5:09) 09. Milieu - The Light In The Lake (4:32) 10. Milieu - Mono Beats (5:48) 11. Milieu - Sunchasers (6:11) 12. Milieu - Voix (10:20) Needing something soft, moody and bittersweet for those humid Summer nights on the way? Look no further. Bell'n Dither is a spiritual follow-up to 2006's dusky electronic effort Night Currents, and probably the most electronic Milieu album yet. Dither is overloaded with skittering, microscopically manipulated beats and spacious pools of warm chords. Droplets of sad, rainy melodies cover a hulking rusted sub-bass contraption while you roll the windows down in your car just so you can smell the air before a thunderstorm. Dither could be considered both a return to form as well as exploratory and new for Milieu, and should satisfy even the most discriminating of Milieu listeners. Limited to 100 copies packaged in a lovely design by David Tagg, who also appears as a guest on one of the album's tracks. released May 1, 2010 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2006-2010. This is Milieu Music number MMD009. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Île du Levant (5:51) Nudists of the world unite and take over. This place is so remote, everything is revealed. It's so mysterious. Here I must stay, forever. released June 9, 2010 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Untitled 1 (3:38) 02. Milieu - Untitled 2 (7:53) 03. Milieu - Untitled 3 (8:47) 04. Milieu - Untitled 4 (9:09) 05. Milieu - Untitled 5 (10:38) Swirling lights beneath paper-thin membranes of fog. Organic movements inside soft and warm surfaces. Muted shifts in temperature give way to watery chords and shallow reverbs. Ambient room music, from a humid South Carolina. released June 19, 2010 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, Spring-Summer 2009. This is Milieu Music number MMD013. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Kontour [Bedroom] (1:31) 02. Milieu - Papertape (2:23) 03. Milieu - Cartwheels (3:38) 04. Milieu - Applejack Beats (5:43) 05. Milieu - Fireleaf Freesky (1:55) 06. Milieu - Sleepy Route (3:37) 07. Milieu - Nite Lite (5:11) 08. Milieu - Sand Loop (1:14) 09. Milieu - Kontour [Dialer] (2:50) 10. Milieu - Land Drone (3:12) 11. Milieu - Riverbend (1:37) 12. Milieu - Powerliner (3:48) 13. Milieu - Wood Weed (4:19) 14. Milieu - Rolling M Loop (1:20) 15. Milieu - Pillbox Piano (5:30) 16. Milieu - Rainbow Topiary (2:15) 17. Milieu - Water Tower Track (4:59) 18. Milieu - Schoolbus Beats (6:37) Bent Appletape was an album that was recorded in 2005-2006 and ultimately shelved in favor of things like Our Blue Rainbow and New Drugs. Considering that it was recorded during the same time as the aforementioned two albums, it is easy to hear resemblance to many other Milieu tracks on this album. Two versions of "Kontour" appear, while two other versions would appear on the first Bent Appletrees album. "Applejack Beats" contains the inclusion of jazz and funk drum breaks - a staple of the New Drugs sound that came afterward. "Sleepy Route" contains very obvious melodic elements that later appeared in ambient form on "The Sleeping Earth", a track recorded for the Grassland Melodies split with Quosp. "Nite Lite" contains the fuzz bass that was present on In Hills Made Of Clouds and Pillowtone Poems. "Powerliner" is led by loops of guitar feedback, something that I would not fully explore until a year later working on Three Space Songs. "Wood Weed" is only one version of a track that was given about a dozen different versions, never to be included on anything. "Pillbox Piano" was the first track recorded for The Tandem Series 5 split at Boltfish, but was never used for reasons unknown. "Schoolbus Beats" could even be seen as a predecessor to "Alvin Sparks", using the same synths. Overall, Bent Appletape is an interesting artifact from a time that has totally passed within my work. I could not hope to make an album that sounds like this now, even if I tried. Like some distilled alcohol that matures over time, I have cultivated a fondness for the playfulness and naivete in these songs since they were initially created. Hopefully you enjoy them too. released December 13, 2010 All music W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2005-2006. All material previously unreleased. Retrieved from the Milieu Music archives, 2009. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mornin' Organ (2:15) 02. Milieu - Boiled Custard Beats (5:10) 03. Milieu - Little Sparkles (6:12) 04. Milieu - Snowradio (3:40) Happy Holidays from Milieu Music! released December 4, 2010 This is Milieu Music number MMC003. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() CD1 Our Blue Rainbow 01. Milieu - Starview (2:28) 02. Milieu - My Friend the Dawn (5:10) 03. Milieu - Days Behind (4:14) 04. Milieu - Alvin Sparks (6:11) 05. Milieu - Tiffany Lane (3:53) 06. Milieu - Glasshill (4:55) 07. Milieu - Mellow U (3:03) 08. Milieu - Kieran Moth (8:06) 09. Milieu - Rainy Daylight (5:33) 10. Milieu - For Katie Asleep on the Bus (5:09) 11. Milieu - Auroral (5:17) 12. Milieu - Blue Rainbow (2:58) CD2 Bent Appletape 01. Milieu - Kontour (Bedroom) (1:31) 02. Milieu - Papertape (2:23) 03. Milieu - Cartwheels (3:38) 04. Milieu - Applejack Beats (5:43) 05. Milieu - Fireleaf Freesky (1:55) 06. Milieu - Sleepy Route (3:36) 07. Milieu - Nite Lite (5:11) 08. Milieu - Sand Loop (1:14) 09. Milieu - Kontour (Dialer) (2:49) 10. Milieu - Land Drone (3:12) 11. Milieu - Riverbend (1:37) 12. Milieu - Powerliner (3:48) 13. Milieu - Wood Weed (4:19) 14. Milieu - Rolling M Loop (1:20) 15. Milieu - Pillbox Piano (5:30) 16. Milieu - Rainbow Topiary (2:15) 17. Milieu - Water Tower Track (4:59) 18. Milieu - Schoolbus Beats (6:37) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2010 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM DATE 2010 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sno Harp (5:10) 02. Milieu - Brittle Piano (5:07) 03. Milieu - Dithering [Section B] (3:16) 04. Milieu - Yellow Dust Orchard (5:19) 05. Milieu - Sadhills (4:16) 06. Milieu - Dithering [Section C] (5:12) 07. Milieu - Brookhaven Beats (4:00) 08. Milieu - Voix [Version] (10:17) 09. Milieu - Tangle [Edit] (6:52) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Electronic, Ambient" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - [Untitled 1] (16:52) 02. Milieu - [Untitled 2] (9:41) 03. Milieu - [Untitled 3] (27:50) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009 REM GENRE "Ambient, Drone" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Vellum (4:19) 02. Milieu - Île du Levant (5:51) 03. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts [Yearbook Version] (5:29) 04. Milieu - Star Bath (4:32) 05. Milieu - Plume Train [Lab Version] (4:05) 06. Milieu - Base Map (6:33) 07. Milieu - Aeroline (4:36) 08. Milieu - Cropduster [Obfusc Remix] (4:39) 09. Milieu - Night Winds Detuned (6:10) 10. Milieu - Nicepollen (4:34) 11. Milieu - Color The Waves [Remodelled] (3:00) 12. Milieu - Sad Summer (5:31) 13. Milieu - Coastline (4:57) 14. Milieu - Cropduster [Drifting Air Version By Forrest] (5:49) A retrospective collection of songs from out of print EPs, webreleases, splits, compilations, extremely scarce promotional/bonus discs or just flat-out "one off" tracks. Spanning five years of recording sessions, various studio setups and equipment changes, this collection is quite varied but altogether cohesive as an album all its own. released May 1, 2011 All music W/P by Brian Grainger, except track 8: written by Brian Grainger, produced/remixed by Joseph Burke, and track 14: written by Brian Grainger, produced/remixed by Warren Kroll. Recorded at 1712FHC and 114RKD, various dates between 2005-2010. Special thanks to I, Absentee, Awkward Silence and EED. This is Milieu Music number MML076. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Grav Bootz (4:28) 02. Milieu - Spring Reverb Airlock (5:44) 03. Milieu - IBM Spacegloss (4:14) 04. Milieu - H Is For Hologram (5:40) 05. Milieu - Almaz Floating Lounge (3:13) 06. Milieu - Coffee For Gummitch (4:10) 07. Milieu - Pale Blue Beats (6:57) 08. Milieu - J Is For Jem (2:28) 09. Milieu - Shortskirt Stardate (8:26) 10. Milieu - Astrolabe Acid (5:26) Dialing in from several light-years away comes a new Milieu album that is just as suited for Summertime as it is for space travel. H Is For Hologram is the summation of several dozens of influences, mixing together like paint and chemicals to create funky fumes that will get you higher than the moon. Combining a braindance infused hybrid of melodic analog synths, organic drumlines and high-grav bass frequencies to build a living breathing robot that will navigate your cruiser to Magrathea, park it in the corner of a Heighliner and serve you blue liquor in a swanky intergalactic lounge on the more colorful side of the Neutral Zone. Packed with loads of hidden samples, dialogue and sound effects from several of my favorite sci-fi movies and TV shows, this album is limited to 50 copies packaged in teleporter-paper and custom stamped cardstock inserts. Don't smegging leave Earth without it! released June 16, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2010-2011. This is Milieu Music number MMD017. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Blisschord (14:47) 02. Milieu - Blisschord II (5:41) 03. Milieu - Blisschord III (25:52) After the Parallax album Blisschord was completed in May 2004, and the Milieu project began to fully take form, the original idea of Blisschord was most definitely still very present in my mind. Through the years, I've revisited the idea, first on the Three Space Songs EP in 2007, then again on the Broken Pieces compilation at Gravity Halo in 2010. Once more I've gone back to the concept for a liveset I performed in March, 2011. All three variations have been assembled here, and I think they make for a fascinating companion piece to the Blisschord album. -Brian, May 2011 released July 20, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Track 1 recorded 2007 at 114RKD. Track 2 recorded 2010 at 114RKD. Track 3 recorded live March 8, 2011 at The House At Five Points, Columbia, SC. This is Milieu Music number MML079B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Spacemelodie (7:53) 02. Milieu - Airjet Blue (9:57) 03. Milieu - Eufloric Dub (15:48) 04. Milieu - Waves (7:58) 05. Milieu - Distances (17:40) Five pieces composed and recorded for the video game Eufloria, intended for the game's transition to the Playstation Network as additional music for the game. Expanding on the previous two-and-a-half hours of soundtrack with another full hour of deep and delicate Euflorian headspaces. Ambient, but not without a pulse. Melodic in the way that winding tree branches organically grow outward and upward. Organic and alive. released July 20, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Photos courtesy of Eufloria. This is Milieu Music number MMD018. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Night Cruiser (6:09) 02. Milieu - Moving Ever Towards (7:05) 03. Milieu - Auto-Land (8:30) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "electronic, ambient, techno, downtempo" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Mrs Jynx - Barking for Fun (4:28) 02. Mrs Jynx - Bathroom Greeting (2:37) 03. Mrs Jynx - Chickpea (4:18) 04. Mrs Jynx - Property of the Month (4:11) 05. Mrs Jynx - Weekender (3:56) 06. Mrs Jynx - Purple (3:45) 07. Milieu - Sage Derby (3:31) 08. Milieu - Red Windsor (Hugs for Jaffa) (6:27) 09. Milieu - Double Gloucester & Stilton (5:55) 10. Milieu - Marmite Funk (Gluesniffa) (4:25) 11. Milieu - Maytag Blue with Figs & Honey (5:19) 12. Fieldtriqp - Anti Civilization Rally (1:58) 13. Fieldtriqp - Kaz (3:40) 14. Fieldtriqp - Theme from Blass, Part 2 (3:02) 15. Fieldtriqp - Secretary H (2:37) 16. Fieldtriqp - Grainger (2:48) 17. Fieldtriqp - Abalone (3:38) 18. Fieldtriqp - Mish Midnight (2:10) 19. Fieldtriqp - Glk (2:38) 20. Fieldtriqp - Next Morning (2:08) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Unknown ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Kitty Come Here (4:06) 02. Milieu - Can't Do That, Dave (0:40) 03. Milieu - Bomb #20 (3:27) 04. Milieu - Shuttlecraft To Med-Bay (3:12) 05. Milieu - Fornax Quarian Centerfold (1:16) 06. Milieu - Astrolabe Dub (4:45) 07. Milieu - Hard-Light Helipad (8:38) 08. Milieu - Redshirt Red Alert (2:29) 09. Milieu - Miss December 2183 (1:17) 10. Milieu - Holographic Atmo-Burn (5:41) 11. Milieu - Elcor Dialup Fuzz (0:38) 12. Milieu - H Is For Helmsman (0:41) 13. Milieu - Radiation Fume Funk (2:56) 14. Milieu - Fremen Blue (6:57) 15. Milieu - "Boy, Have We Got A Vacation For You" (3:45) So 2011 is ending, and you're sitting in your Delorian thinking "What about the future?"...just then, a blinding flash of light slightly stuns you as Ace Rimmer appears in a sparkly clean space-suit with Berlin playing in the background. He hands you a small square disk not unlike the outmoded floppies PCs used in the 80's and 90's. This one has "Get your ass to Mars" scribbled on it with a smiley face giving a thumbs up. Before you can ask what it's for, Ace is gone, leaving only the faintest space-dust trail behind his rocket. You pull out your communicator to call Doc Brown, he'd probably know what to do with this disk. Upon arriving at Doc's lab, he knowingly inserts the disk into his Pip-Boy 7000 and decodes the data, which is revealed to be a 15-part message detailing the location of a swank holographic lounge, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. After about a week of calculating Pi with Doc's fancy AI (conveniently named Holly) you know enough to build a transporter device to get you to the party just in time. A second blinding flash of light, and the feeling of being poured out of a bottle and into one of those tie-die machines...and suddenly you're naked and confused in the back of a smoky nightclub. You're approached by a silvery droid that asks "Nice night for a walk?" to which you reply "Your clothes - give them to me, now" and the robot kindly produces a red Starfleet uniform. Knowing what this means, you fear for your life until you open the door to the dancefloor and hear "Last Night Ace Rimmer Saved My Life" and realize all is as it should be. You make your way to the glowing neon bar and order a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the Asari Matriarch behind the counter. After a few sips, your vision blurs, blurs some more and before you know it you're cosmic surfing past Jupiter and well beyond the infinite. After the effect wears off you realize you just passed out on the Holodeck with a Ligeti record stuck in a locked groove. You tiredly walk over to the kiosk, take the LP off the turntable and curl up in the lovely soft bed sitting conveniently nearby. A tall dark monolith appears at the foot of the bed to say goodnight and turn the lights down. What a day. Next time you're totally going to Westworld instead. released December 18, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2010-2011. This is Milieu Music number MML082. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Xmas Lights (3:36) 02. Milieu - Tinsel Loop (2:08) 03. Milieu - Frostee (3:54) 04. Milieu - Treetopping Beats (4:38) 05. Milieu - Winterbells (4:12) 06. Milieu - Imaginary Snow (5:08) 07. Milieu - Mornin' Organ (2:15) 08. Milieu - Boiled Custard Beats (5:10) 09. Milieu - Little Sparkles (6:12) 10. Milieu - Snowradio (3:40) Combining the previous holiday EPs Blue White Nights and Icepak from Christmases past, Swirling Tinsel Singalongs is a fun and free forty minute album of spiced wine, sparkly lights, falling snow, gold ribbon, peppermint candy, cinnamon and evergreen. Tis the season to eat, drink and be merry to one another. Download this set of tracks and pass them around as much as you like. released December 24, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. This is Milieu Music number MMC004. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Soft Space (11:36) 02. Milieu - Surface Gloss (14:45) 03. Milieu - Mother Tree (12:05) Credits Written-By, Producer – Brian Grainger Notes Limited to 100 copies in glossy card-sleeve with artwork from the game. Recorded 2011. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE Soundtrack ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Smoking Neon (3:11) 02. Milieu - Appletree Beats (4:05) 03. Milieu - Coming Home (4:28) 04. Milieu - Five/Four (2:13) 05. Milieu - Sunlighter (4:49) 06. Milieu - Enjoy Your Stay At The Holograph Lounge (1:13) 07. Milieu - Bramblechord (3:45) 08. Milieu - August Orange (4:54) 09. Milieu - Blue Breeze (1:56) 10. Milieu - Archipelagos (6:33) 11. Milieu - Melted Radio Tape (3:53) 12. Milieu - Spraycan Pink (4:43) 13. Milieu - Micropsic Melodics (1:46) 14. Milieu - Capricorn (4:23) 15. Milieu - Scotchtape Patchtrack (0:28) 16. Milieu - Summer Savannah (5:47) 17. Milieu - Naptime Singalong (4:49) 18. Milieu - Night Camera (5:00) 19. Milieu - Hotel Holograph Afterhours (1:17) 20. Milieu - Greenland Jam (2:54) 21. Milieu - Naptime Reprise (2:00) 22. Milieu - Comfort Tape (4:22) 23. Milieu - Lights Out (1:15) In the end of 2009, the label released three EPs of the namesake milky analog love music that Milieu has become emblematic of since 2004. Reverb Microcoma was a fun set of carefree melodic electronic songs, intended to convey a laid-back attitude and more-obvious-than-not nods to several heavy musical influences. "Naptime Singalong" was a catnap in Mrs. Jynx's colorful pastures. "Sunlighter" was a happy hug for Bochum Welt's "Hug Me Tight". "Coming Home" was a slowfade high-five to Casino Versus Japan. "Melted Radio Tape" was my fantasy of stealing a cassette from Freescha's sexed out 70's muscle car (for the record I don't even know if they have one). "Night Camera" was even recorded when Am-Boy visited to hang out and listen to my Jandek LPs, and bears some resemblance to his earlier works in its copious use of detuned flute melodies. These three EPs quickly went out of print, off the map and under the radar, and the songs contained on them have since become some of my favorite Summer listening. In the spirit of supporting this music with a proper reissue, the original tracks have been combined and expanded with eight previously unreleased songs from that 2009 Summer, clocking in at almost exactly 80 minutes. This reissue should please listeners and collectors who missed out on the original EPs, as well as seasoned Milieu aficionados who will enjoy the colorful unreleased material collected here. Additionally, this reissue is the second of several to appear in a new catalog subset called Arboreal Digest. This is #6 in the set, with other out of print/scarce Milieu and Coppice Halifax reissues following suit. released July 25, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2009. This is Milieu Music number AD6, and the sixth issue of the Arboreal Digest reissue series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Drysummer (6:04) 02. Milieu - Neon 9000 (5:58) 03. Milieu - Eagle Nebula (8:38) Three songs written as a preface to a full-length album of the same name. While the TP full-length still remains unreleased, this EP is a strong followup to Swaying Palms, retaining much of the hyper-melodic dancefloor style of SP while introducing a much glossier production sound, and flexing the range of the music via constant tempo shifts, overloaded FX processing and complex rhythm programming. released November 25, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD Summer 2009. This is Milieu Music number MML061. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Last Waves (2:23) 02. Milieu - Last Wave (47:00) Recorded in Spring 2012, with field recording work completed in January, this strange new Milieu album sat in storage for a few months while I mentally processed what I had made. Containing a very short opening vignette and a forty-minute-plus suite of warm drones that abruptly transition to a melodic midtempo electronic flavor, Last Wave is a somewhat strange vehicle for the Milieu sound to fit into. After repeated listens it occurred to me that I essentially created a piece of music that is all about being comfortable. Happily going nearly nowhere. Considering the tenuous anticipation during the time of the recording session (my daughter Penelope was due very shortly after) I think Last Wave was a subconscious (or maybe not so subconscious after all) attempt at building the most accommodating, familiar and easy-on-the-ear atmosphere possible. Taking musical cues from my Eufloria soundtrack works, Last Wave bubbles along on a bed of hospital field recordings made during ultrasounds, with thick layers of synthesized chords radiating up, like the wavy heat on a hot Summer street. By the time you pass the half-hour mark, you're plucked up out of the warmth and dropped into a slowly bouncing field of colorful balloons, with a gently propulsive drum machine moving things along while melodies cascade up and down and all around. As it happens, my daughter seemed to really enjoy listening to this record, and so perhaps it had to wait for her to arrive before it made sense to release it. released October 11, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded Spring 2012 at Botany Bay. This is Milieu Music number MML088. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Cropduster (4:25) 02. Milieu - Color The Waves (4:33) 03. Milieu - Sun Dress (4:11) 04. Milieu - Summer Friends (3:51) 05. Milieu - Acid Fried Skate Rink (3:34) 06. Milieu - Jacket Holograph (4:35) 07. Milieu - Pillow Whiter (3:46) 08. Milieu - Night Ride (5:17) 09. Milieu - Silver Fountain Cascade (5:28) 10. Milieu - Waving Goodbye (1:08) 11. Milieu - Cropduster [Obfusc Remix] (4:39) 12. Milieu - 100 Burnt Acres (3:40) 13. Milieu - Base Map (6:33) 14. Milieu - Jacket Holograph [Smoking Neon] (4:30) 15. Milieu - Summer Friends [Mrs Jynx Remix] (5:28) 16. Milieu - Boulevard Haze [Remodelled] (5:55) 17. Milieu - Nicepollen (4:34) 18. Milieu - Jacket Holograph [Live Edit] (4:20) 19. Milieu - Shade Loop (0:58) 20. Milieu - Color The Waves [Remodelled] (3:00) 21. Milieu - Jacket Holograph [Ten And Tracer Remix] (4:43) 22. Milieu - Blue White Nights (4:08) 23. Milieu - Solar Window (3:51) 24. Milieu - Fortyfive Loop (1:04) 25. Milieu - Holograph Dub (4:50) 26. Milieu - Cropduster [Drifting Air Version By Forrest] (5:49) Colortone was recorded in 2008 and released in 2009, and remains one of the most well-known and loved Milieu albums. It is arguably the last iteration of the "downtempo" Milieu sound, in that the following album (Swaying Palms) began to incorporate more processing and dance-oriented material, rather than dedicated slow and feel-good music. Colortone is an incredibly melodic set of warm Summer electronics, and both the sound of the album and the iconic Holga-shot cover photograph live up to the title. Warped and psychedelic at times, reserved and contemplative at others. A lot of love went into making Colortone, and so it is only fair that this reissue include all relevant remixes, outtakes and alternate versions from the original session recordings. This comprehensive double-disc set compiles all material on both the Cropduster and Jacket Holograph EPs, as well as the exclusive tracks from Suntanned Melodies (a bonus disc included in only the first 25 copies of the original pressing). Superb remix work appears from Mrs Jynx (Planet Mu), Ten and Tracer (U-Cover), Forrest (U-Cover) and Obfusc (Boltfish). released April 20, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger, except where noted. Recorded at 114RKD, 2008. This is Milieu Music number AD8, and eighth in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Betamax Cavalier (4:39) 02. Milieu - Carpet Acid (3:58) 03. Milieu - Peppershaker (5:03) 04. Milieu - Academy Stripes (5:20) 05. Milieu - Popbottle (3:57) 06. Milieu - Cardigan Acid (5:33) 07. Milieu - Report Card (3:02) 08. Milieu - Set Phasers To Debonair (5:21) 09. Milieu - Faux Academy (3:15) 10. Milieu - Cherrycoke (4:25) 11. Milieu - Backslash Academy (5:35) 12. Milieu - Portbottle (4:25) 13. Milieu - Rainfield (5:54) 14. Milieu - Peppermint (6:19) 15. Milieu - Plangent Liqueurs (5:22) As Milieu reaches its 9th year as a project, what better way to celebrate but with a brand new record? Academy Stripes is Milieu's 36th full-length album of original material, and the first at Recycled Plastics. So what should you expect to hear? A colorful assortment of happy-sad melodies in about a dozen different flavors, cast like a sunbeam over energetic drum machine programming and funky bass that floats elegantly like sex in space. The trademark attributes of the Milieu sound are still there - lots of creative detuning, analog signal processing and a focus on psychedelics that should bring a smile to just about anyone. Carefree feel-good music is complemented by elements of dualities (or maybe even stripes) that are noticeable in both the music and the track titles. Right on time for the Summer, released on Brian's 30th birthday, and ready to lovingly caress large and small speakers everywhere. released May 17, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Album design by Eric Adrian Lee. A knowing wink, secret handshake and friendly high-five to Richard on track #8. Thanks to Herc, Hastings, Japp and Lemon. This is Recycled Plastics number RP5. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Leaves Painted Purple, Part 1 (19:48) 02. Milieu - The Space Between (13:27) 03. Milieu - MML059B A2 Assemblage (6:05) 04. Milieu - Leaves Painted Purple, Part 2 (28:11) 05. Milieu - Delphine (8:15) 06. Milieu - Sedentary Lifestyles (17:09) 07. Milieu - Battle Hymn Of Tranquilized Dissonance (15:36) 08. Milieu - Translucent Forestation (21:00) 2009's ambient album Leaves Painted Purple came and went fairly quickly, as many Milieu releases go, but it always left a positive mark in my mind. I recorded it live during a very hot summer, between sessions for Analog Botany material. Coppice Halifax was fast becoming my main project, but Leaves was a nice reminder that Milieu was still around for serious consideration. After both a CD-R and cassette version of Leaves went out of print, I always knew I would someday revisit the material again, so here it is now. Remastered from the original fourtrack tapes, and augmented with a few like-minded pieces to really form a nice expansion on the original idea. The "Appendage" track was a cassette-only exclusive piece for the tape version of Leaves, while "Delphine" and "Battle Hymn" were previously issued on the incredibly limited (and also out of print) split album with Turquoise Turtles. "Translucent Forestation" was released as its own single that same year, and "The Space Between" and "Sedentary Lifestyles" both appeared much later on the Bedroom Waves split cassette with Solitary Nature, although they fit perfectly with the rest of the content here. As I sit here now, in the midst of 2013's beautiful Autumn season, four years later...this album still resonates with me, as do the accompanying pieces. There's a strain of sadness in the very pretty organ melodies, layered deep beneath the warm guitar tones, and I think this material will be well met during the colder months approaching. released December 30, 2013 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD (#1/3/4/5/7/8) and Botany Bay (#2/6) various dates, 2009-2011. Remastered from the original master tapes at Botany Bay by The Analog Botanist, Fall 2013. Cover photo by Brian. This is Milieu Music number AD12, and Issue #12 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Prepsilon (0:15) 02. Milieu - Polypsilon I (3:59) 03. Milieu - P-Q (5:20) 04. Milieu - Polypsilon II (4:05) 05. Milieu - Polite Trams (0:11) 06. Milieu - Polyglide (6:27) 07. Milieu - Pinup Salon (3:55) 08. Milieu - Polypsilon III (5:00) 09. Milieu - Polyp (0:14) 10. Milieu - P-291733 (2:31) 11. Milieu - P.O.L.Y.F.N.K. (4:56) 12. Milieu - Playtime (1:48) 13. Milieu - Polypse (5:43) 14. Milieu - Polypsilon IV (6:58) 15. Milieu - Polypsilol (0:24) 16. Milieu - Polypsilon V (4:10) Polypsilon, Part 1 is - as the title implies - the first half of two separate 60-minute cassette releases, and the first tape released at RP! As a Milieu album, Polypsilon is possibly the most "genre music" type thing Milieu has done, filled with all the staples of feel-good braindance as well as my first foray into acid. The recording sessions were impulsive and tangential, and by the end, there was far more material than I was expecting to make, giving way to this two-part release. It's probably a spiritual follow-up to Academy Stripes, although it should be noted that Polypsilon was intended to be a sidetrack thing, and not "the next big new Milieu record", so I guess consider it as a gigantic 2 hour EP. I can't really think about how to describe it, so I'll leave you with the music. There's lots of 606/707/808 drum machine action, as well as my usual soft spot for a couple breaks and my Korg ER-1, and the synths used include my Roland SH-32, Casio PSS-50 and MT-210, the wonderful Fahtacon softsynth made by my friend Robin and of course the Milieu go-to Lowrey Magic Genie organ, among other things. Everything was meant to be loose, sporadic, playful and tingly on the earlobes, so hopefully that comes through in the final result. Remember, this isn't braindance - it's BRIANDANCE! released January 30, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, November 2013-January 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number RPC1-A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Ballad Of Twin Suns, Pt. 1 (7:25) 02. Milieu - Quaternion (12:23) 03. Milieu - Winter's Gasping Revenge (7:47) 04. Milieu - The Ballad Of Twin Suns, Pt. 2 (9:49) 05. Milieu - Night Liquors (8:07) 06. Milieu - Atlantic Chartreuse (24:01) Thriambus, originally conceptualized and recorded as the follow-up to Phosphene Weather at Install, is now drafted from the Install wine cellar, dusted off and allowed to be shared with the world. Phosphene Weather, if you don't know, was my first vinyl release, and as such was a great stress to create and finish. It follows that the return to a template with a standard set so highly was in effect even harder to do. So Thriambus dripped out of me slowly, over a year or so, until I felt it was a perfect statement by itself, and in consideration next to Phosphene. Like that album, it functions almost entirely on composition by way of processing and rephrasing of orchestral loops, harvested from vinyl, laid to tape, and used as the paint for my studio paintbrush. The one exception is "Winter's Gasping Revenge" - a lone guitar and pedal bass piece amid the impressionist fog, much like Phosphene's guitar odyssey "Aboir" was the counterpoint to the faded looping sadness of its first side. Thriambus is what I consider to be one of my most accomplished ambient works from the last few years, and a pillar in the swamp of my many shallower excursions. Inside it sleeps a part of my creative self that has now been permanently etched into the soundwaves. released February 1, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010-2011. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMD026. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Paul The Pylon (5:31) 02. Milieu - Polypsilon VI (4:14) 03. Milieu - Polymatthew (2:27) 04. Milieu - Phallusaurus Jox (5:17) 05. Milieu - Polychord (0:13) 06. Milieu - Polar Cyclone (4:00) 07. Milieu - Polyester (4:53) 08. Milieu - Plywood (2:52) 09. Milieu - Polypsilon VII (6:00) 10. Milieu - Polypsilon VIII (1:59) 11. Milieu - Polly Epsilon (3:47) 12. Milieu - P-Boots (8:46) 13. Milieu - Polyth (9:05) Hot on the heels of Part 1 comes Polypsilon, Part 2! The second half of the BRIAN-DANCE odyssey is another hour of colorful electronics and bedroom production values. Arguably more diverse than Part 1, with krautrock influenced motorik tracks like "Paul The Pylon", jungle strains in "Phallusaurus Jox", a little Boards of Canada peeking through in "Polly Epsilon" and a nod to SAW 85-92 on "P-Boots". Of course, melodies are still the focus of the material, along with a nice settled in comfort level from working with so many familiar sounds and machines. The whole thing inevitably caves in by the end, and trails off along some long-lost ambient coastline from the depths of my mind. Printed and pressed on a super-limited special edition of 30 copies on white cassette tape, with hand-cut red cardstock J-cards and black text decals. Don't miss out! released March 13, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2013-2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number RPC1-B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Windy Hills (25:20) 02. Milieu - Cobblestone Road (9:51) 03. Milieu - Blind Horses Whipped By The Dead (12:33) 04. Milieu - Steepest Tower (10:30) 05. Milieu - Approaching (16:49) 06. Coppice Halifax - Varosha (1:01:52) Gunkajima was the first Milieu album recorded, and arguably it can be said that the Milieu name itself was chosen to fit with a record of this kind. Although it was created around the same time as Songs We Found In The Sand, the album bears no resemblance to any other Milieu music at the time, and would remain an anomaly until perhaps Giants In The Desert was recorded a full two years later. Gunkajima is comprised of a seamless suite of five longform beatless pieces, themselves built out of carefully assembled field recordings, computer and tape recorded synthesis and instrumental improvisation. From these components, a foreboding atmosphere emerges, painting an abstract image of a deserted city landscape, decaying civilization overtaken by the elements (a theme that would be revisited later on several Coppice Halifax albums) and total abject isolation. Gunkajima itself is such a place - an island off the coast of Japan that looks like a battleship from the mainland, completely deserted since 1974 (although it's worth noting that in my naivete back in 2004, I may have misspelled the proper name of the island on the album...even so, I don't have the heart to change it now). Having read about the island in a book, I was inspired to create an artificial field recording of the place, paired with imagery from a nightmare I had at the time (which, oddly, was somewhere in Bavaria in the early 1900s), and so this brooding experience was given life through a kitchen-sink recording approach in my then-girlfriend's living room. At the time, it represented far more than the sum of its pieces, to me. It was the first time I'd really successfully created something totally unique on my own - I'd been in and out of several bands since 1997 and Gunkajima was my first recording project that was made using leftover equipment from those years. By today's standards, and on the other end of 400+ releases, it probably doesn't hold as much weight, but it's still the very beginning of this long strange trip I've been on since then, and as such will never lose significance for me. I've gone to great exhaustive lengths to remaster the release, and I think it sounds and feels even bolder than it did when I created it. In continuing with my tradition of renewal and revision, after finding the source recordings, I set out to also create a new Coppice Halifax piece using those original sounds. The resulting piece is the hour-long Varosha, itself named for yet another abandoned city, and a perfect companion piece to the ominous landmark that is Gunkajima. released May 17, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Remastered by The Analog Botanist, Botany Bay, Spring 2014. Varosha constructed by Coppice Halifax at Botany Bay, Spring 2014. This is Milieu Music number AD14, and 14th in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mellow U (3:02) 02. Milieu - Stained Brown Pages (3:44) 03. Milieu - Thrum (4:16) 04. Milieu - Sophiesongs Theme (1:58) 05. Milieu - Daughter (3:47) 06. Milieu - Angela Piano (4:51) 07. Milieu - Blue Bath (6:59) 08. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts (3:52) 09. Milieu - For Katie Asleep On The Bus (5:09) 10. Milieu - Laine (5:18) 11. Milieu - Night Ride (5:17) 12. Milieu - Rooms Within Rooms (4:32) 13. Milieu - Pavilion Nights (4:51) 14. Milieu - Saltwater (5:11) 15. Milieu - Paperbacks (3:32) 16. Milieu - Rainbow Topiary (2:15) 17. Milieu - Trapezoid Sing (5:21) 18. Milieu - The Singsong Waters Of An Endless Sea (4:28) 19. Milieu - Blueskies Found (1:36) 20. Milieu - Slowfade High Five (4:24) 21. Milieu - Academy Stripes (5:20) 22. Milieu - Powerliner (3:48) 23. Milieu - Pinwheel Carousels (4:42) 24. Milieu - Angela Starpillow (3:01) 25. Milieu - Alice Flagg (4:48) 26. Milieu - H Is For Hologram (5:40) 27. Milieu - Motorbike Trail (3:28) 28. Milieu - Tigertail (5:28) 29. Milieu - Vapors (4:13) 30. Milieu - Magic Marker (3:03) 31. Milieu - Night Winds Detuned (6:09) 32. Milieu - Golden Madison (3:42) 33. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts [Yearbook Version] (5:29) 34. Milieu - Swaying Palms (3:00) 35. Milieu - Abandoned Lot Nextdoor (4:47) 36. Milieu - Rope Nest (6:39) 37. Milieu - In The Back Of A Car, With Your Head In The Stars (4:56) 38. Milieu - Pileus (6:30) 39. Milieu - Sadleaves (4:30) 40. Milieu - Auburn Morning Winds (5:06) 41. Milieu - For Naoya & Miho (6:32) 42. Milieu - Sleepy Explorers (5:28) 43. Milieu - Naptime Singalong (4:49) 44. Milieu - Set Phasers To Debonair (5:21) 45. Milieu - Polypse (5:44) 46. Milieu - Neon 9000 (5:58) 47. Milieu - Maytag Blue With Figs & Honey (5:19) 48. Milieu - Pink Leaves (6:54) 49. Milieu - Phosphene Weather (4:47) 50. Milieu - Sun-Day (7:41) Butcher Block Andromeda (graciously christened by Kirk Marrison of Kiln) represents a decade of Milieu music, from its inauguration in May of 2004 to its 10th anniversary celebration in May of 2014. Fifty tracks, carefully selected from dozens of albums, EPs, singles and compilations, lovingly remastered (and in some cases appended for time) to be presented here in this thorough and detailed "beginner's guide". Across the three-disc, four-hour affair, we hear facets of all the various phases Milieu has gone through over the years - from the mid-fi melodies over slow tempos to the house and techno-inflected groovers, from the glitchy atmospheric pieces to the deep ambient odysseys, right on up to present day Milieu, a playful bedroom braindance sound. For both longtime listeners and new recruits, Butcher Block Andromeda should be a fresh and colorful experience of vibrant electronic music, newly minted with a 2014 paint job. **The digital download also includes seven bonus high-resolution Milieu desktop wallpapers, designed by Eric Adrian Lee. released May 17, 2014 Written & produced by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 1027PDS, Foxhill, 114RKD and Botany Bay, various dates 2004-2014. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, January-April 2014. Album art by Eric Adrian Lee. This is Recycled Plastics number RPMX. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Lazy Days on Our Hillside (4:23) 02. Milieu - Parasol (6:58) 03. Milieu - Seventeen Twelve (0:43) 04. Milieu - Rooms Within Rooms (4:34) 05. Milieu - Blue Bath (6:59) 06. Milieu - Inline Track (3:48) 07. Milieu - Statuettes (6:37) 08. Milieu - Trapezoid Sing (5:19) 09. Milieu - The Last Song We Found (1:25) 10. Milieu - Slow Lid Close (7:31) 11. Milieu - Laine (5:26) 12. Milieu - Narthex (7:13) 13. Milieu - Numbers Drop (4:18) 14. Milieu - Universes Inside You (1:24) 15. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts (3:56) 16. Milieu - Hidden Paths (7:54) 17. Milieu - Journey by Heliodrome (7:58) 18. Milieu - Seashell Breeze (1:35) 19. Milieu - Path to Tower (4:09) 20. Milieu - Fortyseven (3:44) 21. Milieu - Hands Clapping, Time Reversing (7:30) 22. Milieu - Dromeda Three (1:56) 23. Milieu - Sad Yellow Father (4:42) 24. Milieu - Slumber Notes (2:44) 25. Milieu - Shoreline Drones (4:41) 26. Milieu - She is Hallway (4:01) 27. Milieu - Counting Fives (1:42) 28. Milieu - Golden Madison (3:42) 29. Milieu - Waves of Permanent Blue, Fields of Endless Green (6:11) 30. Milieu - Xanadu (24:55) Long since separated and meant to be companion pieces from the start, Aurora Borealis and Night Currents were two albums whose sessions ran back to back. Borealis was given to U-Cover in Belgium, in 2005, to release as a physical format introduction to Milieu. As such, it contains tracks that previously appeared on Slow Lid Close and Songs We Found In The Sand (a couple of which are alternate mixes) alongside tracks that were recorded specifically for it (although Narthex, Statuettes and Inline Track were all recorded much earlier than that in 2004). Pretty much right after Borealis was issued, I started work on Night Currents, and the two albums segue together almost perfectly, with Borealis ending on the ambient meditation of Hidden Paths, and Currents starting with the elaborate opener Journey By Heliodrome, which washes over as pure ambient for the first two minutes or so. Stylistically, Currents gets darker than Borealis, which sounds very sunny for the most part, and this was always intended as a daytime/nighttime counterpoint. Until now, both albums were given simple CD-R reissues in stamped white paper sleeves, following the U-Cover versions going out of print, and I've always wanted to see them justified as a 2CD release with renewed album art and stylish presentation. This reissue is as close to my original intent as I think I can get, and it's appropriate that it's happening on the tenth anniversary of the Milieu name. The music here is playful, exploratory, naive and uninhibited, but I think it still works well as both an early introduction to my work and a summer listening experience. released May 17, 2014 Written & produced by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 1027PDS, Foxhill and 114RKD, 2004-2005. Cover photograph by Brian, Botany Bay 2012. This is Milieu Music number AD17, and 17th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Meander (8:45) 02. Milieu - Pink Leaves (14:38) 03. Milieu - Asteroid Beats (4:06) 04. Milieu - Petal Pool (4:38) 05. Milieu - Halfspeed Capsule Growth (10:45) 06. Milieu - Euflorian (4:32) 07. Milieu - Open (15:36) 08. Milieu - Spheric Residuals (6:58) 09. Milieu - Sleepership (9:32) 01. Milieu - Anterior Sweep (2:02) 02. Milieu - Empty Space (10:45) 03. Milieu - Burnt Dusk [Reduction] (9:45) 04. Milieu - Ghost Signals (11:20) 05. Milieu - Floral Piano (9:06) 06. Milieu - Airjet Yellow (14:03) 07. Milieu - Softwhite [Reduction] (9:36) 08. Milieu - One Hundred Fathoms (9:35) 01. Milieu - Spacemelodie (7:53) 02. Milieu - Airjet Blue (9:57) 03. Milieu - Eufloric Dub (15:48) 04. Milieu - Waves (7:58) 05. Milieu - Distances (17:40) 01. Milieu - Soft Space (11:36) 02. Milieu - Surface Gloss (14:45) 03. Milieu - Mother Tree (12:05) 01. Milieu - Softwhite (28:00) 02. Milieu - Burnt Dusk (32:05) Part 1-2 'Eufloria' Official 2-disc soundtrack for the critically acclaimed independent video game Eufloria, containing all music used in the game, as well as additional tracks exclusive to this soundtrack and bonus hi-res desktop wallpaper images of the game's art. Recently reissued on a second limited edition of 117 copies, packaged in a white DVD case with full-color artwork. released 20 July 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Images courtesy of Eufloria. This is Milieu Music number MMD008. Part 3 'Euflorian Additions' Five pieces composed and recorded for the video game Eufloria, intended for the game's transition to the Playstation Network as additional music for the game. Expanding on the previous two-and-a-half hours of soundtrack with another full hour of deep and delicate Euflorian headspaces. Ambient, but not without a pulse. Melodic in the way that winding tree branches organically grow outward and upward. Organic and alive. credits released 20 July 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Photos courtesy of Eufloria. This is Milieu Music number MMD018. Part 4 'Euflorian Additions, Volume II' Continually growing, expanding, revising and renewing - what started out as a quaint video game has now, over years, blossomed into an epic universe of its own. Eufloria, and its soundtrack, has once again evolved to appear on the Apple iPad format, boasting new features, updated design and of course another 40 minutes of new Milieu sonic illustrations. This unexpected addendum to the already huge Eufloria soundtrack has been lovingly designed to fit alongside the previous volume of Euflorian Additions (MMD018), presented in a high-gloss mini-LP style CD sleeve with images from the game, and limited to 100 copies worldwide. released 15 February 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011. This is Milieu Music number MMD020. Images courtesy of Eufloria. Part 5 'We Live in the Trees' Two extended ambient suites composed for the video game Eufloria during the winter of 2008. Recorded using several treated loops and melodic motifs recorded for the soundtrack, in tandem with FX devices and cassette tape. Resulting in pieces that were longer and more atmospheric than most of the material on the soundtrack, this album was given a short and intimate release via a limited edition CD-R that was gifted to parties who helped fund Brian Grainger's trip to the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco, where Eufloria was nominated for the Seumas McNally award, a full year after these tracks were recorded. Until now, this album has remained unavailable in any form and has collected a few years of dust in Brian's studio. Trainspotters may notice that shorter versions of these tracks appear on the double-album soundtrack, albeit with rhythmic accompaniment and other textural overdubs that are not present on the original pieces presented here. released 01 November 2009 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, winter 2008. This is Milieu Music Digital number MMDR030. ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Birthday Party (0:43) 02. Milieu - Elep (5:47) 03. Milieu - KTX-1 (0:55) 04. Milieu - Alison Transmission (1:57) 05. Milieu - As Summer Blooms + (6:52) 06. Milieu - Rolerskates (1:03) 07. Milieu - Eyelid Raft (2:38) 08. Milieu - Rooms Within Rooms (4:26) 09. Milieu - Ghosts in the Trees, Songs in the Breeze (7:14) 10. Milieu - Poplar Drive 1967 (3:12) 11. Milieu - Colorful Waves Go Up (4:22) 12. Milieu - Anedt (2:02) 13. Milieu - White Sunshine (3:14) 14. Milieu - Circles in the Spacebook (1:01) 15. Milieu - Inpond (7:28) 16. Milieu - Universes Inside You (1:28) 17. Milieu - Hidden Paths (7:34) 18. Milieu - Ghost Raft 1967 (Assembled by Galerie Stratique) (3:45) 19. Milieu - Ghosts in the Trees, Songs in the Breeze (Am-Boy Remix I) (6:37) 20. Milieu - Ghosts in the Trees, Songs in the Breeze (Am-Boy Remix II) (7:40) Fuzzy childhood memories, hot summers, tape degradation via "sunbathing" my cassettes on the back dashboard of my car, childish misspellings and non-word words, soft melodies over harsh drums, introspective psychedelia, even more introspective ambience, making a crappy Casio keyboard sound novel. These are just a few of the key elements that were in my mind when I recorded Songs We Found In The Sand in the sweltering summer of 2004, all of them seemingly unrelated but still carrying some kind of mental weight and as yet unfulfilled importance to me. I didn't know what I was doing, but I sort of knew what i wanted to do, and working toward it felt more right than any of the previous bands I'd played in from 1997 onward. So, listening to Songs We Found today, it certainly bears its share of naive moments - an unassuming fragile baby ego is coming into being, one that doesn't fully know what it's about yet. Milieu was a cool new name for a cool new project of mine at this point, and I hadn't quite cut my teeth on it enough to realize just how much music this project would really yield. While the album is scatterbrained, piecemeal and at certain points (for me) barely listenable, I've done my best to clean it up and make it presentable here, because it's important still. It was not only the first Milieu album with beats and melodies, but it was the reason I met so many talented people who helped inspire it and ended up inspiring later works too. Included here is the original album, remastered from the original session recordings, and three additional cuts - Colorful Waves Go Up and White Sunshine, which were both recorded at the same time, but left off for some reason, and the original unedited version of As Summer Blooms, complete with an extra 2 minute song sewn onto the ending as a reprise of sorts. Three remixes also appear as bonus material - a Galerie Stratique assemblage of three album tracks, which is really a fantastic track even today, and two Clayton's Hideout-era remixes by Am-Boy, whose Floridian album helped inspire many of the melodies on this album. released September 15, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, April-July 2004. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, August 2014. Original cover art designed by John-Paul Kramer. 3D cover art and Arboreal Digest cover art designed by Eric Adrian Lee. This is Milieu Music number AD15, and issue #15 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Lazer Rinq (Remastered) (3:48) 02. Milieu - Blueskies Found (Remastered) (1:36) 03. Milieu - Sunshine People (Remastered) (4:14) 04. Milieu - Northern Lights (Remastered) (3:22) 05. Milieu - Magic Marker (Remastered) (3:03) 06. Milieu - Orange Evening Windows (Remastered) (3:31) 07. Milieu - Floating Riverbed (Remastered) (2:10) 08. Milieu - Trip, To (Remastered) (4:11) 09. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts (Remastered) (3:52) 10. Milieu - Forest (Remastered) (7:05) 11. Milieu - Carnival Rides til Sunset (Remastered) (4:46) 12. Milieu - Trainsong (Remastered) (3:43) 13. Milieu - Trapezoid Sing (Remastered) (5:21) 14. Milieu - Daisy Scrapbook (Remastered) (4:16) 15. Milieu - Found My Rubix Cube (Remastered) (3:54) 16. Milieu - Go Divers (Remastered) (2:11) 17. Milieu - Stained Brown Pages (Remastered) (3:47) 18. Milieu - Bridge One (Remastered) (2:36) 19. Milieu - Summer Vacation (Remastered) (5:39) 20. Milieu - Petals (Remastered) (4:01) If Songs We Found In The Sand was a set of training wheels for the Milieu project, Slow Lid Close was where the kid wheels came off and I went bounding headfirst into the future. SLC took everything I'd learned up to that point, and sort of distilled it down into neat little electronic pop songs. The music was intended to be playful and psychedelic but also very tuneful and easy on the ears, so SLC is very much a melodic overload of flavor and color. This album was also the first time I'd noticed a faster stride in my recording and writing - I was making more music, and I was making it more frequently, and little did I know at that time that this would be a trend on an upward arc that my creative tendencies would follow for years to come. So in that regard, SLC is the first real Milieu-in-the-wild moment. I'm working efficiently enough that I can be more impulsive with my ideas, less deliberate, and hopefully end up somewhere more sincere. The sound of this album is a graduated (some might say matured, I don't know if I'd agree) take on the sound palate from Songs We Found - a lot of detuned synths, funky drum breaks, overprocessed drum machines, "in the pocket" basslines (as David Tagg would later call them) and just enough texture and strange ephemera to make things feel more organic and less computerized. There's even prominent guitar on a few tracks - the faux-Hawaiian bent leads on Northern Lights, a pitch-bent loop groove on Trip, To and the super-depressed radio fuzz pickwork that leads Trainsong into the dark at the end of the album. Also included as an addendum are the seven tracks from the Mint Slape Session EP, which were recorded at the same time as SLC. The Mint cuts are self-aware outtakes, a bit more experimental and meandering than their album counterparts, so please give them a bit more understanding if they sound drunk, or naive, or rude, or all three. Everything has been painstakingly remastered from the original source, and I don't mind saying that this is the best these tracks have ever sounded. The new cover photograph was graciously given to me by Rudolf Kremers, the genius behind the Eufloria games I've scored, and I think the pretty colors and understated subject matter echo the simplistic approach to electronic music that Slow Lid Close has. Hopefully it has aged as well as I feel it has! released September 15, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 1027 PDS and Foxhill, Summer-Winter 2004. Remastered by The Analog Botanist, Summer 2014. Cover photograph by Rudolf Kremers. This is Milieu Music number AD16, the sixteenth issue in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Memory Hearth (1:02:31) Memory Hearth is a swirling storm of psychedelic color that coalesces and eventually explodes. A sonic vessel built out of solid gold and diamonds that takes a full hour to ascend into the clouds. This is a Milieu album as you have never before heard or experienced it. Filled to the brim with tape droning, shoegazing guitars and humming pedal bass, and led by both cut-up breaks and live drums and percussion, until it bursts with bright hot streams of sunny feedback and detuned melody. Meant to be played loud. released October 31, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Summer 2014. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photograph by Penelope Grainger. This is Milieu Music number MML100. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - [02:30] (2:30) 02. Milieu - [09:29] (9:29) 03. Milieu - [04:10] (4:10) 04. Milieu - [07:12] (7:13) 05. Milieu - [02:53] (2:53) 06. Milieu - [11:57] (11:57) 07. Milieu - [05:47] (5:47) 08. Milieu - [05:56] (5:57) 09. Milieu - [04:09] (4:10) 10. Milieu - [09:20] (9:20) Credits Layout, Design, Photography By – Eric Adrian Lee Mastered By – The Analog Botanist Written By, Producer – Brian Grainger Notes Limited edition glass-mastered CD version of Statuettes, Part One. Edition of 150 in a jewel case. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016 REM DATE 2015 ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mirage (2:50) 02. Milieu - Rope Nest (6:43) 03. Milieu - Sieve (4:11) 04. Milieu - Written on Driftwood (11:09) 05. Milieu - Pollen Cabin Poetry (5:23) 06. Milieu - Winter Decay (3:15) 07. Milieu - The Decomposition of Memory (5:42) 08. Milieu - A Night Walk Clearing (3:54) 09. Milieu - Muted Travels (3:50) 10. Milieu - Burnt Rust (2:13) 11. Milieu - A Warm Wooden Hollow (6:55) 12. Milieu - Inside The Sun (18:15) 13. Milieu - Woodgrain Elegiac (5:13) 14. Milieu - Antique Sunlight (5:26) 15. Milieu - Grandfather Clock (13:06) 16. Milieu - Inside The Sun (Coppice Halifax Rephrase) (43:25) A Warm Wooden Hollow was originally released on a limited edition run at Infraction Records in 2008, and like nothing else I had released at that time, it went out of print within a month's time. I was satisfied to let AWWH rest after that, so that the people who supported the release could relish it like a piece of special jewelry that you only wear on formal occasions. These days, AWWH has become a sort of mythical beast, rarely appearing in the wild, and prized by collectors in a way that few other Milieu records have been. I don't listen to it very often, and when I do, it makes me very sad, but I am content with that as it was designed from its very skeleton to be a sad album. Expanding on that a little: the previous album I released with Infraction - Beyond The Sea Lies The Stars - was a longform ambient affair built solely out of juxtaposed and heavily processed orchestral tape loops. Following that aesthetic and atmosphere, I began the recording phase for Wooden Hollow with a distinct goal - to once again carefully pluck small melodic phrases, strums and swells from orchestral vinyl I loved, but this time I would use these sounds as a seafloor to build an ocean on top of. They would simultaneously shape the composition that grew around the loops like a vine, and color it in ways non-looped instruments never really could. And so Wooden Hollow is an ambient album built with the bones of my favorite composers - Smetana, Delius, Satie, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, Debussy - and presented as a personal walk through the psychedelic gardens of Milieu's estate eight years ago. The visual aesthetic of AWWH is unlike any other, thanks to Luke Hazard's iconic and powerful processed photography, and those images have been preserved and carried over here, for this reissue. Rounding out the double-disc set of AWWH is the incredibly rare EP Smokebuilder's Woodshop, itself only made available on 50 3" CD-Rs sent out with the first fifty orders of the CD from Infraction. Woodshop is a three-track, 24 minute microcosm of dusty sunbeams lazily coloring an old Russian man's quiet apartment in Brighton Beach - steeped in that special kind of disconnected sadness you can only experience when you lose someone you love. In addition to this EP, the second disc of this reissue also contains a forty minute Coppice Halifax mix of the closing track on AWWH, Inside The Sun. When AWWH was originally being conceived and created in 2006, Coppice Halifax was blooming to life as a new project, and the 1983 sessions were concurrent with the AWWH recordings. Thus, it felt appropriate to revisit Inside The Sun, itself a lengthy ambient piece whose chords echo the deep CH epics of the time, such as Bronze or Soil, and provide a very "classic Halifaxian" treatment to the master tape. What you hear is a sound sculpture that has one foot in 2006 and one foot in 2015, and enough delay to make that trip several times over. An appropriate and immersive counterpoint to Wooden Hollow's Impressionistic ambience. So I relinquish this surreal pile of tape, compression and sadness to you, the curious listeners. Long may you mine it for the jewels it is rumored to contain... released May 29, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2006-2007 and Botany Bay, Summer 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Luke Hazard. This is Milieu Music number AD4, and fourth in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - As Summer Blooms (2:57) 02. Milieu - Thrum (4:17) 03. Milieu - Elep (3:37) 04. Milieu - Cumulus Drones (3:31) 05. Milieu - Auburn Morning Winds (5:05) 06. Milieu - Hidden Paths (4:37) 07. Milieu - Biketrail 2 (4:28) 08. Milieu - Glasshill (Gravel Bank) (4:43) 09. Milieu - Blackwood Moth (6:10) 10. Milieu - Lazer Rinq (3:26) 11. Milieu - Pileus (Infinite Edit) (6:48) 12. Milieu - Sway Blue Waters (8:40) 13. Milieu - Forest (Fast Edit) (3:21) 14. Milieu - Snowhill (2:10) 15. Milieu - Rain Metre (Acid Edit) (3:13) 16. Milieu - Smokestacks (3:18) 17. Milieu - Narthex (7:30) 18. Milieu - Poppies (Lintro Filtro) (2:07) 19. Milieu - Blue Bath (Water Organ Dub) (5:08) 20. Milieu - Jacket Holograph (Smoking Neon) (4:30) 21. Milieu - Color The Waves (3:00) 22. Milieu - Fossil Hum (Live) (4:00) 23. Milieu - Glasshill (Lazy Passenger Dub) (4:21) 24. Milieu - Aeroline (4:05) 25. Milieu - Boulevard Haze (5:55) 26. Milieu - Swaying Palms (5:13) 27. Milieu - Nightwalk (4:12) 28. Milieu - Autumn Fog Lifts (Yearbook Version) (5:30) 29. Milieu - Holograph Dub (4:50) 30. Milieu - Woodenhollow (2:14) 31. Milieu - Naomi (Ultramode) (4:33) 32. Milieu - Imaginary Snow (5:08) Remodelled came about organically as a concept as early as 2004, when I first started the practice of tangentially exploring my own tracks in the form of radically different mixes, alternate arrangements or even just rewriting the track altogether, while still keeping the same sonic template in mind. As such, I've always held that Remodelled is not simply a collection of outtakes or remixes, rather, a mirror-universe peek at what certain pieces of music I've written might seem like in another life. Remodelled isn't about purpose so much as potential. So, that said, many of these tracks I feel are not quite as good as their "official" album track counterparts, while others in the time since their creation have gained my favor over the tracks I chose to release in their stead. The amazingly generous guys at Boltfish Recordings in the UK put Remodelled out back in 2007, in not just one but two unique editions - each with different packaging and track sequence, so that Remodelled itself was also Remodelled. By 2007 though, the album still went under the radar a little, because I had already mostly moved on from many of the sounds and approaches the album contains (the fact that Remodelled was completed during 2005 and 2006 didn't help), but label schedules and budgets are what they are, and I am still to this day thankful for the fact that such a conceptual and potentially overlooked album got issued at all. In the time since then, Remodelled has been disparaged by critics while simultaneously being celebrated by fans. I don't understand it, I probably never will. To me, it is simply another foundational facet of what Milieu was and still is all about. It was never an exception to the rule or a tangent I chased down and failed to fully realize. So I kept making tracks and remodelling them in this same fashion, which is where the expansion for Remodelled comes in. A second hour-long disc of fifteen tracks, mostly b-sides, rarities from various homes and outtakes, including three previously unreleased tracks that I only ever played live once, then tucked away in my closet. The whole double-disc affair has also been remastered from the ground up with the master recordings, which took some real digging to find, as I'm not exactly known for my organizational talents. Everything sounds bigger and bolder than it originally did, and that, I feel, makes the album far more interesting and dynamic. Many of these tracks were recorded at a time when I still got intimidated by an equalizer, and tended to embrace very conservative (and unorthodox) midrange-heavy mixes. So this is Remodelled as you and I have never heard it before! "Remodelled is remarkably coherent." -Igloomag "The unspoken but palpable underlying feeling is that the artist who releases, say, twenty albums a year is viewed as somehow less worthy than those who issue one every couple; such an artist is not just less worthy, but downright suspicious" -E/I Mag "What does it all mean? More nice melancholic melodies, more excellent dry beats" -Electronic Desert "If someone had played me a random track from this CD a few weeks ago then I probably would've thought that it *was* Boards of Canada apart from the fact that it's slightly less interesting." -Heathen Harvest "There's no denying the album's overall quality but there's no denying either the overly derivative character of the music." -Textura "...ambient doodling set against the mild rhythms, sauced up with some extra reverb to gain some extra, artificial, depth..." -Vital Weekly "Remodelled is my favorite album of all-time" -Gary Busey released July 28, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD & 1027PDS, 2004-2009. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, July 2015. Cover photography by Rudolf Kremers, used with permission. Thanks to Wil, Murray, John-Paul and Rudolf. Special high-five and a hug to Lee Norris, from whom I borrowed the name of this album from. This is Milieu Music number AD19, and 19th in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Readytone (0:55) 02. Milieu - In The Back Of A Car, With Your Head In The Stars (4:57) 03. Milieu - Green Summer (1:04) 04. Milieu - We Swam (4:26) 05. Milieu - Walking Pastels (6:11) 06. Milieu - Cumulus Drones (4:49) 07. Milieu - Soft Screen Report (1:00) 08. Milieu - My Shiny Sunday (6:55) 09. Milieu - Simple Stations Repeat (1:57) 10. Milieu - Dream From Above Houses [Live Remodel] (11:39) 11. Milieu - Morning In The Base Of The Ravine (1:51) 12. Milieu - Yellow Hymn (4:31) 13. Milieu - Desert Wind (1:06) 14. Milieu - Where Mountains Once Stood (3:53) 15. Milieu - Obelisk (1:05) 16. Milieu - Pillars (1:59) 17. Milieu - Fossil Hum (3:48) 18. Milieu - The Visitors (1:48) 19. Milieu - Desert Drone (4:41) 20. Milieu - U.A.U. (4:05) Foxhill Pastels collects the 2005 EPs Simple Stations Repeat and Giants In The Desert, both recorded at Foxhill, deep in the Columbian country. In many ways, these twenty tracks are emblematic of early period Milieu in ways none of the albums are - they are overly melodic, naively filled with weird dialogue samples and detuned to the point of near-nausea. Many of the tracks have since become associated with specific people and events, such as Ten and Tracer detailing a romantic mountain hike with wine, "Walking Pastels" and his girlfriend, or Eric Lee confessing that "My Shiny Sunday" is still his all-time favorite Milieu track. There are obvious references to the things I was emulating at that point in time - Freescha, Boards of Canada, Am-Boy, Ten and Tracer. Everything feels very off the cuff to me, listening to it now, which is perhaps owed somewhat to the fact that both EPs were created in under a week for two different online release events called Project 168. For completion's sake, I've also included the live version of "Dream From Above Houses", from Brother, which was remodelled for a live performance in Cayce, in February 2006. It is an appropriate segue between the more traditional Milieu of Simple Stations Repeat and the textural, dusky ambient weirdness that is Giants In The Desert. The two EPs are almost miniature mirror images of Aurora Borealis and Night Currents, the day and night brother-sister albums that would follow at U-Cover later in 2005 and 2006, making this set a fascinating little curio. For this collection, I've remastered Simple Stations Repeat from the original master tracks, but I've chosen to leave Giants In The Desert undisturbed, mostly because it's such a texturally specific suite of work and I'm honestly surprised at how nice it still sounds to me now. Hopefully, you're able to enjoy this little jaunt down that country dirt road as much as I have. released October 1, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Foxhill, 2005-2006. Tracks #1-10 remastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, September 2015. Photograph taken by Brian at Foxhill, 2006. This is Milieu Music number AD20, and 20th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - This Velvet Morning (1:52) 02. Milieu - Alaskan Minor (4:01) 03. Milieu - Gentle Fields (3:35) 04. Milieu - Three Seven By Two (5:10) 05. Milieu - Glacier Drone (12:50) 06. Milieu - The Burning Snow (6:08) 07. Milieu - Rusting [Overgrowth Wall] (3:46) 08. Milieu - Yellowcurl (1:59) 09. Milieu - Still Air, Small Sound (1:03) 10. Milieu - Sun White Sun (6:25) 11. Milieu - Buried (18:20) 12. Milieu - Buried [Coppice Halifax Excavation] (1:15:52) Sun White Sun, the third of three albums recorded as a nameless triptych of guitar-centric works, produced in 2006 without a computer. SWS was laid to tape live, with no overdubs, using only a single electric guitar, a Boss RV-3 and a Technics M11 cassette recorder. Recorded for the improvisational series Freed Music at Expanding Electronic Diversity, SWS was issued with the following text: "Suffused with Milieu's inimitable, breathy, organic sound and virtuosic studio technique, Sun White Sun is another exceptional set of sound sculptures from a true master of the genre. Thick with harmonic resonances, at times it conjures waves of parched heat rolling off the ground, and others, a placid ice floe, seemingly motionless in space. It is the refraction of light through a diamond, viewed through a dreamy and communicative ether." For this reissue, I've opted to refrain from a remastering job, even though initially I thought it might have benefited from one. Mainly, I find that SWS truly shines in the spirit of free improvisation, and to polish it up would be to somewhat miss the point. In lieu of a remaster, however, I've gone back to the original tape and utilized it to create a massive Coppice Halifax remix of the closing piece "Buried". Not unlike the CH rephrase of "Inside The Sun" I drafted for the A Warm Wooden Hollow reissue, this mix melts down the walls of guitar drone and submerges rhythmic and melodic structures inside the liquids. Sun White Sun was a landmark record for me at the time it was created, opening up new and exciting avenues in the name of what might be possible for a Milieu release, and if it didn't exist, there's a very large possibility I wouldn't have gone forward with Second Sun Recordings or VCV with David Tagg afterward. released November 11, 2015 W/P by Milieu. Recorded at 114RKD, June 2006. #12 written by Milieu, produced and remixed by Coppice Halifax at Botany Bay, Autumn 2015. Photograph by Brian, Conway 2010. This is Milieu Music number AD3, and 3rd in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Sleeping Earth (4:18) 02. Milieu - Washed Out (1:21) 03. Milieu - Autumn (1:11) 04. Milieu - CIE 1931 Color Space (7:33) 05. Milieu - The First Light's Waking Bells (1:46) 06. Milieu - Poppies (2:13) 07. Milieu - Blackwater Tide (3:12) 08. Milieu - Long Slow Honey (2:44) 09. Milieu - Gold [Rusted Chime] (3:52) 10. Milieu - Above The Shorelines Of Foreign Lands (10:00) 11. Milieu - Bell Bath (4:42) 12. Milieu - Downpour (4:30) 13. Milieu - Glossy Ceramic Harmonies (9:12) 14. Milieu - Sunless (6:38) The Sleeping Earth is a postscript to the first four albums at Arboreal Digest: Milieu, Of The Apple, Sun White Sun and A Warm Wooden Hollow. It compiles music made during and soon after those four albums' gestation, and stands solidly as an album itself, despite its separate origins. The first ten tracks are taken from the Grassland Melodies split with Quosp, which originally appeared at Rope Swing Cities in 2006. These pieces inhabit a unique space that is equal parts Beyond The Sea, Of The Apple and early Coppice Halifax, with a very Teenager-like guitar piece thrown in. Tracks 11/12 originally were commissioned for a compilation, though I cannot be certain if it ever came out. They were recorded about a month following Night Currents' release at U-Cover in Belgium, in 2006, and hinted at the direction Milieu recordings would largely go by the end of that year. Track 13 was commissioned for an ongoing series of singles called 13 Weeks Of Summer, at Attacknine Records in 2007. It was the first single in the series, and bears some resemblance to my two guitar pieces on the four-way split Traveling at Sunrise Acoustics. Track 14 is a previously unreleased outtake from the Milieu sessions in 2006. Likely left off the album because of its length (the Milieu album ended up being seconds short of 80 minutes long) and also perhaps for its resemblance to other tracks on that album. Here, however, it shines as a beautiful and sad gemstone, embedded in the key that unlocks this surreal tableau. released December 4, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger. #1-10 and 14 recorded at 114RKD, 2006. #11-12 recorded at Foxhill, 2006. #13 recorded at 114RKD, 2007. Photograph taken by Brian, Foxhill, 2007. This is Milieu Music number AD23, and 23rd in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Metraliminaloxone (1:19:10) Metraliminaloxone is a longform near-beatless Milieu piece that propels itself on wings of bass and emits rays of warm orange sunshine that long to caress your skin. Somewhere between Memory Hearth and Phosphene Weather, Metraliminaloxone was created live with a Roland SH-32 synthesizer, a Boss DR-880, a Lowrey organ, electric guitar and a small village of FX units, all humming and fuzzing and droning straight across the heads of a Tascam 414 tape machine. A lucid moment, captured, laid flat like a photograph and stretched across eighty minutes. released January 26, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at Botany Bay, Autumn 2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Originally released in digital form as a part of the Nagual USB-stick box set at Txt Recordings, UK. Photograph taken by Brian at Botany Bay, 2011. This is Milieu Music number MML107. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Seashell Breeze (1:53) 02. Milieu - In Blue Fields (9:37) 03. Milieu - Yellow Hymn (4:31) 04. Milieu - Further Away (8:11) 05. Milieu - We Live In The Trees (4:05) 06. Milieu - Imagined Histories (9:49) 07. Milieu - A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions (3:38) 08. Milieu - Woodgrain Elegiac (5:13) 09. Milieu - The Sleeping Earth (4:18) 10. Milieu - Abandoned Lot Nextdoor (4:47) 11. Milieu - The Loneliness Of Empty Roads (9:39) 12. Milieu - Soft Island (1:29) 13. Milieu - Cloud Counting (5:25) 14. Milieu - The Ballad Of Twin Suns, Pt. 1 (7:25) A sampler of ambient works by Milieu, including some personal favorites and some lesser known cuts. Previously only available via download codes hidden in orders shipped out from Milieu Music / Recycled Plastics. released March 8, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded on various dates and locations, 2005-2013. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMLP15. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Hauswerk (8:40) 02. Milieu - Brücke (2:43) 03. Milieu - Auf / On (3:37) 04. Milieu - Flüstern (7:36) 05. Milieu - Einlage (8:26) 06. Milieu - Ausgelassen (7:04) 07. Milieu - Übertragen (7:43) Originally issued only as a digital download, given as gracious thanks to patrons who donated toward the costs of retrieving data from a failed studio hard drive. Thankfully, with my studio back in working order, Auf / On can enjoy some time in the sunlight. I've put together a limited edition CD-R version of this, for all the collectors and people who may not have had the chance to get this album the first time, and it has been appropriately designed to fit alongside Quebrith & Yarrow, a similar album that was also previously only available for a charity. Auf / On was recorded live using only the following hardware: Korg ER-1/ES-1/Volca Bass/Beats/Keys, Boss DR-660/880, Roland SH-32/TR-505, Moog MF-101/102, Alesis Quadraverb, Mackie ProFX8, Pioneer SR-202W and a Tascam DR-07. released April 14, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, Spring-Summer 2015. This is Milieu Music number MML109. Photograph taken by Brian, Columbia 2011. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Eisblau (4:21) 02. Milieu - Tom & Rudolph (5:43) 03. Milieu - Vereist Ente (0:25) 04. Milieu - Eis Pflug (6:46) 05. Milieu - Acid Pflug (1:40) 06. Milieu - Glücklich Betrunken (3:48) 07. Milieu - Eis Nein (5:45) Uploaded from my laptop in an Ohio hotel. Six and a half tracks that were dusting up an old SD card for a while, all (except #4) recorded using the following gear: Yamaha QY-70, Boss DR-660/880, Roland SH-32. Track #4 mulched out on the laptop somewhere on the road between Columbia and Orlando. released April 14, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, various dates 2015, except #4 recorded in transit, 2015. This is Milieu Music number MML110. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Eisblau (4:21) 02. Milieu - Tom & Rudolph (5:43) 03. Milieu - Vereist Ente (0:25) 04. Milieu - Eis Pflug (6:46) 05. Milieu - Acid Pflug (1:40) 06. Milieu - Kühl Türsteher (3:33) 07. Milieu - Glücklich Betrunken (3:48) 08. Milieu - Eis Nein (5:45) Notes Packaged in a clear plastic sleeve with blue or purple grid paper inserts, and an in-house duplicated/printed white disc. Contains an exclusive bonus track, #6, which isn't available on the digital version. ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015 REM GENRE IDM ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Memory Bells (2004) (1:27) 02. Milieu - Blue Holograph (2006) (3:36) 03. Milieu - Echo Speck (2007) (1:30) 04. Milieu - Bridge Three (2005) (0:33) 05. Milieu - Rushwater Loop (2007) (0:43) 06. Milieu - Filtro Sevener (2007) (2:28) 07. Milieu - Clipped Loop (2005) (0:33) 08. Milieu - Windsor Postscript (2009) (0:34) 09. Milieu - Borealis Theme (Demo 2005) (3:18) 10. Milieu - Bridge Four (2005) (0:43) 11. Milieu - Improvisational Livingroom Drum Routines (2004) (5:22) 12. Milieu - Desert Cylinder (2005) (1:02) 13. Milieu - Coma Theme (2007) (0:58) 14. Milieu - Kosmos Track (First Take 2005) (4:20) 15. Milieu - Filtro Brick Block (2007) (1:02) 16. Milieu - Glasshill (Test Loop 2006) (0:40) 17. Milieu - Foxhill Beats (2005) (1:24) 18. Milieu - Lidclose Patchtrack (2005) (3:01) 19. Milieu - Summer Islands (2005) (1:48) 20. Milieu - Brookhaven Beta (2007) (1:45) 21. Milieu - K Beats (2007) (1:29) 22. Milieu - Warming (2006) (3:38) 23. Milieu - Redbrick Loop (2007) (0:50) 24. Milieu - Kellygrey (2007) (1:19) 25. Milieu - Rainbowland (2007) (2:22) 26. Milieu - Marmite Funk (Demo 2009) (3:00) 27. Milieu - Sadtape (2007) (1:16) 28. Milieu - Coolaid (2005) (5:51) In October of 2015, I released an exhaustive completionist set called Bent Applefarm, which collected all six volumes of the Bent Appletrees series and one new volume - Bent Appleleaves. The set is comprised of outtakes, unreleased and alternate versions, live tracks and demos, and Appleleaves was a nice tableaux of extras to include in the collection. Since then, I've received several requests for a standalone Appleleaves release, for the collectors who already own Appletrees I-VI, which only makes sense. So, here's a single-disc microverse of Milieu outtakes and unreleased tracks that do not appear elsewhere! released July 5, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Poplar Drive South, Foxhill and 114RKD, 2004-2009. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number AD21B. © + ℗ Milieu, 2016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Echo Spectrum (5:24) 02. Milieu - Little Marble Eyes (3:52) 03. Milieu - B (4:55) 04. Milieu - Pavilion Nights (4:53) 05. Milieu - Peak Overlook (2:04) 06. Milieu - Appletree Theme (3:45) 07. Milieu - Bicycle Day (4:15) 08. Milieu - Boulevard Haze (4:59) 09. Milieu - Pinwheel Carousels (4:42) 10. Milieu - Naomi (4:49) 11. Milieu - LZ Interview Segment (CRT Mix) (1:11) 12. Milieu - Albatrosses (4:33) 13. Milieu - Solar Window (3:50) 14. Milieu - Hi Teens (4:32) 15. Milieu - Counting Lights (5:18) 16. Milieu - Night Flight (3:50) 17. Milieu - Plume Train (Lab Version) (4:05) 18. Milieu - Charlotte Space (1:03) Echo Spectrum and Boulevard Haze, both taken from the New Drugs album, were originally issued on this double-single set (backed by eight b-sides) in 2007, a few months ahead of the album. As such, this release is a sort of sister to New Drugs, containing several tracks that didn't make the cut but remain fan favorites today (see: Pinwheel Carousels, Bicycle Day). It is only appropriate then, that Echo Spectrum finally gets the same expanded reissue and remaster treatment as New Drugs, which is what I'm happy to present you with here. Accompanying the original ten tracks are eight others from various locations: Albatrosses / Counting Lights from Calico Fountain Melange, Solar Window / Night Flight / Lab Version of Plume Train from Muted Travels and Hi Teens from Bent Appletrees 2 - a track I always regretted not including on a proper album somewhere. Closing the set is the previously unreleased vignette piece, Charlotte Space, which was originally recorded for Muted Travels but had to be left off for time constraints. There is also a small artifact from Germany included here, for your chuckling pleasure. released July 6, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2006-2007. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, Botany Bay, 2016. This is Milieu Music number AD26, and 26th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Bluecarpet (7:02) 02. Milieu - Warm Arp (1:30) 03. Milieu - Tinn (3:24) 04. Milieu - Boris The Kat (7:33) 05. Milieu - Undercast (4:04) 06. Milieu - Sleepy P (5:43) 07. Milieu - Brutemaw (1:36) 08. Milieu - Wet Sneakers (4:48) 09. Milieu - Qume (7:33) 10. Milieu - Fluorescent Toothpaste (5:46) 11. Milieu - Traintrax (3:46) 12. Milieu - Morning Acid (6:37) 13. Milieu - Rainbounding (6:35) 14. Milieu - Summergliss (6:47) 15. Milieu - Seam (6:17) Available for the first time on physical format! Quebrith & Yarrow is a record that might not have otherwise existed if not for my close friend John-Paul having a hard time getting back home after his mother passed away. Seeing John-Paul's need and wanting to help, I put together Quebrith as a gift to him, with my blessing for him to make as much money as he could with it to get him back home. I'm happy to report that he's made it home and he's slowly starting to put his life back together again - I wish him all the best. The tracks presented here were all made almost entirely live on hardware, with only the slightest editing and overdubbing on a couple tracks with a computer. Many of them were also created in hotel rooms, using a mobilized studio rig that fit into a blue suitcase and a green backpack, almost totally battery operated. As such, this album's consistency is a testament to the dependability of the gear I used to make it all, since none of these tracks were intended to rub shoulders together in this manner. Yet, here they are, and I find Quebrith is a very enjoyable listen for these hot and humid Summer days. Hopefully you do too. **This version of Quebrith also includes a bonus track (Summergliss) that is something of a sibling to Bluecarpet. released August 20, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded on various dates and at various locations in South Carolina, Florida and Ohio, 2015-2016. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover photograph taken by Brian, West Virginia, 2016. This is Milieu Music number MMLP17B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Three Two One (2:22) 02. Milieu - Slowfade High Five (4:24) 03. Milieu - Hills Made Of Clouds (1:07) 04. Milieu - Sunlite Sound (5:47) 05. Milieu - Ocean Bleached (1:27) 06. Milieu - Sway Leaf (5:55) 07. Milieu - Aeroline (4:36) 08. Milieu - Angela Sunrise (4:02) 09. Milieu - Angela Blush (2:18) 10. Milieu - Angela Dream Sequence (1:43) 11. Milieu - Angela Beachyhead (3:54) 12. Milieu - Angela Piano (4:55) 13. Milieu - Angela Night Lite (2:24) 14. Milieu - Angela Starpillow (3:02) 15. Milieu - Angela Looks At The Moon (5:05) 16. Milieu - Dreamboat 2 (1:55) 17. Milieu - Pillowtone (0:21) 18. Milieu - Slow Blue Night (4:06) 19. Milieu - Slowfade High Five [Live At Lab 30, Germany 2007] (4:21) 20. Milieu - Rainy Daylight [Live In Cayce, South Carolina 2006] (6:17) The newest material to get the remastered reissue treatment is the 20-track collection SUN BLEACHED PIANO, containing works from 2006 to 2008. Starting with the IN HILLS MADE OF CLOUDS EP, from #1-6, it's evident that this music was Milieu's teeth-cutting on the sampled-breaks and weathered organ melodies aesthetic that later appeared on OUR BLUE RAINBOW, NEW DRUGS and came to a close on COLORTONE. Originally issued on a limited edition 3" CD-R at Earstroke Records in summer of 2006, these tracks also shipped with the first-ever Milieu stickers! They've been carefully remastered at Botany Bay, to bring out the finer details while still remaining plump and pleasantly bouncy for your stereos to vibrate to. Bridging the gap between HILLS and the next release included here is the track AEROLINE, which was originally recorded in 2005, only to sit unreleased until Metanoia Media issued an updated recording of it for their 50th catalog release compilation in autumn of 2007. The original version contained samples of a pinball machine, although the final cut of the track presented here is a much more traditionalist affair with moody organ lines and sparse drum machine punctuation. From #8-15 is the PILLOWTONE POEMS EP, initially recorded as a half-joke birthday present for my mother in law, who would always try to annoy me by asking when I was going to name an album after her. As such, PILLOWTONE was recorded from start to finish in about a week on a really terrible Compaq PC that was retrieved from an insurance office that was auctioning off their old machines. It too benefits greatly from the much-deserved remastering treatment applied here, retaining all the nuance of the melodies and effects processing in the original tracks, but being filled out with a depth and weight the tracks never seemed to have until now. This EP was originally issued at Milieu Music in 2006 as a simple papersleeve CD-R, then got an expanded second run at Unlabel for their Series 52 catalog later that year. Tracks #16-18 were three bonus unlisted tracks included on the Unlabel edition of PILLOWTONE POEMS. They have always had names, but I've never mentioned them until now, because it's fun to keep secrets. The track SLOW BLUE NIGHT shares a melodic motif with the deep cut RED BALLOONS OVER A BLUE SHORE, which was recorded during the NEW DRUGS sessions and left off, to later appear on BENT APPLETREES 6. DREAMBOAT 2, as the name implies, is a reprise of DREAMBOAT, from the self-titled MILIEU album. Finally, closing up the disc are two selected live cuts, the first being a dirty and playful rendition of SLOWFADE HIGH FIVE, performed at the Lab 30 festival in Augsburg, Germany back in autumn of 2007. The second is a performance of the OUR BLUE RAINBOW cut RAINY DAYLIGHT, played for a creaky country house full of sleepy people in Cayce, South Carolina back in 2006. It was the closing piece of the set and you can laughably hear me remind everyone afterward that the set ended, so they could pick themselves up off the floor. These live recordings were compromised by low-fidelity recording setups, so please be aware that although the greatest care was taken to remaster them, they exist as artifacts before they exist as pieces of music. Additionally, a previously-forgotten live set recording from 2006 surfaced while searching for the masters of this material. It's been released as a companion piece to SUN BLEACHED PIANO here: milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-birch-park released September 20, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD and Foxhill, 2006-2008, except where noted. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, September 2016. This is Milieu Music number AD28, and 28th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Live At Birch Park [February 9th, 2006] (45:23) On February 9th, 2006, I put together a Milieu live set for a small group of family and friends, nearby the studio I was using at that time. This was an informal, although pre-planned, rehearsal for what may have become my live set in the Cayce countryside later that month. Attentive listeners will realize the drastic differences between this set and the Cayce set, which ended up winning out with newer pieces I'd finished and Coppice Halifax material, instead of this set, which is far more "traditional" Milieu material. So at some point, this recording was shelved away in the archive, to be accidentally located now, over 10 years later in 2016, while looking for master recordings of concurrent material. While there isn't much that hasn't been already released on offer here, the presentation and the processing of many of these tracks for the live environment are fascinating, making this recording an interesting time capsule of what felt fresh in Milieu-land ten years ago. released September 20, 2016 W/P by Brian Grainger. Performed and recorded at Birch Park, Columbia, South Carolina, February 9th, 2006. Photograph by Brian, Columbia 2007. This is Milieu Music number AD28B, an appendix to AD28 (Sun Bleached Piano), in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Ambitropic Bedroom Carnival [Morning] (21:34) 02. Milieu - Ambitropic Bedroom Carnival [Night] (40:47) Upon leaving South Carolina and moving to Ohio late last year, I was sad about having to leave my Lowrey organ behind. Everything we were taking had to fit into one shipping container, and there simply wasn't any room for it. The organ has been a mainstay in my studio, appearing in some capacity on nearly every single album I've recorded since buying it in 2002. Longtime friend and collaborator David Tagg was going to try to drive out and pick it up, but he hasn't been able to swing it. At this moment, it's set to be left on the curb outside my old house, for either the county waste pickup or some curious passerby to pick up, free. So, as I enjoy settling into my new White Pillar Workshop, things still only feel as if they are 90% complete without the organ here. I'll eventually replace it, of course, but I'll likely opt for a different model or something even more graduated than the Lowrey. Thrift shoppers can't be too choosy. This is why I felt it pertinent to craft a special sendoff to the old Lowrey, something to wave goodbye to an old reliable friend with. The result of this initiative is Ambitropic Bedroom Carnival. A 2-track long player, containing brother-sister mixes of the same piece, has been built using only sounds from my Lowrey, sampled and taped and backed up across the years of use. It also features some field recordings of a windy spring day outside my first Columbian studio, 114RKD, which is visible in the Holga photograph used on the cover. The first piece is for the late nights that turned into mornings in that space, and the second is for the evenings that turned into late nights. A warm missive for something that's been such a vital part of my exploration as a musician. released March 17, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph taken by Brian in Columbia, 2007. This is Milieu Music number MMD037. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sand (4:59) 02. Milieu - Gate (6:39) 03. Milieu - Sand [Cardfeedback Modulus] (5:30) 04. Milieu - Gate [X-PShapes] (13:28) Sandgate, initially recorded in a sporadic session one weekend, and named for a location where a close friend resides, which I myself have never been. After sitting on the shelf for a few months, I opted to do some augmenting to the original tracks and see where I could take them. A few hours later, I felt like I'd unearthed four rare gems and polished them enough to place them in ornamental displays around my house. A colorful blend of hardware and software with lots of creative FX processing and (perhaps unexpected) sampling, Sandgate in many ways brings back the psychedelic, tape-crusted funk of earlier Milieu albums. Sugar, and a little bit of toothpaste, for the eardrums. released April 6, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded initially Fall 2016 in White Pillar Workshop, with final mix completed April 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian in Hopkins, South Carolina, 2015. This is Milieu Music number MML118. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Soda Can Acid [Redkreem Mix] (7:44) 02. Milieu - Soda Can Acid [Bluebubbles Mix] (9:11) 03. Milieu - Soda Can Acid [L8 Mix] (3:24) Bouncy sproingy bubbly new Milieu jams for Spring! Fashioned entirely live and using only the tastiest hardware ingredients, Soda Can Acid pulls melodic toe-tapping funk out of old Roland gear like the TR-505 and 626, new staples like Korg's Volca Keys & Bass and the monster floorshaker Microbrute from Arturia. Two tracks to turn your bedroom into a dancefloor, then one beatless cut for dialing things back down to a comfortable level. Burned and stamped into three inches of digital disc spinout, for your portable pleasure. **Includes bonus alternate artwork, prefabricated for all your Milieu cat meme needs. released April 6, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, January 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian in Dayton, Ohio, 2016. This is Milieu Music number MML119. Special thanks to Boris. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Accumulation State 1 (20:33) 02. Milieu - Accumulation State 2 (20:19) 03. Milieu - Accumulation State 3 (14:23) 04. Milieu - Accumulation State 4 (18:33) 05. Milieu - Accumulation Stasis (1:14:52) Upon returning to the original, raw cassette recordings for A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions, laid to sun-baked tape in 2010 in South Carolina, the temptation to play with the material became too great to bear, and subsequently these extended ambient pieces were generated. Built using a convoluted process of both wearing down the original cassette sound until it is nearly unlistenably textured, then elongating it digitally to allow for these textural events to pull themselves apart in unique ways, the resultant recordings were further processed live via an FX chain of exponential reverb saturations and pitch shifts up/down two octaves. This process allowed for moments that may have otherwise been very small melodic transitions in the original pieces to become far more pronounced and overt, effectively building huge atmospheres from a very singular provenance. These pieces have been especially mastered at a lower volume level to allow for the listener's momentary environment to color the playback, although they will also work sufficiently with a nicer set of headphones. The original recordings have been remastered (albeit more traditionally) and augmented with a 40-minute Coppice Halifax remix here: milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/a-blanket-of-infinite-repetitions-expanded-remastered released April 21, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Processed & recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2017, using only the original cassette recordings for A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML121. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Clock (5:58) 02. Milieu - Blackfur (4:19) 03. Milieu - Boris & His Bedroom Beat (7:40) 04. Milieu - Amble (3:05) To celebrate the release of the new Milieu album, FUGUE STATE PHASES, at Recycled Plastics - here's a single/EP for my favorite track on that album (Tim Looks At The Clock), backed by three extra tracks. Blackfur was previously released on digital format only on the Touched 3 compilation, and Boris & His Bedroom Beat / Amble are both unreleased tracks from earlier this summer. Funky, detuned and ear-caressing Milieu jams for your transitioning into cooler evenings of fall. Open the windows, push that volume knob up and cruise. released August 4, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. #1-2 recorded at Botany Bay, 2013-2016, #3-4 recorded at White Pillar Workshop 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, used with gracious permission. This is Milieu Music number MML122. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Lepus Tolai Habibi (5:17) 02. Milieu - Candy For Brandon (5:16) 03. Milieu - Tim Looks At The Clock (5:58) 04. Milieu - Amanita Park (5:34) 05. Milieu - Junk Collection (6:13) 06. Milieu - Matt's Happy Song (4:12) 07. Milieu - Habibiella Gaillardi (6:13) 08. Milieu - Jason Stands On His Head (6:00) 09. Milieu - David's Dream Journal (7:30) 10. Milieu - Shazy's Dance (4:32) Privately commissioned in 2013, Fugue State Phases has collected digital dust for four years now. Recording sessions began with the express intent to return to the 'classic' Milieu sound, circa 2005-2006, following the example of albums like Slow Lid Close and Our Blue Rainbow. To do this, I went to great lengths in order to use the exact same setups and FX that I used back then, and worked for several months to attempt to get back to that very specific headspace, compositionally. I'm not absolutely certain that I succeeded in my charge, but considering how much material I create, even the distance of a year is like centuries apart, in terms of forward movement in my work. In any case, the results are quite melodic, funky and a little bent in that very specific detuned way all of the earlier Milieu music was. The astute listener will recognize certain drum breaks, bass, organ and synthesizer sounds and other ephemera that appeared all over the earlier Milieu output. A possible past, perhaps from a different Brian Grainger in a different timeline - where instead of Slow Lid Close, this might have existed in its place. Today, I'm releasing this publicly to aid Bandcamp's charity drive for the Transgender Law Center, on August 4, wherein they will donate 100% of their share. Some of my biggest musical influences are transgender or gender-queer artists, and their equal rights, happiness and well-being mean a lot to me. So buy a record, get some music, help me and help others in need - everybody wins. **Editor's note: All track titles for this album were conceived by the person who commissioned the work. I do not know the people they name or the situations they reference. In this way, the work maintains a personal connection to the curator, while simultaneously being a public work for everyone to draw their own conclusions with. released September 1, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2013 for private commission. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Issued with thanks to K.F. Photography by Rudolf Kremers, used with gracious permission. This is Recycled Plastics number RP9. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Go Divers (2:11) 02. Milieu - Petal Pool (4:38) 03. Milieu - Red Balloons Over A Blue Shore (4:01) 04. Milieu - Old Fives (1:18) 05. Milieu - Rainbowland (2:22) 06. Milieu - Holograph Dub (4:50) 07. Milieu - A Blanket Of Infinite Repetitions [Part One] (3:38) 08. Milieu - Cumulus Drones (3:31) The October 2017 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler. released October 1, 2017 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Silk Fur Marcine (12:34) 02. Milieu - Sill Vellocet Elaine (12:36) 03. Milieu - Starview Treeline (17:17) 04. Milieu - Squire Trelaine (10:24) Catalog number MML124 is an informal tribute to Botany Bay, my previous studio in Columbia. It is comprised of four distinct sections taken from a live set rehearsal, longform hardware funk jams that sound just as bedroom as they do club. Built in realtime using 4x Korg Volcas / Boss DR-110 / Alesis Quadraverb / Boss RV-3 / BBE Two Timer / JVC KD-A11 & a Peavey FX2x24 board, in conjunction with some selective software processing in post. Heavy, groovy, weird as hell, touching on many different aspects of where Milieu has been these last few years, as well as moments that could have easily appeared on the similarly-produced Coppice Halifax album Argentine Confiture. As the years go on, the lines between Milieu and CH continue to blur in certain spots, and I find that I really enjoy that middle ground when it happens. It always feels very fun, alive, spontaneous and hopefully that spirit of the performance translates via these recordings. released October 24, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, October 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian @ Florida, June 2015. This is Milieu Music number MML124. For Botany Bay: Goodbye is never really goodbye. Special thanks to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club, for helping make this recording possible: David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Francois H / Andy B / Joe U / Benoit P / Jonathan W / Jose S / Rik J / Dave W / Levi G / Chris S / Justin T / Burton T. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Silk Fur Marcine (12:34) 02. Milieu - Silk Vellocet Elaine (12:36) 03. Milieu - Starview Treeline (17:17) 04. Milieu - Squire Trelaine (10:24) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.3 from 2. September 2016 REM GENRE IDM ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Saltwater (5:07) 02. Milieu - Calico (2:11) 03. Milieu - Blank Disk (3:14) 04. Milieu - Counting Lights (5:18) 05. Milieu - Golden Hill (5:09) 06. Milieu - U.A.U. (4:05) 07. Milieu - Angela Night Lite (2:24) 08. Milieu - Another Space Calling (10:36) The November 2017 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler. released November 1, 2017 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Serial N Milq (7:00) 02. Milieu - Mmx 4 (5:56) 03. Milieu - Tom & Rudolph (5:43) 04. Milieu - Blue White Nights (4:08) 05. Milieu - Daisy Scrapbook (4:18) 06. Milieu - Further (Live Oh Five) (4:26) 07. Milieu - Dialogue Five (Excerpt) (10:25) 08. Milieu - Last Waves (2:23) The December 2017 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler. released December 1, 2017 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Snowradius, Part One (1:00:47) 02. Milieu - Snowradius, Part Two (1:04:36) 03. Milieu - Snowradius, Part Three (1:12:21) Snowradius is the first new holiday Milieu recording since 2011's Swirling Tinsel Singalongs (itself a compilation of two previously recorded holiday EPs), an ambient triptych that significantly expands the chilly Winter atmosphere of Swirling Tinsel's "Snowradio". Created using similar production methods as those employed on Accumulation States, Snowradius' three long suites are generated using extremely processed and reduced vinyl recordings of orchestral, choral and other Christmas music, smeared and melted down to the point that what you are perceiving is a temperature and blend of colors, with a very occasional and subtle chord change that might, in some rare case, recall a holiday tune from the past that you might recognize. These aural paintings are made complete by casting them over a carefully constructed backdrop of field recordings, from two different snowfalls 600 miles apart. Murmurs of fuzzed speech drip in and out of the haze like melting icicles, and cold air frames the deep ambient vistas with a subtle breath, barely visible in the cold. Snowradius is a massive triple-album set, designed to calm and comfort the stressed holiday listener for bedroom or headphone playback applications. Mixed at a modest level, these pieces can be used for warm Winter sleep, late night reading or fireside intimacy, providing only texture and tonal color to accent the relaxed environment of your choice. released December 13, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, December 2017, using a Gemini PDT-6000 and a large array of analog and digital FX units, alongside field recordings conducted in South Carolina and Ohio, using a Tascam DR-07 and a Zoom H1. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMC009. Photograph taken by Brian, Botany Bay December 2014. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Enjoy Your Stay At The Holograph Lounge (1:13) 02. Milieu - Up Late In The Upstate (Demo) (5:34) 03. Milieu - Asteroid Beats (4:06) 04. Milieu - Sage Derby (3:31) 05. Milieu - Cardigan Acid (5:38) 06. Milieu - My Shiny Sunday (Demo) (2:04) 07. Milieu - Star Bath (4:32) 08. Milieu - The Loneliness Of Empty Roads, Part Two (9:39) The January 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler. #2 is previously unreleased. released January 1, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 1 (6:18) 02. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 2 (5:32) 03. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 3 (3:45) 04. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 4 (5:13) 05. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 5 (8:32) 06. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 6 (6:50) 07. Milieu - A.N.M. Phase 7 (6:36) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The first set, cryptically titled ANDROPHOTIC NURSE MASK, was completely improvised and broadcast online as audio/video from the White Pillar Workshop studio, privately to the Milieu Music Fan Club. It was created using only four Korg Volca units (Keys, Bass, Beats and Sample), in conjunction with outboard FX like an Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box, a BBE analog delay and a Boss RV-3 digital reverb, all channeled through the able faders and paths of a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. The choice was made to index different tracks throughout the different phases of the set, in order to make it easier to navigate, although playback should still remain as seamless as it was when it was performed. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released January 23, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on November 2nd, 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number HW001, and first in the ongoing live HOUSEWORK subcatalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 1 (6:13) 02. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 2 (7:22) 03. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 3 (4:44) 04. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 4 (9:14) 05. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 5 (6:37) 06. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 6 (8:42) 07. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 7 (14:00) 08. Milieu - S.W.H. Phase 8 (6:47) SINE WAND HONEYDOWSING is the second album in the HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. This second set was completely improvised and broadcast online as audio/video from the White Pillar Workshop studio. It was created using only four Korg Volca units (Keys, Bass, Beats and Sample), in conjunction with outboard FX like an Alesis Quadraverb, a Pioneer spring reverb box, a BBE analog delay and a Boss RV-3 digital reverb, all channeled through the able faders and paths of a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. The choice was made to index different tracks throughout the different phases of the set, in order to make it easier to navigate, although playback should still remain as seamless as it was when it was performed. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released January 23, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on November 4th, 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number HW002, and second in the ongoing live HOUSEWORK subcatalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Afterschool Trak (Daycare Pops Mix) (4:21) 02. Milieu - Mono Field (2:43) 03. Milieu - Star Bath (4:32) 04. Milieu - Amtrac (Silverbus Mix) (3:43) 05. Milieu - Metallic Eggshell (4:21) 06. Milieu - Bubblewrap Bridge (0:33) 07. Milieu - Mass Transit Blues (4:55) 08. Milieu - Archeocyathid (Coral King Mix) (3:37) 09. Milieu - Blue Bronze (2:31) 10. Milieu - The Light In The Lake (Magic Busbee Mix) (3:58) 11. Milieu - Cinder And Blush (5:46) 12. Milieu - Golden Hill (Sun Brother Mix) (4:58) 13. Milieu - Star Brittle (8:14) 14. Milieu - Afterschool Trak (5:46) 15. Milieu - Amtone Garden (1:53) Amtrax was originally a promotional-only EP given away with the first few orders of the Bell'n Dither album, in 2010. It consisted of five cuts from the sessions, presented in alternative, beat-centric versions. Here, almost eight years later, I've returned to the source recordings, tapes and software files for the occasion of reissuing Bell'n Dither, and expanded Amtrax to a robust 15 track album all its own. The original five mixes of Afterschool Trak, Amtrac, Archeocyathid, Golden Hill and The Light In The Lake appear here, re-sequenced and granted their original mix headings as well. Beyond these, the original version of Afterschool Trak (from the Pinwheel Carousels compilation) appears here, as well as Star Bath, an EP cut from 2005 that has only managed to surface on scarce physical iterations until now. Further rounding out the substance of the album are a number of Bell'n Dither outtakes, many of which feel more loose and "jammy", despite their intricately programmed rhythms and analog melodic textures. For this reason, they were likely omitted from both the Sadhills companion album and Amtrax, only now surfacing to greet curious ears. Listening back to these tracks today, it becomes more than apparent how much of a love affair with my Korg ER-1 drum machine this album was. The ER-1 appears on every single cut, often in multiple juxtapositions, providing not only rhythm but tonal parts and other textures that are likely to be recognized as skeletal forms within other Bell'n Dither tracks. An interesting tableaux of works that makes for a stimulating excursion alongside Bell'n Dither and Sadhills, and a proper issuing of many of these oft overlooked cuts. released January 30, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD & Foxhill, 2005-2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Guitar on #9 and #12 by David Tagg. Cover design by ABM&D, following a design template by David Tagg. This is Milieu Music number AD35C, and 35Cth in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Wand 1 (Silver Pearls) (8:46) 02. Milieu - Wand 2 (Blue Leaves) (5:55) 03. Milieu - Wand 3 (Cyan Arch) (7:05) 04. Milieu - Wand 4 (Apple Tree) (6:08) 05. Milieu - Wand 5 (Windy Fields) (9:50) 06. Milieu - Wand 6 (Bell Forest) (18:52) Upon returning to my session recordings for Bell'n Dither, it became apparent that I'd laid the groundwork for an ambient companion piece, much in the same way I later did with Inland By Night - rearranging Pawleys Island songs, reducing them to just melodies and ambience. For whatever reasons that I can no longer remember, these six tracks sat unrendered/unrealized/unreleased until I stumbled over them looking for other materials. With a little effort and processing, they now appear as a supporting fourth act with the reissues of Bell'n Dither (milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/belln-dither), Sadhills (milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/sadhills) and Amtrax (milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/amtrax-plus). Musically, these songs bear more resemblance to my Statuettes album for Lee Norris' Txt label in the UK - ornamental and pretty, but also isolated and melancholic. Obvious influences from Aphex Twin's SAW II, Cylob's Cylobian Sunset, Eno and Budd's The Pearl and probably even Philip Glass' organ works. As I finalized them, I felt as if each track was a magical wand that, when used to strike bells, would ring out these beautiful melodies of longing and nostalgic fantasy. They have been named as such, although eagle-eared Milieu listeners will likely be able to work out what each track is a version of. Ambell Suns is a unique ambient perspective on Bell'n Dither's often glitchy and programmed approach, and stands on its own as a beatless Milieu monument built for sleep and introspection. released January 30, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded principally at 114RKD, 2009-2010, with final rendering and production at White Pillar Workshop, 2017-2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D, following a design by David Tagg. This is Milieu Music number AD35D, and 35Dth in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Original Dromeda (1:32) 02. Milieu - Petals (4:01) 03. Milieu - Treebark Honey (4:14) 04. Milieu - Spring Reverb Airlock (5:44) 05. Milieu - Jacket Holograph (Smoking Neon Mix) (4:30) 06. Milieu - Burnt Dusk (Reduction) (9:45) 07. Milieu - Soft Island Amb (1:29) 08. Milieu - Astrolabe Dub (4:45) The February 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler released February 8, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Lastgasp Dusk Returner (Phase 1) (1:47) 02. Milieu - Lastgasp Dusk Returner (Phase 2) (4:56) 03. Milieu - Lastgasp Dusk Returner (Phase 3) (4:33) 04. Milieu - Lastgasp Dusk Returner (Phase 4) (3:12) 05. Milieu - Lastgasp Dusk Returner (Phase 5) (2:58) 06. Milieu - Lastgasp Dusk Returner (Phase 6) (6:35) 07. Milieu - Test Acid (Rehearsal) (6:48) 08. Milieu - Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (Phase 1) (7:42) 09. Milieu - Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (Phase 2) (6:40) 10. Milieu - Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (Phase 3) (6:22) 11. Milieu - Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (Phase 4) (7:41) 12. Milieu - Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (Phase 5) (9:33) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The third volume, BLOODY KNUCKLES BETAPHASE, consists of two different live sets and a rehearsal track between them. The first of the two sets, Lastgasp Dusk Returner, was drafted as an "encore" performance for someone who missed the live stream of Sine Wand Honeydowsing. It bears some similarities in patterns and melodic sequences, but is an altogether more frantic and technoid entity, building up through patches of off-kilter breaks and bent acid lines to a barnstorming kickdrum fantasy at the end. The intermission cut, TEST ACID, is a recording of the first ever video broadcast from the White Pillar Workshop, created to ascertain and calibrate volume levels and distortion thresholds. The second set, the titular Bloody Knuckles Betaphase, was a proof-of-concept set made on the bedroom carpet, with a smaller Mackie mixer (instead of the usual Peavey mammoth) and a suitcase-rig of MIDI-free mostly analog instruments. It goes from an uptempo Analord-style approach to an industro dub lurch, with rugged distorted drum machines, shuddering glitch sequences and metallic pad chords, which tightens back up by the end and lays down the law with gigantic planetary collapse rhythmic fervor. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released March 13, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on November 4th, 2017 (#1-6), November 2nd, 2017 (#7) and January 10, 2018 (#8-12). #1-7 created using Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys/Sample, with outboard FX and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. #8-12 created using a Boss DR-110, 4x Korg Volcas and Bliptronic 5000, with Ibanez SM7 / Boss RV-3 / Synthrotek PT2399 FX and a Mackie ProFX8 mixer. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number HW003, and third in the ongoing live HOUSEWORK subcatalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section One] (1:00:47) 02. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Two] (1:09:53) 03. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Three] (1:15:13) 04. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Four] (1:10:45) 05. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Five] (1:04:24) 06. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Six] (1:00:31) 07. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Seven] (47:51) 08. Milieu - Recursive Bell [Section Eight] (32:46) Since starting with music in 1997, I've been consistently fascinated with producing longform recordings. The longest single-session pieces I've created, to date, have been the 13.5 hour Autochromata III (a generative work) and the nearly 6 hour Night's Moisture (a sleep balm for my infant daughter) - both works by Coppice Halifax. Until now, Milieu as an entity has existed somewhere between rhythmic bedroom electronics and varying shades of ambient music, with many different configurations between the two. I've long wanted to put my name to a longform Milieu work, and with a recent commission for such from a close friend, it has finally come to fruition. Living In The Shadow Of A Recursive Bell Whose Chime Echoed The Dawn Of Consciousness, while being a suitably lengthy title for what is an 8 hour near-generative ambient work, also bears some examination for the intent behind this recording, and the contexts it sprang from. It refers to numerous aspects of my first year of life as a resident of this windy Ohio valley, both obliquely and directly. On a more topical level, it is a poetic representation of the feeling I get waking up in the morning to the sound of that Ohio breeze blowing through the metal windchimes behind my kitchen, which coincidentally have been tuned to play a specific melodic passage from Igor Stravinsky's masterwork The Rite Of Spring. Since seeing the Disney film Fantasia as a boy, I have (probably like many American boys) associated that piece of music with the creation, and primordial Earth. So, it follows that hearing the individual notes of such a melody, while slowly regaining awareness, brings to mind a foggy recollection, a distant deeply buried understanding of the violent genesis of the world around me. On a deeper, more abstract level, the title explains my fascination with generative systems - how a simple set of six notes can be infinitely and randomly arranged, and will only rarely play in the proper order of a recognizable melody. How, despite the seemingly infinite spaces between such occurrences, these melodic motifs do recur, conjuring the notion that time itself is the composer in this way, and not Stravinsky. Perhaps, in some way, Stravinsky's presentation of those six notes was itself a recurrence of a melody from some other prior time and space. An inevitable reiteration. An inescapable eventuality that absolves myself and anyone else of any actual artistic intent. We're just "tapping into something in the air", as my father used to say to me when we'd arrive at similar motifs in our guitar playing, completely separate from each other. So this Milieu recording, too, has been plucked from the cool air blowing through this Ohio valley - no doubt passed on from some other set of aware ears. It exists everywhere, all the time, and also nowhere at all. And I am only a resident of time's currents, surfing on sine waves, letting the universe write the melodies, just as Eno, Lucier, Radigue and countless others have done before me. released March 13, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Principally recorded on January 13th, 2018 at White Pillar Workshop, using a MIDI-free configuration of Korg Volca Bass / Keys / Sample, Korg MS-20, Arturia Microbrute, Boss DS-330, Grass C-TCM, Roland SH-32, Unisonic Chippendale in conjunction with Moog Ringmod / MIDI MuRF, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3, Peavey FX2x24. Subsequently prepared for semi-generative 8-hour playback and broadcast live on the internet from 6 PM on March 2nd to 2 AM on March 3rd, 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography generated during the original online broadcast, using only video feedback, with stills captured and processed by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number COMMISSION 5, privately commissioned by A.J.C / T.P.D and approved for public dissemination by express agreement with those parties. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - A Simple Station (2:58) 02. Milieu - Windy Fields Roadracer (5:23) 03. Milieu - Miss December 2183 (1:17) 04. Milieu - Lazy Shade (4:25) 05. Milieu - Appletree Theme (3:45) 06. Milieu - Auto-Land (8:30) 07. Milieu - Mmx 1 (4:42) 08. Milieu - Sedentary Lifestyles [45 Mix] (8:34) The March 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler. Track 8 previously unreleased. released March 14, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Coming Home (4:28) 02. Milieu - Warming (3:38) 03. Milieu - Crptabus (5:27) 04. Milieu - Fireleaf Freesky (1:55) 05. Milieu - Paperbacks (3:33) 06. Milieu - Veedol (2:58) 07. Milieu - Mmx 6B (3:34) 08. Milieu - Winter's Gasping Revenge (7:47) The April issue of the monthly Milieu sampler. released April 24, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Chasing Dusk (8:05) 02. Milieu - Spring Chime (Blurred) (8:16) 03. Milieu - Lowland Radio (6:43) 04. Milieu - Dim Hours (5:30) 05. Milieu - Valley Green (5:55) 06. Milieu - Spring Chime (12:55) Elide is a somewhat unexpected ambient Milieu album, which resides somewhere between the recent Ambell Suns release (which transfigured melodies from Bell'n Dither into sad ambient microforests) and the upcoming Statuettes Part Two album, recorded years ago and scheduled for a release at ROHS in Berlin. It collects a series of isolated shorter sessions, undertaken throughout the Autumn and Winter seasons of 2017/2018, which use sampled bells, thumb pianos and various tonal percussion elements alongside analog synthesizers and outboard processors. All of this is gently hushed along like leaves in a valley breeze, through soft field recordings and manipulated radio static. Music for dreaming about Summer in the colder parts of the year, inspired by things such as GAS, Purl, Arjen Schat and the usual suspects such as SAW II, Variant, Irv Teibel's Environments and Wendy Carlos' Sonic Seasonings. released May 16, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Autumn-Winter 2017/2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Brian, Cleveland June 2016. This is Milieu Music number MMD041. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Circles In The Spacebook (1:01) 02. Milieu - Three Maps (4:48) 03. Milieu - The Burning Snow (6:08) 04. Milieu - The Earth As Our Pillow (6:00) 05. Milieu - Where Mountains Once Stood (3:53) 06. Milieu - Seashell Breeze (1:53) 07. Milieu - Antique Sunlight (5:26) 08. Milieu - Blueskies Found (1:36) The May 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler series. released May 27, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sunline Sail (5:29) 02. Milieu - Penelope Envelope (4:47) 03. Milieu - Briam (7:22) The first of two (or maybe three) singles from the forthcoming SUN CAST album - a new Milieu record that has been in progress for the better part of eight years. Weathering hard drive crashes, studio changes, relocation and the birth of my daughter in that span of time, the material presented on Sun Cast is very much what one might call "classic Milieu" in that it returns to the subtropical Summer melodies, chopped break rhythmic nod, warm tanned basslines and a melancholic wistfulness that you can't quite put your finger on. A special record that will hopefully delight fans of albums like New Drugs and Swaying Palms, as well as Halifaxian works such as Ocean Lion and Pink Acre. SUNLINE SAIL is a bouncy electronic pop bottle, eager for the Summertime months while being all too aware that they will be over faster than you'd like. Backed by two b-sides, "Penelope Envelope" being an outtake from the Sun Cast sessions and "Briam", which previously appeared on the 3067 Megs charity compilation, here's to twenty minutes of blissful Summer escapism, built to last until it's time to go back to school. released June 14, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, various dates 2016-2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text & photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML127. "Sunline Sail" taken from the forthcoming Sun Cast album. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - J Is For Jem (2:28) 02. Milieu - Drysummer (6:04) 03. Milieu - Wood Weed (4:19) 04. Milieu - Île du Levant (5:51) 05. Milieu - Archipelagos (6:33) 06. Milieu - Kickdrum Klock (3:23) 07. Milieu - Original Yellowfather (8:46) 08. Milieu - Hyperaccelerated Exploding Sun (4:21) This is the June 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler series. released June 23, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Wind Over Hill (1:08:21) An unexpected album that materialized from session recordings for the Milieu album Elide ( milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/elide ), transmuting late Summer evenings in the White Pillar Workshop into sonic seasoning and sub-bass balm. Having the studio half underground, and half on the precipice of a steep ravine brings with it a sense of being surrounded by Earth and nature. Trees filled sometimes with the rushing valley wind, and others, with blue hour skies and fireflies...but always, a sensation of being deep inside something. The Workshop drones on, ever pulsing with analog waves and echoes of distant ocean shores, lapping on empty beaches. The fantasy of escapism, ripe for the claiming, to be explored night after night, moment to moment, like pages in a sedative book. released July 7, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2018, using software processing in conjunction with an Arturia Microbrute monophonic analog synthesizer, Moog low pass filter, Korg MS-20 external signal processor, BBE Two Timer analog delay, Boss RV-3 digital reverb, Pioneer SR202W spring reverb box, Synthrotek PT2399 lo-fi delay, Alesis Quadraverb and a Peavey FX2x24 hybrid mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦVI. Text and design by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Green Heat (7:16) 02. Milieu - Mars Topaz Sadness (4:35) 03. Milieu - Red Summer (3:40) 04. Milieu - Plastercast Kiss (6:15) The second of three singles from the forthcoming SUN CAST album - a new Milieu record that has been in progress for the better part of eight years. Weathering hard drive crashes, studio changes, relocation and the birth of my daughter in that span of time, the material presented on Sun Cast is very much what one might call "classic Milieu" in that it returns to the subtropical Summer melodies, chopped break rhythmic nod, warm tanned basslines and a melancholic wistfulness that you can't quite put your finger on. A special record that will hopefully delight fans of albums like New Drugs and Swaying Palms, as well as Halifaxian works such as Ocean Lion and Pink Acre. GREEN HEAT is a track that sits on the fence between melodic Milieu sadness and Halifaxian "Analog Botany" style dub techno sway. While busier on the percussion side of things, it still manages to keep itself laid back, with a wooden synth-bass at the forefront and dub chord stabs washing in and out of the stereo field like bubbling waves. Somewhere in the midst of all this, a two-chord tremolo surfs in slowly as the rhythm dips under the surface of the water for a moment, kissing the mermaids and taking Polaroids of the warped faces above. Once the rhythm comes up for air, the track enters full-on Milieu melancholy mode, making the entire jam up to that point feel like a slow curtain pulling back to reveal a bleary-eyed sunset, laid over your tired sand-covered feet like a blanket. Backing Green Heat for the single are three outtakes from the SUN CAST sessions, themselves Summer-obsessed and ready for a drive. released July 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay (SC) and White Pillar Workshop (OH) between 2011-2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML128. "Green Heat" taken from the forthcoming Sun Cast album, presented here in a slightly edited form. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 1) (9:39) 02. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 2) (3:39) 03. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 3) (5:27) 04. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 4) (6:17) 05. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 5) (7:52) 06. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 6) (9:07) 07. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 7) (7:51) 08. Milieu - Nightlazer (Phase 8) (4:09) 09. Milieu - Saturday Night Lazer (Continuous Mix) (54:01) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The fourth volume, SATURDAY NIGHT LAZER, was streamed online as it happened to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club on the night of December 9th, 2017. As per the usual with live-in-studio sets, Lazer was completely improvised using only hardware (look Ma, no computers!) and no overdubs. This set begins with a halfway pretty-halfway drunk analog polysynth melody, which quickly gives way to bouncing house kicks and percolating rhythmic textures. Being made using only four machines total - Korg Volcas, all - things mutate and deform and before we know it, it's a psychedelic acid dance party. Things get shaken up though, more than you might expect for only four devices, some FX and a mixer - the sounds weave in and out of Perrey-esque bleep-bloop melodic playfulness, woozy synthesizer space-outs and mercilessly tight Milieu funk. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released July 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on December 9th, 2017. Created using Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys/Sample, with outboard FX (Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3) and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number HW004, and fourth in the ongoing live HOUSEWORK subcatalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - 17 / 18 (Phase 1) (13:31) 02. Milieu - 17 / 18 (Phase 2) (6:26) 03. Milieu - 17 / 18 (Phase 3) (7:42) 04. Milieu - 17 / 18 (Phase 4) (12:55) 05. Milieu - 17 / 18 (Phase 5) (9:21) 06. Milieu - 17 / 18 (Phase 6) (6:24) 07. Milieu - Seventeen Eighteen Argentine (Continuous Mix) (56:18) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The fifth volume, SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN ARGENTINE, is a special set that was performed live-in-studio and broadcast online to the Milieu Music Fan Club as the last hour of December 31st, 2017 ticked away, with the second half of the set being the first audio I created in the 2018 year. For this New Year's countdown celebration, friends were invited into the studio, drinks and snacks were brought in and two hours of unreleased music were broadcast to the Fan Club leading up to the set, which was also followed by an Occur set of half-jamming/half-playing vinyl. You may notice that this set is markedly faster in tempo than the previous sets in the Housework series - this was decided upon beforehand, to break up any notions of "comfort" dialing it in, avoiding monotony as much as possible. (Fuck Mono Tony, we like Stereo Tony and his pals Quad Tony and Fivepointone Tony - ha!) What followed was a frantic cascade of acidic monosynths, bending and warping in all those wonderful analog ways, accompanied by a frenzy of manic drum machine panic attacks, spattered percussion and rumbling filter growls everywhere. Somewhere around the halfway mark, the Arturia Microbrute comes in with a patch that sounds almost like a lower register piano, playing a plaintive sequence that weaves in and out of more drum machine madness, reverb soaking and finally drops off into abject isolationist space. Not an inappropriate analog for the way 2017 felt for a lot of us starving artist types! Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released July 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on December 31st, 2017 - January 1st, 2018. Created using Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys/Sample, Arturia Microbrute, Yamaha RY-20, Unisonic MX8888 with outboard FX (Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3/SL-20, Pioneer SR202W, Ibanez PM7, 3x Moogerfoogers) and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number HW005, and fifth in the ongoing live HOUSEWORK subcatalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Capricorn (4:23) 02. Milieu - Mass Transit Blues (4:55) 03. Milieu - Elep (5:47) 04. Milieu - Euflorian (4:32) 05. Milieu - Nightwalk (4:12) 06. Milieu - My Shiny Sunday (6:55) 07. Milieu - Seventeen-Oh-One (5:59) 08. Milieu - Summer Friends (3:51) This is the July 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler series. released July 17, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Rolerskates (1:03) 02. Milieu - Katiesong (4:08) 03. Milieu - My Bike (4:26) 04. Milieu - Five Four (2:13) 05. Milieu - As Summer Blooms [Remodelled] (2:57) 06. Milieu - Yellow Dust Orchard (5:19) 07. Milieu - Poppies (2:13) 08. Milieu - We Swam (4:26) The August 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler series. released August 18, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Sunline Sail (5:29) 02. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Green Heat (7:51) 03. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Chapel Pills (11:31) 04. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Makeout Payphone (7:03) 05. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Smokey Coat (7:31) 06. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Seaboard Girls (8:07) 07. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Sets U Free (10:24) 08. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Window Waves (9:36) 09. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Hightide Crush (8:13) 10. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Hurricane Blues (12:38) 11. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Swamp Lux (31:30) 12. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - She (5:09) 13. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Cillage (19:49) 14. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Heliodrome 2 (6:53) 15. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Roadshimmer Ecstasies (5:19) 16. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Carpark Zero (7:31) 17. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - The Summer And The C (8:48) 18. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Tropical Swamp (7:25) 19. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Sandoz Dress (7:27) 20. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - Tidewater Aubade (4:09) 21. Milieu & Coppice Halifax - A Cloud Draped Across The Sun (10:11) SUN CAST is the result of eight years of recording work, which began life as a Coppice Halifax album in the Ocean Lion series. Over time, and through several changes in my creative and family life, I realized that I was actually writing a Milieu album. The two projects have always been grown from the same sun-kissed soil, and certain albums have blurred the lines drawn between them - Sun Cast is such a project, and possibly the most unique one to sit on that fence. (For those more inclined to watch/listen than to read, I have recorded a vlog video where I attempt to explain and contextualize this album: youtu.be/9UNHmTXcwhU ) Rather than think of my creative work as a compartmentalized, strictly separated set of colors/shapes/sounds/places, Sun Cast asks the listener to consider that Milieu, Coppice Halifax and all the other monikers I've used are themselves only vessels, each navigating a different part of a great ocean. This ocean's water has many elemental aspects about it - it might meet smiling faces and warm sands in a blue-skied tropical paradise, when Milieu is navigating. Or it could end up beached on a distant, isolated island, covered in mountains, valleys and hairy green forests, when Coppice Halifax takes the helm. Further still, Vhom inhabits a cold abyss of Lovecraftian black noise, further down than the Mariana Trench...and the plaintive strummed guitars on Brian Grainger albums are themselves looking out longingly at the waves, held fast inland by the confines of youth and memory. All of the other facets and iterations of my artistic subconscious exist in this space as well, be they distant blinking stars, the drunken laughter of best friends or a haunted swamp backyard behind a small house in the country. And so, it is with this understanding that I ask you to consider Sun Cast as a rare opportunity to explore these alchemical soundwaves from two vantage points, instead of one. Like my obsession with Monet's paintings of the Rouen Cathedral - the same subject in the same space, transfigured by time and light every single day, and set into a frame by the same hands. Sun Cast is musical superposition - it is the new Milieu album, and it is also the new Coppice Halifax album. And when you listen to it, you will understand why it is this way - I didn't set out to do this out of indecision, or a lack of better editorial ability, and I couldn't convey the same sensation of depth and interconnection with my ideas if the Milieu tracks were separated from the CH tracks. The CH material on Sun Cast is not "remixes" or "versions", it is not bonus content or outtakes. Sun Cast is a straight line through a map that itself shifts from Milieu to CH and back to Milieu again for the duration of its trip. All this text, and I haven't even discussed the music itself! I think many of you reading this far already probably know what to expect from something like this, but for those that do not - it is melodic electronic music, applied with cassette warmth, mutant jazz/funk break sampling, detuned synthesizers and a host of head-nodding drum machines. It is like tropical and humid sad synth-pop, blended with aspects of hip hop, shoegaze bands and psychedelic Impressionism, played in its own time, without trying to make itself palatable for radio or mainstream appeal. And yet, I feel that it is the most emotive music I've laid to tape in years, which could be owed to the time spent on it, or having become a father during the creation/gestation of the album. It is also built brick-by-brick out of many of my biggest influences, such as The B-52's, Freescha, GAS, Fela Kuti and all kinds of disparate sources of inspiration, such as a lake, an electric plant, an overgrown backyard, a bedroom with an open window, the backseat of a smoke-filled car, an old paperback... In short, if you like Milieu albums like Swaying Palms or New Drugs, or you like Coppice Halifax albums like Ocean Lion or High Hawaiian Fog, then Sun Cast will really take you places. I hope you let it do what it has been designed to do, and if I'm right about that, we'll stroll on the sand, where the air and the land meet forever. released August 19, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the 114RKD, Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop studios in South Carolina and Ohio, from 2010-2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Design and layout by Eric Adrian Lee. This is Milieu Music number MMD043. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Autumn (1:11) 02. Milieu - Sandal Weave (5:55) 03. Milieu - Public Parks In The 1980s (2:29) 04. Milieu - Universes Inside You (1:28) 05. Milieu - Yellowcurl (1:59) 06. Milieu - Lights Out (1:15) 07. Milieu - Battle Hymn Of Tranquilized Dissonance (15:36) 08. Milieu - Woodgrain Elegiac (5:13) This is the September 2018 issue of the monthly Milieu sampler series. released September 14, 2018 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Bismuth Cosmolog [2018/05/28] (14:35) 02. Milieu - Friday Night Lazer [2017/12/08] (9:23) 03. Milieu - Age Onyx Poise [2018/05/20] (5:48) 04. Milieu - Bismuth Beats Pt. 1 [2018/05/28] (10:30) 05. Milieu - Bismuth Beats Pt. 2 [2018/05/28] (5:36) 06. Milieu - Age Onyx Q-S [2018/05/20] (12:06) Milieu returns to Recycled Plastics, bearing a new catalog of improvisations and excerpts from live performances. Bismuth Cosmolog will consist of tracks (or sections) taken from live Milieu sets, which Brian felt were better off in these isolated pieces than as a part of a longer session. Since the process of Milieu sets is ongoing, so too will the series be. This first volume opens with the namesake track, a 14-minute exploration on only two pieces of hardware (a Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer and a Teenage Electronics PO-12 drum machine). Phasing from melodic braindance bounce to something more plaintive and calm, it leaves the door wide open for Friday Night Lazer, a rehearsal of the live set that has since been released as Saturday Night Lazer at Milieu Music. In some ways, Friday is the "single version" of Saturday, although it's a little more spaced out in the lead lines than its companion. Friday was created using four Korg Volca machines (Bass/Beats/Keys/Sample). The two Age Onyx tracks originated from a quite heavy test session for the Minilogue and PO-12, with the latter playing ping-pong with an Alesis Quadraverb's sampler mode and a Synthrotek PT2399, to really fuck everything up. Bismuth Beats is a single piece, split into two distinct sections, that further mutates the same sequences and patches used on the title track. Bismuth Cosmolog will be a simple but funky series of live curiosities and snapshots of moments where the vibrations in the air seemed to be mingling just right. Originating from live recordings means these tracks are best enjoyed very loud on a stereo system with substantial low end output! released September 14, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Recycled Plastics number COSM01 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Phronesis [2018/06/23] (10:13) 02. Milieu - Mint Gel [2018/08/13] (4:28) 03. Milieu - Oxy Lucid [2018/06/23] (12:39) 04. Milieu - Mint Dub [2018/08/13] (5:13) 05. Milieu - Red Lamp On Carpet [2017/12/18] (18:08) 06. Milieu - Oxy Constellation [2018/06/23] (1:54) 07. Milieu - Red Lamp On Curtains [2017/12/18] (7:34) Milieu returns to Recycled Plastics, bearing a new catalog of improvisations and excerpts from live performances. Bismuth Cosmolog will consist of tracks (or sections) taken from live Milieu sets, which Brian felt were better off in these isolated pieces than as a part of a longer session. Since the process of Milieu sets is ongoing, so too will the series be. This second volume opens with Phronesis, a funky and offbeat jam recorded on Brian's wife's birthday with a Boss DR-110 drum machine controlling four Korg Volca machines (Bass/Beats/Keys/Sample), a Teenage Electronics PO-12 and a Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer. The two Oxy cuts were also taken from this same live set, themselves ever stranger iterations of the same machines and patches. Mint Gel is a short but sweet bubbly analog braindance track, and (as the title would indicate) Mint Dub manages to reduce it to a shuffle and some reverberated dub spatter. Both of the Mint tracks were generated using the 4x Volcas, Minilogue, Arturia Microbrute, Teenage Electronics PO-12, Korg MS-20 and a Roland SH-32. Finally, the Red Lamp tracks are from a more minimalistic set from late 2017, using only the four Volcas to build up their sequenced psychedelia. Bismuth Cosmolog will be a simple but funky series of live curiosities and snapshots of moments where the vibrations in the air seemed to be mingling just right. Originating from live recordings means these tracks are best enjoyed very loud on a stereo system with substantial low end output! released September 17, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Recycled Plastics number COSM02. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sunday Meadow Blush (31:58) An unexpected EP that materialized in a live session, with no overdubs, and was mostly improvised. One of the first recordings I made using the Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer, alongside an Arturia Microbrute on bass, Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys/Sample units, a Teenage Electronics PO-12 and some outboard FX. It recalls many of my biggest musical influences, such as Casino Versus Japan, early Aphex and Freescha, and was a perfect atmosphere to emerge from the studio this past Summer. In the wake of the much labored over and long-winded Sun Cast triple-album, Sunday Meadow Blush is a simple and sweet walk through a flowery park on a quiet blue-skied day. released September 28, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on June 24, 2018, and broadcast in realtime to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD045. Photography by Brian, shot with a Holga 35mm. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Summer Evaporated (1:06:12) Unexpectedly, much like the previous catalog entry Wind Over Hill, Summer Evaporated emerged as a tangential exploration of an outtake from the recently completed sessions for an album called Daughter. It felt appropriate to append this release to Psoma 6 as an extension, as it once again addresses the changing of seasons - something that has far more weight and dynamism living here in an Ohio valley, than it did (or didn't) in the Carolinian subtropics. Evaporated is a more (more?) minimalistic exercise than Wind, echoing the lethargy at the end of warm months, a resignation to the cool air, burnt leaves and fading greenery. Into the welcoming arms of Autumn, bountiful cornucopia of orange hue and cinnamon smoke, melted down around the sun-cast apples of Summer. Open a window, lie down with an old paperback and listen to the sound of the sunshine dissolving into perfumes of dust and hiss, fertilizing the Earth as it sleeps beneath the soil... released November 2, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, September 2018, using frequency modulation softsynths processed via Moog ring modulator/step filter/low pass filter, Pioneer spring reverb, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer analog delay and a Boss RV-3 digital reverb. Laid to Scotch non-virgin reel to reel tape on a Roberts 450A tape machine, with final digitization and EQ processing via a Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Psøma Psi Phi number ØΨΦVI.II. Text and design by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Muzak for Electronic Wind & Filtered Bell (2:00:31) In March, earlier this year, I issued a monument of generative ambient music: the eight-hour Living In The Shadow Of A Recursive Bell Whose Chime Echoed The Dawn Of Consciousness ( milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/living-in-the-shadow-of-a-recursive-bell-whose-chime-echoed-the-dawn-of-consciousness ). This massive release was sourced from a single 2-hour live session, parsing many different synthesizers apart for reconstitution into what became the final work. Until now, that original session has remained unreleased, heard and seen only by the few members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at that moment in time. The session took place during the evening hours of January 13th, 2018, and across the two-hour runtime, you are able to hear ten different synthesized voices emerge one at a time, seamlessly and gracefully, blown by the shapes of electronic wind currents and filtered through narrow banded hallways of EQ and reverberation. Half of the synthesizers were analog (Korg Volca Bass, Korg Volca Keys, Korg MS-20, Arturia Microbrute, DSI MoPho) and half were digital (Grass C-TCM, Roland SH-32, Yamaha QY-70, Boss DS-330, Korg Volca Sample), coalescing together each at a different independent tempo. Allowing each machine to move at its own pace meant that the individual sequences would never overlap in the same way twice - composed, and yet totally random and incidental. This process allowed me to become just as immersed in the playback of the sound, and the physicality of it, as those observing. All I needed to do the entire time was decide when and how the individual elements might enter/exit the mix, and tweak EQs/volume levels to suit, to make sure things remained spacious and uncrowded. Having had almost a year away from this recording, and coming back to it only recently, for mastering and subsequent release, I think it is an even more interesting piece than it was when it happened. My studio hardware has expanded and changed since then, so in many ways, this recording is just as much defined by the space and time of that January evening as it was by the slow LFOs and disparate sequence layouts. There's also always a slight strain of melancholy running through my work, Milieu especially, and that has only become more apparent here with time. Gently split in half to be etched across two white discs, Muzak is presented digitally in its unedited format, conveniently available in both dosages for home or traveling playback. released November 11, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Broadcast and recorded live on January 13th, 2018 at White Pillar Workshop. Generated using Korg MS-20 / Volca Bass / Volca Keys / Volca Sample, Arturia Microbrute, Yamaha QY-70, DSI MoPho, Boss DS-330, Grass C-TCM, Roland SH-32, processed via Pioneer SR202W, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3, Alesis Quadraverb and a Moog low-pass filter, and channeled through a Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing desk. Photograph by S.M.C. / Addl. photo processing and text by ABM&D. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MMD046. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Quadra (Phase 1) (4:52) 02. Milieu - Quadra (Phase 2) (6:15) 03. Milieu - Quadra (Phase 3) (7:09) 04. Milieu - Quadra (Phase 4) (11:34) 05. Milieu - CID (23:32) 06. Milieu - Quadracid (Continuous Mix) (53:23) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The sixth volume, QUADRACID, was improvised and broadcast on January 27, 2018 at the White Pillar Workshop, exclusively for the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club. Doing what you might have expected from the title, Quadracid lowers the pH levels of the Workshop with 4x Korg Volcas / Korg MS-20 / Arturia Microbrute / Roland TR-505 / Boss DR-660 / Yamaha RY-20 and some well placed FX, across four distinct phases of technoid rhythms, filter squealing acid lines and crispy fried percussion. The fifth track, and closing section of the set, drops the club off a cliff and loses itself in a winding forest of delay pings, feedback trails and spaced out Quadraverb atmospherics. This one sounds great when pushed to louder volumes, and still lets you down softly at the end. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released November 11, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised, broadcast and recorded live in the White Pillar Workshop, January 27 2018. Constructed using 4x Korg Volcas, Korg MS-20, Arturia Microbrute, Boss DR-660 and SL-20, Yamaha RY-20, Roland TR-505, 3x Moogerfoogers + various FX and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number HW006, and seventh in the ongoing Housework subcatalog of live recordings. Design and text by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Coolbreeze (Phase 1) (10:03) 02. Milieu - Coolbreeze (Phase 2) (8:46) 03. Milieu - Coolbreeze (Phase 3) (2:12) 04. Milieu - Coolbreeze (Phase 4) (2:56) 05. Milieu - Coolbreeze (Phase 5) (16:20) 06. Milieu - De-Com (Phase 1) (15:04) 07. Milieu - De-Com (Phase 2) (8:00) 08. Milieu - Coolbreeze Refreshment Time (Continuous Mix) (40:16) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The seventh volume, COOLBREEZE REFRESHMENT TIME, was improvised and broadcast on August 13, 2018 as one of two live sets that served as a "decompression" for my cluttered and exhausted brain, in the wake of two months' deep production work finishing the Sun Cast triple-album. As such, it is a loose and funky affair, with lots of spastic changes and blatant disregard for staying put. Also included here are two sections of a second set, broadcast earlier on June 23, that was tagged with the name DECOMPRESSION SESSION. Both sets were made using the same gear configuration: A Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer, Teenage Electronics PO-12 drum machine, Korg Volca Bass/Beats/Keys/Sample, Roland SH-32 polyphonic digital synthesizer, Arturia Microbrute monophonic analog synthesizer, Korg MS-20 monophonic analog synthesizer, Boss DR-110 analog drum machine and a large array of outboard analog/digital FX. Stylistically, both sets almost drunkenly wander their way through acid, techno, ambient minimalism and Autechre-influenced spasmodic IDM. Melodies, basslines and drum patterns are thrown around the stereo field like paint on a Pollock, making for a truly palate-cleansing and ear-flossing experience. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released November 12, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised, broadcast and recorded live in the White Pillar Workshop, August 13 2018 (#1-5) and June 23 2018 (#6-7). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number HW007, and seventh in the ongoing Housework subcatalog of live recordings. Design and text by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Rainpatch (Phase 1) (10:56) 02. Milieu - Rainpatch (Phase 2) (10:16) 03. Milieu - Rainpatch (Phase 3) (12:08) 04. Milieu - Rainpatch (Phase 4) (14:11) 05. Milieu - Frozen Rain Patchwork (Continuous Mix) (47:29) Heralding the start of a new sub-catalog at Milieu Music: The HOUSEWORK series. This heading will be responsible for distribution of Milieu live sets, recorded from 2017 onward. Every set will be cleaned up and mastered, as much as possible, by The Analog Botanist's loving hands and ears, made presentable for both club systems and home listening rituals, maximizing enjoyment. The eighth volume, FROZEN RAIN PATCHWORK, was broadcast live to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club via Twitch on February 5, 2018. The Workshop had closed me in that night, surrounded by freezing rain and icy streets, giving me the urge to make something comfortable, easy and accessible. The result was 48-minute set of spacious and melodic braindance, with moments of sequencer-ambient, acid spasms and house grooves. Conjured completely using Korg Volca Bass/Keys/Sample/Beats, Korg MS-20, Yamaha RY-20, Boss DR-660, Roland TR-505 and Arturia Microbrute, channeled thru the usual FX devices and the trusty "King Stevie" Peavey mixer. Nothing you haven't really heard before from Milieu, but that wasn't the point. F.R.P. is a cozy and familiar bedroom party on new and old hardware, singing and dancing in MIDI-unison...perfect for a day when you need to lock yourself inside. Mastering note: These recordings, and those that follow in the Housework catalog, were sometimes made so impulsively that there were less than ideal recording conditions present, such as ground hum, the occasional pop or click, etc. Every effort has been made to present the recordings as sincerely as possible, errors and all, with only as much editing as necessary. Please understand the raw nature of the performances is being preserved here above all else, and that sometimes means it retains some obvious flaws! released November 14, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Performed and recorded live on February 5th, 2018 at the White Pillar Workshop in beautiful Dayton, OH. Constructed using the following hardware: Korg Volca Bass/Keys/Sample/Beats, Korg MS-20, Yamaha RY-20, Boss DR-660, Roland TR-505, Arturia Microbrute + Moog MIDI MuRF, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Boss RV-3, Pioneer spring verb, Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number HW008, 8th in the Housework catalog of live Milieu performance recordings. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - [2017/11/02] Androphotic Nurse Mask (42:46) 02. Milieu - [2017/11/04] Sine Wand Honeydowsing (1:03:39) 03. Milieu - [2017/11/04] Lastgasp Dusk Returner (24:00) 04. Milieu - [2017/11/02] Test Acid (6:48) 05. Milieu - [2018/01/10] Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (37:59) (24Bit) 06. Milieu - [2017/12/09] Saturday Night Lazer (54:01) 07. Milieu - [2018/01/01] Seventeen Eighteen Argentine (56:18) 08. Milieu - [2018/08/13] Coolbreeze Refreshment Time (40:16) 09. Milieu - [2018/06/23] De-Com 1 (15:04) 10. Milieu - [2018/06/23] De-Com 2 (8:00) 11. Milieu - [2018/01/27] Quadracid (53:23) 12. Milieu - [2018/02/05] Frozen Rain Patchwork (47:29) 13. Milieu - [2018/11/12] Ambisthmus (11:11) 14. Milieu - [2018/11/12] Rainspasture (9:35) Almost exactly one year since the first live streams began, beamed from the White Pillar Workshop to the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club via Twitch, we have arrived at a milemarker: 8 volumes of improvised live Milieu recordings, now collected into a comprehensive boxed set. Houseworks contains all eight of the Housework releases from HW001-HW008, and presents them here in their unedited seamless original forms, alongside a bonus ambient EP - Home Works - processed from two sections of two different live performances. While this material has been painstakingly mastered to sound as nice as it possibly can, these recordings are raw and wild examples of Milieu in his natural setting, surrounded by gear, hands all over the mixer, in a cozy basement room lit only by the LEDs on the synthesizers and drum machines that are generating the realtime vibrations. A massive amount of music, annotated with dates and hardware configurations printed on the discs themselves, Houseworks is sure to both please, surprise and maybe even confound even the most dedicated Milieu listener. Limited to 10, so get in fast! released November 16, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Improvised and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, 2017-2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number HWB01. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (4:38) 02. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (5:24) 03. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (3:14) 04. Milieu - Rural Dialogues (10:24) 05. Milieu - Imagined Histories (7:57) 06. Milieu - Imagined Histories (9:49) 07. Milieu - Sand Dunes (10:49) 08. Milieu - Sand Dunes (10:20) 09. Milieu - Dialogue Five (20:58) 10. Milieu - Sand Dunes [Coppice Halifax Excavation] (43:54) 11. Milieu - Dialogue Six (5:09) Originally issued in April 2009, Brittle Paper Cathedrals has remained a somewhat under-the-radar Milieu album. In many ways, it was drafted as a kind of travelogue, to illustrate the different pastoral fields, oceanside stretches and sad dusky evenings that Milieu was host to across a span of five years. Looking back at it now, it is easy to imagine parts of this album comfortably appearing on other albums. The four-part Rural Dialogues suite could have been included on the countryside eclogue Silver Horns Heard Over Green Hills, with its warped guitar source material and filter-passed texture beds. The first of the two Imagined Histories pieces recalls striking similarities to the Nine Billion Names album, full of delayed organ feedback trails and pedal bass hum, while the second part feels right in between the first two Ocean Lion albums and Phosphene Weather, burbling restrained chords and melodies over a slow two-note bass motif. Finally, the closing two-track suite of Sand Dunes immediately conjures up reference points of Brother's endless sad refrains and the nautically blissed out Beyond The Sea/Stars recordings for Infraction Records three years before. Perhaps this is why the album has gone out of print and unattended for over nine years now - that it always felt so fractured between these crystalline sonic identities, that it never really belonged to itself. The title, whose original meaning has been lost to me now, seems to outline this fragility, and emphasize the macrocosmic grandeur found within barely held together aural ecosystems. Truly, remastering this material was a challenge, as much of it was generated using very low-fidelity equipment and recording processes, and the entirety of the album's voice resides within a very narrow set of frequency bands, where even the slightest equalizer nudge can offset the temperature of the atmosphere a whole lot. I can, however, report that I am happier now with the sound of these pieces than I was when I released them. To support this reissue edition, I've also included the out of print Dialogue Five EP, which was an outtake from the Rural Dialogues session, as well as a sixth Rural Dialogues session cut, omitted for some reason at the time. Perhaps inevitably, I have also spent considerable time drafting a Coppice Halifax excavation of the original Sand Dunes session, which runs just over forty minutes long and provides a modern counterpoint to the album proper. Also updated is the album's artwork - which was previously a simple wallpaper pattern I reproduced - now a black and white photograph from the ravine behind my current studio. released November 30, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll in Columbia, South Carolina, 2008-2009. Originally released on April 12, 2009. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at the White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2018. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD38, and 38th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Version I Side A (29:27) 02. Milieu - Version I Side B (29:27) 03. Milieu - Version II Side A (29:27) 04. Milieu - Version II Side B (29:27) music by MILIEU. vaped out, mixed and mastered by joshua rogers of illuminated paths and broken machine films utilizing lofi cassette to cassette and SVHS to cassette manipulation and layering only. check out the promo vid created by broken machine films and culled from pieces of the full 'daughter' movie here... www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXzNAD61veI released March 8, 2019 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Lenticular Carpet Surfboard [South Park Tavern 2018.11.02] (28:38) 02. Milieu - Lenticular Carpet Encore [South Park Tavern 2018.11.02] (6:21) 03. Milieu - Lenticular Basement Switchboard [Workshop 2018.08.24] (37:03) 04. Milieu - Lenticular Carpet Surfboard [Extended Rehearsal 2018.10.26] (53:18) 05. Milieu - Lenticular Carpet 3VCO [Workshop 2017.05.12] (7:16) For our 10th main catalog release, Recycled Plastics is happy to offer up a double-disc set of bedroom compost from the sun-baked mind of Milieu. 2+ hours of live braindance, compiled from a sweat-drenched club performance and a few studio rehearsals orbiting it. Bouncy, colorful and warm, and coaxed out of a computer-free rig of analog synthesizers, samplers, drum machines and FX. For fans of the hardware excursions on Bismuth Cosmolog, the melodic-overload of albums like Academy Stripes or the longform bliss-outs on the Eufloria soundtrack, the Lenticular Carpet Surfboard has room for just about everyone! released March 20, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Performed live on various dates with the following hardware: Korg Minilogue / Monologue / Volca Kick / Volca Sample / Volca Keys / Volca Bass / Volca Beats, Boss DR-202 / DR-660, Arturia Microbrute, channeled through a Peavey FX2 24-channel mixer and a Mackie ProFX8 8-channel mixer, with FX including a Pioneer SR202W spring reverb box, Boss RV-3 digital reverb, BBE Two Timer analog delay, Alesis Quadraverb, Ibanez DS-5 digital delay and custom DSP patches onboard the FX2 and ProFX8. Text and design by ABM&D. Mastering by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number RP10. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Amber Petrol'r (6:10) 02. Milieu - Nectar Mag (6:24) 03. Milieu - Alpine Valet (6:27) Amber Petrol'r is the first of two singles for/from the full-length affair Shallow Earth, issued at Recycled Plastics on May 17th. Opening with detuned breaths of polysynth pad, the mood quickly establishes itself with a ballooned FM bassline over a DR-660 digital drum machine. Slices of pop radio vocal flit around the stereo field, coagulating into a funky fuzz (or is that a fuzzy funk?). From there, Milieu turns on the cruise control, while the glistening melodies seep out of the speakers and stain the floorboards of the car. This all feels so very familiar, doesn't it? Have we all been here before? A moment's hesitation..."Wait a minute, wait a minute..." before a slow realization dawns: "We've met before, haven't we? It was at your house, don't you remember?" At this instant, we're no longer riding in a car, but falling upward into a fireworks show, surrounded by smoke and neon and electric heat. We're vaporized into a billion fluorescent particles of light, scattered across the horizon line like a radioactive rainfall, surfing on purple clouds in a sleepy night sky. Supporting Amber on her debut single are two non-album b-side tracks from the Shallow Earth sessions, Nectar Mag and Alpine Valet. If you'd like to hear the full album, check it out at Recycled Plastics: recycledplastics.bandcamp.com/album/shallow-earth released May 13, 2019 W/P by Milieu. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2018-2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Rudolf Kremers. Rudolf appears courtesy of Omni Systems, UK. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML136. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sadleaves (4:30) 02. Milieu - Borealis Theme (5:02) 03. Milieu - Ultraviolet Impressions (5:56) 04. Milieu - Tropical Sleeper (6:34) 05. Milieu - Night Divers (5:39) 06. Milieu - Soft Island (5:03) 07. Milieu - Coastline (4:56) 08. Milieu - Azurine Drowned (6:10) 09. Milieu - Hyperaccelerated Exploding Sun (4:22) 10. Milieu - Blue Drugs (4:13) 11. Milieu - Swaying Palms (3:00) 12. Milieu - Marshland Canopy (5:19) 13. Milieu - Night Winds Detuned (6:10) 14. Milieu - Endless Perfect Echo (6:47) 15. Milieu - Zeal Palace (3:48) 16. Milieu - Sad Summer (5:31) 17. Milieu - Neon Ambler (4:22) 18. Milieu - Lazy Shade (4:25) 19. Milieu - Missive (6:47) 20. Milieu - Azurine Droned (10:35) 21. Milieu - Waverider (5:30) 22. Milieu - Bluish Loop (1:00) 23. Milieu - Darkwood Incense Perfume (2:22) 24. Milieu - CRPTA Bus (5:27) 25. Milieu - Soft Island Amb (1:29) 26. Milieu - Smokey Beard (2:22) 27. Milieu - For Naoya & Miho (6:32) 28. Milieu - Tropical Sedater (5:03) 29. Milieu - Champagne Sun (3:20) 30. Milieu - Purple Palms (4:34) 31. Milieu - Echo Beach (3:30) 32. Milieu - Hazy Shade (3:34) 33. Milieu - Low Tide Glitter (2:44) It was the Spring of 2008 when I recognized the need to bring Milieu, as a project, into Phase II, whatever that would actually entail. I felt that with records like New Drugs, Our Blue Rainbow and Colortone, I'd gone as far as I could go with the slower tempos, mid-fi production and woozy sad-happy melodies, and I wanted to make a Milieu album that was brightly colored with a different set of watercolors, tropical, more clean-cut EQ, danceable even. Swaying Palms coalesced from these ideas, and when it was issued in July of 2009, it was the first of its kind in my catalog. It's easy to look back at this album now, and see the paths that have branched out from it - the braindance, acid and glossy funk of H Is For Hologram, Academy Stripes, Polypsilon and Tidewater Petrol, the Analog Botany series, Pawleys Island and even Sun Cast. All of these records owe at least some of their approach to the new ground that was broken here. Musically, it is almost over-abundant with warm basslines, while the same detuned synthesizers that were staples on prior Milieu albums took on different shapes, both rounder and more angular. The copious use of filters and textured compressors is still present, but dialed back behind an ever-present groove, with many moments on the album seeming to burst at the seams with rhythmic spasms, effects freakouts and huge tidal waves of reverberated chords. There's a lot more dynamism at play than on earlier Milieu albums, which may have preferred to simmer and jam out on a riff for a few minutes, instead of building up crescendos and dropping major changes out of hard tonal shifts. Many different inspirations bubbled up to the surface here, such as Casino Versus Japan and Freescha (always somewhere in the DNA of Milieu records), Fieldtriqp's more uptempo work on People Damage, Aphex Twin's Gentle People remix and his Polygon Window LP, Signaldrift, Yimino, Mrs Jynx, Miles Tilmann's Yes & No LP, Magic Arrows and The B-52's. The album was also courted for a vinyl release at the now-closed Consumer's Research & Development label in Chicago, before being re-sequenced, mastered a second time and issued as MMD006. It was released alongside two EPs, Azurine Droned and Waverider, which contained outtakes from the sessions, and a bonus EP called Shade Versions was included with the first 25 copies sold. This collection remasters and compiles all 13 original album tracks, all 10 tracks from Azurine Droned & Waverider and all 5 tracks from Shade Versions, plus the two tracks from the split EP with The Dandelion Council at Awkward Silence, "Sad Summer" from the EED's Summer Vacation compilation, "For Naoya & Miho" (a privately commissioned track for a Japanese wedding) and "Missive", a track recorded in Germany in 2007, which remained homeless for some time and, in many ways, was the first Swaying Palms track. 33 tracks in all, for an exhaustively detailed look at what these sessions really generated. Additionally, for the listeners who would like the most complete Swaying Palms experience, I've assembled a third disc of ten tracks titled Palms Plus, which collects the first take of the album's title track, the Yearbook Version of Autumn Fog Lifts and eight commissioned remixes that were produced either right before, during or right after the Swaying Palms sessions. It augments the main album with what is essentially a whole other full-length's worth of Milieu tracks. There is no digital version for Palms Plus - it is only available as a bonus CD-R in the special Anniversary Edition of the reissue. released May 15, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, 2008-2009, except #19 recorded in Augsbug, Germany, October 2007. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar Workshop, May 2019. Photography & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD42, and 42nd in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Germs 86 [Night Version] (7:34) 02. Milieu - He Can C (5:26) 03. Milieu - Hallex Video (1:51) 04. Milieu - Love Theme From 'Cosine Pharmacy' (4:44) 05. Milieu - Pink Pepper Reprise (6:39) 06. Milieu - Androgen Welt (7:43) 07. Milieu - Glanz (6:26) 08. Milieu - Ambsalons (5:47) Arriving fashionably late is GERMS 86, the second single for/from the SHALLOW EARTH album issued at Recycled Plastics. To make up for the delinquency, Germs 86 has been augmented by five more tracks than it was previously intended to carry, making it a full 40+ minute mini-LP - a digestif for the Shallow Earth experience. Leading the fray is a Night Version of Germs 86, which may not sound too different to most ears - what is happening here is a re-pitching and processing of the Illuminated Paths "Party Mix" version of the track, which was itself much slower in tempo and pitch, and saturated via multiple generations of tape. Thus, in "returning" Germs 86 to its former state (or something close to it) it becomes like a mostly-remembered party that you absentmindedly wonder about the next morning. From there, He Can C cuts apart a Phil Collins single and gleefully rearranges it over a rubbery drum machine, before obliterating the entire mix in a fluorescent chemical fog and evaporating it. Hallex Video offers a 2-minute palate cleanser with a lock-groove of that soul LP you like to play when you separate the seeds from the stems. The iconic Love Theme from the romantic comedy 'Cosine Pharmacy' appears next, with some reflective dialogue between star-cross'd lovers Jean and Patrick, as they enjoy a sorbet on the balcony of Patrick's posh apartment. Pink Pepper picks up the pace again with a reprise of Harlequin Salon from the Shallow Earth album, although the entirety of the original track has been stripped off and replaced, except for a distant wash of synthesizer chords. Androgen Welt, previously an exclusive bonus track given out to those who attended the Shallow Earth Listening Party on Twitch, manages to appear here as well, after some convincing. The final two cuts, Glanz and Ambsalons, dial the groove back down again to a warm ambient buzz. **As a small additional fun thing, I found three black cassette tapes in a box and decided to use them to make a tape edition of the two singles for Shallow Earth. This cassette, titled GLANZWELT, collects all eleven tracks from the AMBER PETROL'R aperitif and the GERMS 86 release presented here. The track sequence has been altered to give a more cassette-friendly flow, and the tapes are contained inside fluorescent green plastic cases with digital gradient photography on a glossy Fujicolor insert. Being that there are only two of these cassettes for public sale, they're a bit special, and they are being priced to raise a bit of extra cash to pay for more blank tapes to issue more tape editions on! released June 22, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, Spring-Summer 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography by Rudolf Kremers. Design and text by ABM&D. Rudolf Kremers appears courtesy of Omni Systems UK. This is Milieu Music number MML137 (and the Glanzwelt cassette is MML137B). ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Tropic Casanova (3:13) 02. Milieu - Stained Brown Pages (3:46) 03. Milieu - Capricorn (4:23) 04. Milieu - Ultraviolet Impressions (5:56) 05. Milieu - Sage Derby (3:31) 06. Milieu - Blisschord II (5:41) 07. Milieu - Glasshill [Lazy Passenger Dub] (4:21) 08. Milieu - Sunlite Sound (5:47) 09. Milieu - Coastline (4:56) 10. Milieu - Coming Home (4:28) 11. Milieu - Silver Fountain Cascade (5:28) 12. Milieu - Night Camera (5:00) 13. Milieu - Holograph Dub (4:50) 14. Milieu - Slow Blue Night (4:05) 15. Milieu - Pale Blue Beats (6:57) released July 26, 2019 This collection is the first of two I've assembled specifically for the Touched catalog, and it focuses on the earlier shapes of the Milieu sound, which began in 2004 and is now almost old enough to buy cigarettes. These are all old tracks, and for me, even older, because as many of you reading this know by now, Milieu moves through records at the speed of light. Many of them were recorded before fidelity was part of the workflow, and before "mastering" was even in my vocabulary. There's also a lot of obvious (to me) influences at play here - see if you can notice them. Martin has been a Milieu fan for almost as long as I've been at it, and this collection exists because of his enthusiasm and invitation. Hopefully, the music does not overstay its welcome, and offers both longtime listeners and newcomers a colorful experience, riding as sleepy passengers through the tropical hues of sunwarmed melodies, stoned funk bass and tape-rusted drums. The tracks presented here have also been selected to augment/expand the Butcher Block Andromeda album, a triple-disc 50-track 10-year anniversary set that already planted a flag in the sand for a "beginner's guide" to Milieu a few years back. There is no overlap with that set, so continue on dear listener! Colorful waves await! Brian Grainger, Ohio, 2019 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Synthesist's Alphorn Retreat (1:04:07) A quiet log cabin, perched atop a summit in the Black Mountains of Asheville, overlooking hundreds of miles of sun-kissed forest and stone. Summoning the voice of a synthesized drone, calling from the Matterhorn itself, your stillness, isolation and warm contentment rings out across the space. The wooden, hollow tones overlap with the subtlest hint of tape warble and heat-bent flange, forming chords that elevate you in their polyphony to a serene mass high in the clouds. For every pipe in this majestic dream-organ, a ray of sunlight beams down to the ripe green Earth. Birds chime from their perches with sweet approval, and the gusts of mountain breeze underscore the floating symphony with the deep breath of the valleys and rivers themselves. This album has been created with the specific purpose of recovery from trauma, meditation in light of stress, a defiant escapist pasture of safety and contentment in the face of paranoia, worry and pain. The Synthesist's Alphorn Retreat exists forever, for all of us, whenever and wherever we may need to use it. released August 10, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded August 2019 at the White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text, photography and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML139. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Broadcast Imprint (5:52) 02. Milieu - Pond Reeds (9:11) 03. Milieu - Wind Brush (11:21) 04. Milieu - Purple Stripes (3:03) 05. Milieu - Flickering Treeline (9:38) 06. Milieu - Heavenly Shards Of Night Are Falling (10:05) 07. Milieu - Uyulala (5:51) 08. Milieu - Lorisian Field (24:57) 09. Milieu - Provenance Mark (2:05) 10. Milieu - Belltone Of Wall (3:48) 11. Milieu - Limestone Keys (6:52) 12. Milieu - Glasscade (7:05) 13. Milieu - Starry Fountain (5:10) 14. Milieu - Goldenpatch Operator (4:43) 15. Milieu - Quartz Light (7:34) 16. Milieu - Metal Birds At Dusk (8:45) 17. Milieu - Rainfront Panic (4:36) 18. Milieu - Sawtooth In Royal Black (7:38) 19. Milieu - Subsurface Paradox (4:00) 20. Milieu - Dim Curtain Chime (6:57) 21. Milieu - Night Offering (9:47) 22. Milieu - Harp & Herald (9:26) 23. Milieu - Spring's Forest Paints (5:58) 24. Milieu - Sunsinging (11:15) 25. Milieu - Ivorine Empress (9:35) 26. Milieu - Autumn Horns (8:27) 27. Milieu - Lakewater (23:06) 28. Milieu - Upon Dawn (8:39) Earlier this year, in March, the vibrant and varied analog label Illuminated Paths issued an album called Daughter, in a double-cassette edition. This original release was intended to be strictly limited, and although the four sides provided 2 hours of material, IP-354 (Daughter's catalog designate) represented only an abridged (and somewhat mutated) iteration of the original album. Having now gone out of print, I feel comfortable in issuing the full Daughter sessions as they were originally laid to tape. As an album, Daughter was somewhat drafted as a namesake follow-up on Brother, from which I have grown a little estranged through the years. I wanted to reapproach the idea, topically at least, of an ambient session record that connected me to my family life, but in a current and sincere way. Having become a father 7 years ago, my outlook on a number of things has changed, and I have since looked back at that moment, many different times, as a line drawn in the sand of my memory, behind which my past self lay buried. If that sounds maudlin, it isn't - I am in fact happier here and now than I have ever been in my life. Living in this breezy Ohio valley with my family has brought me eloquently into a new era of creative work and domestic happiness. And so, with Daughter, the second focus during these sessions was to do something entirely new and unheard of, at least within the Milieu side of the fence. How to accomplish something new, after hundreds of records, and even more hours of recordings? I looked to a longtime fascination of mine - FM synthesis - which was something I'd toyed with in the past, for things like basslines and a pad sound here or there, but mostly, I knew very little about it and had yet to really immerse myself in it for any length of time. The decision was made to set myself up with an FM synthesizer, one which was in fact portable enough to take with me everywhere I went, and generate enough material while I was out and about to build an album with when I brought it back to the Workshop. As you can see from the amount of music presented here, over four hours of music ended up being created, so the Illuminated Paths release was a good way to sift through it, at least at the time. It was no coincidence either, that Daughter was initially issued on tape. The operative plan was to "soften" the digital sounds created via the FM synthesis with analog tape, although my final mixdown of Daughter's material, here in the studio, also saw me making regular use of analog filters (from Moog, Arturia, Akai and Korg) as well as analog reverb/delay boxes, further mutating the album into an amalgam of analog and digital that, in the end, just seems to sound like Milieu. Hopefully, the filmic sheen and pitch-bent weirdness that I was chasing down with FM synthesis still comes through the ambient Milieu haze. To me, it does still have some very specific moments that, melodically, may not have otherwise happened on an analog synthesizer. Altogether, I think this collection of synthesis experiments makes for an engaging and longform volume of bedroom electronic music, and as it was being completed alongside other Milieu albums (such as Sun Cast), very personal locations, past events and people were very much on my mind. Daughter exists as an expansive soundtrack to no film at all, just the reels and reels of imagined time and space that I never grow tired of exploring. **NOTE: An ultra-limited edition of the 3xCD set is being offered with a bonus 4th CD containing over half an hour of session outtakes. This extra disc is packaged separately from the main 3xCD set - the absolutely complete Daughter experience! released August 10, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD44, and 44th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Faun & Tin Bell (21:31) 02. Milieu - Shimmer In Two Pitches (11:01) 03. Milieu - Belle Under Blue Light (19:01) 04. Milieu - Sun Plinth Aboiteaux (17:11) From four different sessions held in the pregnant space between Winter and Spring, comes a Milieu album that I was writing without even being aware I was doing it. As the snow melted under sunny warmth earlier in the 2019 year, and the green sprouts and flowers began to appear silently around the valley, I recorded four separate pieces, each as its own session, with four different pieces of hardware. The first, "Faun & Tin Bell", was performed using only the Korg Volca Keys polyphonic analog synthesizer, through a number of analog and digital reverberation units. "Shimmer In Two Pitches" was created similarly using the Korg Volca Modular analog synthesizer, layering itself using a Digitech WH-4 and some well-placed analog delays. "Belle Under Blue Light" was created using a Korg Volca Sample, playing back several different variants and sequences of a struck metal bowl I sampled, again through copious amounts of reverberation and some tape dubbing. The final piece, "Sun Plinth Aboiteaux" is a Boss RC-20 looper meditation on a carefully selected section of a Satie piece, sampled from vinyl and slowly brought into the fullness of the sunlight by way of nearly every reverb, delay, filter and pitch shifter I possess. All tracks were bounced to cassette tape in the end, allowing them to congeal that much further on this collected release. Musically, I felt that these four pieces held a commonality between them, some kind of abstracted expectation of a bountiful green Spring season, filled with visions of rolling hills, gentle rains, white stone columns and olive groves. An idyllic mythology that itself held a longing for ships on the sea, or candle-lit warmth in a forest cabin. In each passage, you can hear some aspect of Milieu as you have possibly heard it before, on some other album, in some other past life. Passages may have began as a collection of four disparate recordings, but assembled here, in this way, it feels much more like a successor to things like Beyond The Sea Lies The Stars, Phosphene Weather and some of the Sun-Day albums. Now that Spring has passed, and Summer itself begins to wane, I felt these four pieces were owed a place in my catalog, ready for the cool Summer evenings and even cooler Autumn days, soon to come. released August 10, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Winter-Spring 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD048 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Anspol (4:14) 02. Milieu - Lianthes (9:21) 03. Milieu - Burnetal (4:29) 04. Milieu - Moterns (3:34) 05. Milieu - Trearial (7:39) 06. Milieu - Porth (5:55) 07. Milieu - Lantearmiss (25:58) 08. Milieu - Bewinds (6:44) 09. Milieu - Eldisant (10:54) 10. Milieu - Talport (4:55) 11. Milieu - Fluous (7:09) 12. Milieu - Drearne (13:18) 13. Milieu - Emenhanon (5:22) 14. Milieu - Viorelonith (16:32) 15. Milieu - Fiancirchast (6:59) 16. Milieu - Surrowed (6:52) 17. Milieu - Theric (7:13) 18. Milieu - Almorater (5:56) 19. Milieu - Thansmonten (34:55) 20. Milieu - Undemoirress (8:39) Transposition Gradients is a recollection of melodic composition, initially written and recorded in 2013-2014, revisited five years later in a foggy, half-remembered vision, meditated upon as a balm for an overstressed mind. The original components were arranged and released at Recycled Plastics as two volumes of an album called Polypsilon. At the time, Polypsilon was to be Milieu's formal entry into the bedroom acid sound, though I distinctly recall there being some very pretty melodies and chord changes, so I'd always known that sooner or later, I'd dig out the session recordings and put my hands back into the clay. The material presented here could be considered an analog to other records like it - Inland By Night, Ambell Suns, albums that reconstituted melodic passages from other albums and painted new ambient vistas from them. However, it also bears some resemblance to releases like Improvisations For Hylian Piano & Woodwinds and Statuettes, in the way the voices of synthesizers are brought a bit more to the forefront than on other beatless Milieu recordings. It's interesting to me, to consider these parallel-reality kinds of takes, a "What if?" version of a piece of music - in this case, what if Polypsilon was intended to be an ambient record? Transposition Gradients is such a ponderance, a possible past, a reflection seen through ripples of water, on the bank of a pond, distantly grasped through years of eroding memory, finally allowed to exhale in a deep sigh of relief as I reach the grassy backyard in Deerfield, with the apple tree and the sunny leaves and the musty garage. I can almost smell it, and that small boy is still there now, wistfully sitting on the water's edge, tossing the occasional stone and watching the sun slowly drip down beneath the horizon line, extinguished like a torch in the dark idyll. released August 14, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design & text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD050 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Folder (2:19) 02. Milieu - Mars Cadet (6:24) 03. Milieu - Germs 86 (8:48) 04. Milieu - Harlequin Salon (8:10) 05. Milieu - Amber Petrol'r (7:31) 06. Milieu - Y R U (7:31) 07. Milieu - Blissmind (7:59) 08. Milieu - Ile Du Levant (7:17) 09. Milieu - Greenlands (4:35) 10. Milieu - Hexa Doom Arm (7:13) 11. Milieu - Liminal Nudes (1:26) 12. Milieu - Marshmallow Earth (8:43) 13. Milieu - Six Or Eight (6:10) 14. Milieu - Night Kitchen (2:02) 15. Milieu - M-Phone (10:02) 16. Milieu - Palm Apodaca (14:04) Earlier this year, I completed and released SHALLOW EARTH on my 36th birthday, a record that was (at least, in the beginning of its conception) meant to be a loose, easygoing and feel-good affair to hit the reset button with, after the completion of SUN CAST, an eight-year triple-album odyssey that bordered on an obsession by the end, in 2018. In the end of SHALLOW EARTH's production cycle, however, I realized I'd essentially made an encore to SUN CAST, this time pooling together even more topical and far-reaching influences into a brightly colored aural equivalent to cough syrup-spiked Ecto Cooler. If that descriptor works for the album, then you might describe this, the alternate-timeline PARTY MIX of the album, as some of DJ Screw's infamous "purple drank" with extra muscle relaxants and a couple tabs of blotter thrown in. I wanted to issue SHALLOW EARTH on an analog format, in addition to the CD-R at Recycled Plastics, and that's where the ever-interesting Illuminated Paths version came into focus. Never content to have the same thing simply on different formats, the decision was made to ask resident sound manipulator BROKEN MACHINE FILMS to have his way with mutating and re-presenting the album in his own unique mastering pass, which involved multi-generational analog overdubbing, copy-of-a-copy xerox style, with different cassette and VHS machines, and perhaps even more secret fidelity-warping magic that I am not privy to. The result elongated the album considerably, not just because a few extra tracks were included to fill out two tape sides, but because the pitch had become so affected that SHALLOW EARTH went from a dance party to a hallucinatory Percoset funk party, perhaps more properly echoed in the tired and apathetic expression on the face of the UK mannequin that graces the cover. And yet, this mix became far more than the sum of its process, opening up new spaces, flavors, grooves and colors in the tracks that weren't there before. I've always been a huge fan of playing my tapes and vinyl back at the wrong speeds, and this felt like a grand tribute to both 45-at-33 slow-mo and low battery Walkman bliss. A few of the songs even sound closer to the early Milieu sound from 2005-2007, so in some ways the PARTY MIX is an imagined take on what SHALLOW EARTH would have sounded like, had I created it way back then. No matter how you decide to listen to it, it's clear that BROKEN MACHINE FILMS have completely reconfigured the entire SHALLOW EARTH experience, and for this effort I am quite grateful. This release appears here in digital format after numerous requests have come in for it, since the IP cassette did not include a digital version. Many humble thanks to everyone who purchased the tape, and if you're just now discovering this PARTY MIX and want to pick up a copy of the tape, there are still a few more at ILLUMINATED PATHS here: illuminatedpaths.bandcamp.com/album/shallow-earth-party-mix-ip-cassette-exclusive released August 16, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD and White Pillar Workshop, 2010-2019. Mastered by Broken Machine Films. Text and design by ABM&D. Photography by Rudolf Kremers. This is Milieu Music number MMDL09. Broken Machine Films appears courtesy of Illuminated Paths / illuminatedpaths.bandcamp.com Rudolf Kremers appears courtesy of Omni Systems UK / www.omni-labs.com © + (P) Milieu 2019 / All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Anthemoessa (56:40) Time is just a wind blowing through, pushing the past behind you. All the moments you ever remember are interred, unreachable, with every other moment you've forgotten, building up across years like sand on a beach. Sand that fills the belly of a hungry hourglass, succumbing to gravity, inevitable and finite. You gaze through the glass, and sometimes, you can see things - artifacts and debris, pulled ever downward into that mindless quicksand. Remembrance, romance, reflection, cast onto time's windswept dunes, themselves once majestic mountains and stone temples, where the song of memory could be heard blowing through the air, ageless wind swaying the green leaves on the trees, now forever asleep and returned to that still Earth. This recording would appeal to devotees of albums such as Beyond The Sea Lies The Stars, Leaves Painted Purple, Phosphene Weather and Thriambus. released October 12, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, August 2019, as a meditation on my daughter's voice. Created using voice of LOP through a Korg KP2, and an Arturia Microbrute monophonic analog synthesizer, in conjunction with a wide array of analog and digital filters, reverbs and delays. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML140. Dedicated to the preservation of 3 seconds in Botany Bay, on February 4th, 2015. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Sleeping Vessel, Smoke & Black Grass (1:10:06) When I returned from a harrowing trip to Cleveland and back in August, my physical and mental wellness were both severely lacking. I was desperately in need of some recuperative care on both accounts, and set about doing it one of the best ways I know how to - recording ambient music in my studio. The fruits of those efforts became the Transposition Gradients triple-album, The Synthesist's Alphorn Retreat and final touches on the Daughter sessions and Four Passages, which were four previously recorded ambient sessions unified on a single release. A lot of music, to be certain, but for the mindset I was in, and the immense need I had for it, it was not yet enough. I needed to be buried in the anesthetic vibration of sub-basslines and drifting analog delays, floating endlessly on sun-dappled soundwaves. So, in the spirit of that outlook, it should surprise you not at all to find that there was even more material laid to tape and held back from immediate release. This piece, titled Passage Five, was one that only went to my bedside when it was completed, at the time. It is a transfiguration of tape source used on the Four Passages album, routed through copious FX chains of analog and digital profiles, layered and re-layered and melted down, with a monophonic analog synthesizer anchoring the exploration with a simple and hypnotic sub-bassline. Specifically, it returns to and addresses the bereft feeling I was overtaken with, standing in pitch blackness on the roadside in the middle of the deep countryside, van wrecked, dead deer laid in the grass at my feet, highway patrol flares quickly dying out, as metal mammoths sped by, mere inches from my broken vehicle. Phone battery nearly dead, wife and child stranded alongside, no resolution in sight. In a state like that, you begin to wonder if you'll ever get out alive, and if you manage that, whether or not you'll be able to recover from it easily. It's a deep and depressing feeling to be that helpless and to have lost that much control over your situation, and that space in my mind is the hole I had to spend all of August and most of September crawling back out of. My slow return to the land of the living continues to yield strange fruits, and it is my sincere hope that they fill the world with that much more contentment and ease, and offset the liminal darknesses of the world we live in, because that world can be a frightening and unforgiving place. released October 12, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, August 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML141. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - In Blue Fields (9:35) 02. Milieu - Phosphene Weather (10:24) 03. Milieu - Aboir (17:12) 04. Milieu - In Blue Fields [Coppice Halifax Excavation] (25:16) 05. Milieu - [Dream Compost Mix I] (6:54) 06. Milieu - [Dream Compost Mix II] (14:10) 07. Milieu - [Dream Compost Mix III] (12:21) 08. Milieu - [Dream Compost Mix IV] (29:31) 09. Milieu - [Dream Compost Mix V] (14:39) It was 2009, two years into the INSTALL label I co-owned and operated with sun-brother David Tagg, and three years into our vanity imprint Second Sun Recordings. David and I were always brimming with enough ideas to populate entire catalogues with, and almost as much energy to manifest them. I’m not sure where or when the discussion started, but pressing vinyl was the name of our game that year. Our first was the Arctic / Blue Dub 12”, cut from the collaborative vehicle SEAS, which David and I used for our electronic explorations, as the curtain release in the Expanding Electronic Diversity catalogue. That went well enough, but was very nearly a disaster, mostly due to the fact that the pressing plant that manufactured it was actually a plastics company out of New Jersey, who apparently knew next to nothing about the process. I’d found them somehow, and we pursued it only because they were within driving distance from David’s design company in Long Island, and because they were willing to cut only 100 copies for us. All kinds of amateurish problems plagued the process, yet despite those aspects of it, we were determined to do it again, better the second time around. Somewhere in there, likely the Spring-Summer of 2009, I’d finished recording work on what was designed to be my first vinyl release as Milieu. I cannot remember how long I’d toiled over it, but I remember logging a good amount of time on it, likely all through the previous season. It was all done the old fashioned way, with a bit of a purist approach on my Westone Concorde I electric guitar, my Lowrey “Magic Genie” organ, a Tascam 414 Mk. II four-track tape machine and a large amount of effects boxes. Field recordings were captured on a portable digital recorder at my Columbia home (Rolling Knoll) and my mother-in-law’s home deeper in the country (Foxhill), and bounced to reel-to-reel tape on a Roberts 450A tape machine. The material recorded was intended to represent a sort of pinnacle point in the mountain ranges of my ambient work, referential to things like the self-titled Milieu album, the sunken orchestral processing of the Beyond The Sea / Beyond The Stars albums and the wind-blown textures of A Warm Wooden Hollow. Listening to it now, ten years later, it is apparent to me how close the material is to my Sun-Day series, and there’s even a little bit of my Eight Thousander rehearsal-tape-that-then-became-an-album in there too. A close friend of mine from New Zealand, who for years was my “second ears” on certain projects, wrote back after listening to it with the comment “Another sunset for sale”, which has followed me around since then, especially when I am producing music that has such a clearly emotive and filmic bend to it. And it did feel like quite a colorful sunset that November, when we got the random-color splattered 12”s and heard, for the first time, Milieu unspooling from analog grooves in slow spirals. The titling employed for these recordings was initially only a reference to my lifelong practice of laying down to sleep with my arm draped over my eyes, applying just enough pressure to light up an ever-evolving array of psychedelic visuals, dancing around on the insides of my eyelids – phosphenes. Communicating the notion to David, who was doing the visual design work for it, was difficult at first – I was always dragging my designer friends through hell with my badly translated ideas - but once we happened upon the halftone in black and white, it all seemed to settle into place, and I felt that David really outdid himself with the seven pieces he created, which seem to say so much about movement and the suggestion of forms, but give the listener nothing concrete to latch onto. I didn’t even know what the phenomenon was called until I was in my twenties, and it felt like an appropriate analogy for my music, especially my relationship with the guitar – operating for years in the dark, on impulse, reactively learning and growing through trial and error (mostly error), carving out a creative voice that owed just as much to the adversity and lack of proper tools as it did to whatever was happening in the wrists...only to stumble, clumsy and dazed, upon the names of these things later, long after they had become second nature to me. I’d spent most of my teenage years feeling like I was running to keep up with all of my peers, as an instrumentalist – mostly because I never had any training, or knew the “right way” to do anything – and now, on the 10th anniversary of this landmark recording I made in the blistering heat of the subtropical South, I cannot help but feel that I pushed myself into some indefinable creative space through my years of blind determination. Pulling all of the lonesome sadness out of these six metal strings in humid bedrooms, distilling it down into another sunset for sale. - Brian Grainger November 13th, 2019 / Dayton, Ohio released November 19, 2019 Written and produced by Brian Grainger in beautiful South Carolina (#1-3) and Ohio (#4-9). Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Spring-Summer 2009 (#1-3) and White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2019 (#4-9). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to David Tagg for his sun blessings, brotherly love and alchemical design work. Tracks 1-3 originally issued at INSTALL on limited edition vinyl as INSTLP01 in 2009. Text, reissue layout work and labeling stickers by ABM&D. Cover stickers designed and printed by David Tagg in picturesque Atlanta GA. This is Milieu Music number AD50, and the 50th issue in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue catalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Ambisthmus (11:11) 02. Milieu - Poitrelogue (11:43) 03. Milieu - Rainspasture (9:35) 04. Milieu - Oscilliad (25:31) 05. Milieu - Quintextant (9:47) Originally issued discreetly as a bonus 3" CD-R packaged with the sprawling 8xCD-R box of live-in-studio Milieu sets HOUSEWORKS, the two beatless pieces that comprised the HOME WORKS EP (Ambisthmus / Rainspasture) share more common ground with the Statuettes recordings than the acidic braindancing techno of the Milieu live performances. It's been a full year (to the month) since that box set came out, and now that the Autumn is upon us, I feel like it's an apt moment to give these recordings a proper release of their own, instead of the bonus disc footnote that they were relegated to earlier on. Musically, these are pieces that manifested during rehearsals for (or post-set cooldowns from) the sessions that were broadcast online and released in the HW catalog subset. They are intimate and quietly majestic swoons of analog synthesizers played back in a dark basement studio, lit only by the blinking LEDs of the mixing board and the many pieces of hardware surrounding it. In the time since I pulled them off the tapes and memory cards they were laid onto, I've found three additional recordings that grew out of other live broadcasts in very much the same way, using primarily an analog polysynth that I now no longer possess. With these augmentations, AMBISTHMUS transforms from an afterthought into something much more resembling an album, a concerted effort that I am enjoying today as much as I hope you will too, and an admirable companion piece to be issued alongside the expanded PHOSPHENE WEATHER as it celebrates a 10th anniversary reissue. released November 19, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, various dates 2018-2019, using Korg MS-20 / Volca Keys / Volca Kick / Minilogue, Arturia Microbrute and a wide array of digital and analog signal processors. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD051. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - T.O.R. I/II (1:02:05) 02. Milieu - T.O.R. II/II (1:18:21) THE TRAVELER'S OFFWORLD RETREAT is a longform synthesizer pastorale designed and generated using only the ByteBeat digital audio workstation in the video game No Man's Sky, published by Hello Games on the PlayStation 4. Using these systems in a generative way, it is possible to leave this arrangement unspooling twenty-four hours a day in yet another virtual space - a "paradise" planet in the Euclid galaxy that I've spent hundreds of hours cataloguing, cultivating and making into a serene home-away-from-homeworld. It was created with the express purpose of being an Enosian windchime to enjoy while I relaxed on my sofa for some space-farming. No Man's Sky is, somewhat famously, a procedurally generated video game, containing more planets than any one person (or collective people) would ever hope to explore in their lifetimes. It is a love letter to visual artists like Chris Foss and, for an immense list of reasons, one of my favorite video games of all-time. Sonically, this recording was inspired by things like Synergy's Computer Experiments Volume One and Jochem Paap's two beautiful FM synthesizer albums on FAX, and perfectly aligned with the ethos and synthesis-curious approach of many modern Milieu recordings. For any other listeners who are themselves Travellers of the Atlas (or even a SalesGek, no judgments), I've included an image with this release's download that contains my planet's address. Hop in your ship, find your nearest monolith and come say hello. I have a prosperous living glass farm that served me well before I joined the game of freighter trade routing, and would welcome the company. Plenty of GekNip in the stash, no storms at all, and hardly a Sentinel in sight. released March 14, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop using the ByteBeat digital audio workstation in No Man's Sky, recorded to cassette via a Vesta Fire MR-10B multitrack tape machine, with subsequent processing via a Digitech WH4 and an Alesis Quadraverb. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Photography by Rudolf Kremers. This is Milieu Music number MML145. Special thanks to Hello Games for making such a beautiful game, and for making their ByteBeat software available to begin with, and also to Rudolf Kremers for gracious and continued use of his analog photography. Rudolf Kremers appears courtesy of Omni Systems UK. © + (P) Milieu Music 2020. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Larx In Repose (5:51) 02. Milieu - Panama Coat (16:30) Larx In Repose b/w Panama Coat, a two-track EP of Milieu tracks recorded during session work for the Coppice Halifax album Tigress. Unexpected and inadvertent, these two tracks remain inextricably connected to Tigress at a molecular level, but clearly retain attributes that make them feel more Milieu than Halifaxian, to my ears. Originally, the EP was given out as a gift to attendees of the Tigress Listening Party, on Twitch, but until now no subsequent release or lossless recording formats have been made available. In light of the current global lockdown, it felt appropriate to make these tracks available to everyone, and it is my sincere hope that they bring some happiness from across the distance. released May 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded Autumn-Winter 2019-2020 during the Tigress sessions. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Painting by Anni Roenkae, used with gracious permission. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMLP26 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Carpool Chroma (7:57) 02. Milieu - In Mauve (7:52) 03. Milieu - Brain Drainger (1:06) 04. Milieu - Rephocus (8:14) 05. Milieu - Softwear (7:15) 06. Milieu - Cherrygloss Mixtape (5:20) 07. Milieu - Notel (12:48) 08. Milieu - Black Apples Of Shallow Urth (9:25) It seems that Shallow Earth's shadow extends further than I might have expected, because this is a new stash of trax that sort of embody the palette of RP11, albeit with a bit more of a house music and occasionally acidic bend. Somewhere between a long EP and a short album, Housewares consists of eight cuts of Milieu dance music in varying degrees of ADHD, sometimes content to cruise with the windows down and others, ready to burst through the nightclub wall with a bass assault. Influences should be somewhat obvious - AFX, Norken, Underworld, DJ Sprinkles, cv313, Cylob, Russ Gabriel, Magic Arrows, among lots of other stuff. Housewares is for the late night feel good and the early morning feel bad...or is it the other way around? I can barely keep the days of the week straight here in my basement, so these jams may be a little frayed around the edges, but they mean well. Hugs and high fives. released May 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the Workshop, Spring 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Photography by Anni Roenkae, used with gracious permission. This is Recycled Plastics number RP14. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Flooded Quartz Mine I (13:26) 02. Milieu - Flooded Quartz Mine II (44:30) AMETHYST EXTRACTS is a set of two tracks that manifested as a result of the many different processing steps that went into producing the twenty-eight hour FLAWLESS AMETHYST release. They bear hardly any resemblance to the fully realized work, illustrating just how convoluted these sessions can become. The two pieces presented here are, essentially, what FLAWLESS AMETHYST was at some point, before the decision was made to continue smearing, regenerating and transfiguring the audio into other shapes. An appropriate first entry in the Divergent Paths series of supplemental broadcast materials. released May 30, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, March 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number PATHOS 1. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Burnt Atlas I (1:28:25) BURNT ATLAS is the first VIBRATELEPATHIC session, created by using a ByteBeat digital audio workstation to generate modal polyphonic sequences, which were then recorded in four iterations to a Vesta Fire MR-10B multitrack tape machine (utilizing pitch deviation and selective use of the dbx noise reduction function). From there, the tape was played back forwards and backwards, at several different IPS, as it was routed into a custom built modular system containing Mutable Inst. Clouds and four Green Series modules from SSDP Synthesis. Additional control voltage automation was employed via a Korg MS-20, three Moogerfooger units and an Arturia Microbrute, and the MS-20's external signal processor was also used. Multiple long-form recording sessions of varying running times were digitally captured using a Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing console, with point-specific applications of both analog and digital effects processors made in real time. The resultant audio was imported onto a personal computer for final edits, parametric equalization, compression and mastering gloss. released May 30, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, March 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB1. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Burnt Atlas II (2:01:25) BURNT ATLAS II is the second VIBRATELEPATHIC session, created by using a ByteBeat digital audio workstation to generate modal polyphonic sequences, which were then recorded in four iterations to a Vesta Fire MR-10B multitrack tape machine (utilizing pitch deviation and selective use of the dbx noise reduction function). From there, the tape was played back forwards and backwards, at several different IPS, as it was routed into a custom built modular system containing Mutable Inst. Clouds and four Green Series modules from SSDP Synthesis. Additional control voltage automation was employed via a Korg MS-20, three Moogerfooger units and an Arturia Microbrute, and the MS-20's external signal processor was also used. Multiple long-form recording sessions of varying running times were digitally captured using a Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing console, with point-specific applications of both analog and digital effects processors made in real time. The resultant audio was imported onto a personal computer for final edits, parametric equalization, compression and mastering gloss. released May 30, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, March 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB2. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Reflective Surface Cleaner (1:00:27) REFLECTIVE SURFACE CLEANER is the third VIBRATELEPATHIC session, created by using a Korg Volca FM digital synthesizer to generate modal polyphonic sequences, which were then routed into a custom built modular system containing Mutable Inst. Clouds and four Green Series modules from SSDP Synthesis. Additional control voltage automation was employed via a Korg MS-20, three Moogerfooger units and an Arturia Microbrute, and the MS-20's external signal processor was also used. Multiple long-form recording sessions of varying running times were digitally captured using a Peavey FX2 hybrid mixing console, with point-specific applications of both analog and digital effects processors made in real time. The resultant audio was imported onto a personal computer for final edits, parametric equalization, compression and mastering gloss. released June 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, March 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB3. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst I (1:42:19) 02. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst II (2:29:54) 03. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst III (2:12:52) 04. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst IV (2:47:18) 05. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst V (2:19:23) 06. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst VI (2:23:04) 07. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst VII (2:13:38) 08. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst VIII (2:00:16) 09. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst IX (2:14:27) 10. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst X (2:17:16) 11. Milieu - Flawless Amethyst XI (5:08:55) FLAWLESS AMETHYST is the fourth session in the VIBRATELEPATHIC series. It is possibly the most convoluted of all the processing setups shown in this series, thus far, and was born from a patient mother in TIGRESS. When islanders inhabiting the soundworlds of TIGRESS lie down at night to sleep, FLAWLESS AMETHYST is all the stars in the sky above them. It has been mixed intentionally quiet and is designed as an unintrusive sleep and meditation aid, and can play for more than a full 24-hour day without repeating at all. Listeners are discouraged against using these recordings while operating machinery or driving. For the technical side, FLAWLESS AMETHYST is every individual piece on the TIGRESS album, reduced in post-processing using stereo difference, then re-pitched, sent through a Moog analog low-pass filter, and routed through a modular synthesizer setup, which includes Mutable Inst. Clouds and four Green Series modules by SSDP Synthesis. As per the usual when the modular rig is involved, control voltage automation was applied via three Moogerfoogers, a Korg MS-20 and the small but useful CV matrix on an Arturia Microbrute, while the Korg MS20's external signal processor was also utilized. This process was repeated multiple times over, for each of the 11 pieces, until somewhere around the 3rd or 4th generation, the final results arrived. Altogether, FLAWLESS AMETHYST took about 3 weeks from start to finish, in processing time alone. released June 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, March 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB4. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Greenest Grass Whitest Clouds (2:19:43) GREENEST GRASS WHITEST CLOUDS is the beautiful combination of my oft-cited Grass Click-Tone Control Module (a piece of medical laboratory equipment that I have repurposed as a tone generator) and the immensely versatile Clouds texture synthesizer by Mutable Instruments. As with many of the sessions for these Broadcasts, the sound of the Grass was conveyed through the medium of multitrack cassette tape, layered into four harmonic pitches at four different IPS. A bit of actual loss in translation occurred, as the original tape was recorded using my Tascam 414 machine (with Dolby noise reduction) and this session saw the same tape played back on my Vesta Fire MR-10B machine (which uses very different dbx noise reduction). Both machines also run at totally different speeds, so interesting artifacting was present as well. The signal was routed in and out of my Clouds module alongside my modest Eurorack rig, containing four modules from the green series by SSDP Synthesis, incorporating additional CV animation via the Korg MS-20 and three Moogerfoogers. From there, it was routed into my Peavey mixer, which is currently configured to function as an "Autofugue" generative setup involving signal multiplication, timed delays and pitch shifting, among other things. Final audio repair and mastering work were completed on the evening of April 19th, using a DAW primarily running Arturia filtering and reverberation tools. released June 1, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, April 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB5. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Greenest Grass Whitest Clouds II (58:50) The sixth ANTIVIRAL BROADCAST is the second phase of the GREENEST GRASS WHITEST CLOUDS session, which uses the same methodology and tools, but yields a slightly darker and more humid atmosphere than the first session. Vaporous pads of tape-warmed chords slowly waft up from a dew-dripped subtropical pasture, as purple skies give way to turquoise, then soft blue, then a greenish orange as the sun smiles down upon a new day. This is music for waking up, and half-remembering a dream you had, feeling as if you've run for hours despite just now getting out of bed. Slow and soft curvatures of synthesized darkness for you to take your time with. released June 3, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2020, using a prepared cassette of four pitches of monophonic tone generated on a Grass Click-Tone Control Module, played back via a Vesta Fire MR-10B multitrack tape machine, routed into a modular synthesizer system containing Mutable Inst. Clouds and four Green Series modules from SSDP Synthesis, with external control voltage automation from three Moogerfooger units, a Korg MS-20 and an Arturia Microbrute, plus additional audio/CV processing via the MS-20's external signal processor. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB6, the sixth Vibratelepathic Antiviral Broadcast. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Greenest Grass Whitest Clouds III (3:33:02) The seventh ANTIVIRAL BROADCAST is the third phase of the GREENEST GRASS WHITEST CLOUDS session, which uses the same methodology and tools, but yields a much longer and somewhat more psychedelic atmosphere than the first and second passes. Here, multiple delay units were applied on the end of the signal chain, which self-oscillated enough to allow for different kinds of pitch, pan and volume deviation to happen on the multitrack tape source in a more impulsive and performative way. The resultant audio is almost four hours of swirling foggy tonal shifts, almost resembling a distant horn blown from beyond a mountain range. Hints of home and humanity echoing from just out of reach, held fast behind nature's wall. This third session would perhaps be best enjoyed in headphones, or played a bit louder than the other two, but that's entirely up to your discretion. These pieces conform to your purposes, so play around with different listening scenarios until you find something that you feel good about. released June 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, April 2020, using a prepared cassette of four pitches of monophonic tone generated on a Grass Click-Tone Control Module, played back via a Vesta Fire MR-10B multitrack tape machine, routed into a modular synthesizer system containing Mutable Inst. Clouds and four Green Series modules from SSDP Synthesis, with external control voltage automation from three Moogerfooger units, a Korg MS-20 and an Arturia Microbrute, plus additional audio/CV processing via the MS-20's external signal processor. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB7 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Gentle Suburban Cares (7:34) 02. Milieu - Brush & Mirror (6:16) 03. Milieu - Lemon Star (4:37) 04. Milieu - Rosewater (7:04) 05. Milieu - Q68 (2:41) 06. Milieu - Thaliam (6:20) 07. Milieu - Subgrade Mindless (6:33) 08. Milieu - Sandy (5:42) 09. Milieu - In Flora (8:31) 10. Milieu - Windy Fields At Dusk (15:50) From the chilly basement studio I call the White Pillar Workshop comes a sporadic set of Milieu trax I've affectionately titled Sinewaves In Soft Focus. As it usually goes with Milieu these days, session recordings get so dense and complex and time-intensive for one album, so another album of "easy" music is usually soon to follow, something less scrutinized and more focused on playfulness and impulse-driven decisions. (If you're wondering, Housewares was the album in question - you should see the dozens of automation envelopes on each of those tracks alone!) So, from an initial plan to generate fun quick tracks for a split with another producer, I inevitably got lost having too much fun, and it was decided that my tracks would be better issued solo. Each cut was made top to bottom in one evening of work, somewhat in the approach of the four releases I did for Project 168 so many years ago, where an entire release had to be recorded start to finish in one week (see: Simple Stations Repeat, Giants In The Desert, 1983 and Miniature Q Trax). The thread of commonality running through these cuts is a set of low-res samples I made in 2003 of some throwaway Casio keyboard that ended up in my possession, and it will also be obvious to most seasoned listeners that I am having a blast with my Korg ER-1 all over these tracks too. There's some glitchy stuff going on here in spots, which is the side-effect of now having a small modular rig to process things in strange ways, but for the most part everything is very catchy and "classically inspired" along the lines of Rephlex essentials like Cylobian Sunset and Desktop Robotics, as well as things like the first Metamatics EPs on Clear, Jenkinson's Hard Normal Daddy and the perenially influential AFX shadow cast over a lot of my braindance stuff. There's also some obvious bits of leftover paint from Shallow Earth and Housewares, which only serve to keep things colorful and just familiar enough. Three tracks may seem a little more than familiar: Gentle Suburban Cares previously appeared on Cottage Industries 8 at Neo Ouija in the end of 2018, and finds an appropriate home here. Subgrade Mindless is a spiritual reprise of a very very old Milieu track that was featured on one of the many Bent Appletrees releases. Windy Fields At Dusk is an alternative mix of Wand 5 from Ambell Suns, originally cut at the request of a friend who wanted it to be longer and slower - it also felt appropriate to include here, given the sound palette and atmosphere. The rest of it is brand new Milieu, jammed out under this so-called quarantine. Several attempts to maintain daily sanity and happiness while the world literally burns down and withers away outside. It's a weird time, for me, for you - be safe, and don't forget to take care of yourself too. If there's no you, and no me, there can be no us. released June 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger at White Pillar, Spring 2020, except Gentle Suburban Cares (recorded at White Pillar Summer 2018) and Windy Fields At Dusk (recorded at White Pillar Winter 2017). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Dedicated to the memory of F. Schneider, T. Allen and G.P.O. Design, text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML146 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - AD51B 0001 (5:15) 02. Milieu - AD51B 0002 (6:51) 03. Milieu - AD51B 0003 (2:22) 04. Milieu - AD51B 0004 (10:31) 05. Milieu - AD51B 0005 (7:07) 06. Milieu - AD51B 0006 (5:36) 07. Milieu - AD51B 0007 (9:18) 08. Milieu - AD51B 0008 (9:40) 09. Milieu - AD51B 0009 (4:12) 10. Milieu - AD51B 0010 (10:45) Statuettes, Part Two - five years fabled and finally here, a balm of pleasant ambient escapism from the abyssal world outside. Originally planned to be issued after Part One at Lee Norris' Txt label in the UK, the world moved on a bit, as it always does, and Part Two was displaced. Together, with Part One, these two albums represent a very personal level of happiness and achievement for me, as ambient music goes, but also as composition goes. I've written a lot of melodies since I first picked up a guitar in 1997, and I really feel that some of the best ones are on the Statuettes recordings. The influences are probably obvious - the perennial Selected Ambient Works II, Jochem Paap's two beautiful albums on FAX, Ourson's Warming Plant, Irv Teibel's Tintinnabulation and so many others that I've visited and revisited for the better part of two decades. Given those things, the focus here is on warmth, melodic approachability and expressive environments that are gently coaxed out of rigid sequencers with a light hand. Some pieces incorporate microtonal elements, hand-tuned sounds that were played back in an unorthodox way using old samplers, while others are voices of analog and digital synthesizers, processed through filters, cassette tape, sunlight. There isn't a lot to really say about Statuettes, beyond that I want these two albums to be considered as ambient compositions designed for pleasurable near-wakefulness. They make total sense to me in that liminal space between levels of awareness and sleep, when you've re-read a sentence on a yellowed paperback page five times and it still doesn't register that you've read it at all. When you're there, but you're not really here. These pieces each offer their own explorations of a scene, perhaps a garden, or a riverside, or a bedroom with a dim light, or an empty hotel lobby, or none of these things. Through the rounded tones and pillowy textures, an easy chair can become a cloud, a bed can become a waterfall, a quiet neighborhood can become a church. released June 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2011-2015. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay 2015. Photography, design and layout by Eric Adrian Lee. This is Milieu Music number AD51B. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Empty Space In Red, Yellow & Blue (2:29:46) The eighth ANTIVIRAL BROADCAST is a 2.5 hour session called EMPTY SPACE IN RED, YELLOW & BLUE, created using a complex signal chain that begins with feedback and ends in beautiful glassy tones, reminiscent of FM synthesizers and some of my favorite recordings by Alvin Lucier. To begin, RYB was created by wiring up an SSM-1750 Optimus mixer (built and sold by Radio Shack in 1995) into a feedback loop between the mixer's input channels, the mixer's output, and a Nady MM14-FX mixer between the two, to provide additional amplification and modulation via the Nady's built-in analog delay. Careful shaping of the feedback tones was done via the SSM's onboard three-band equalizer, and this output was then routed to a Peavey FX2 mixing desk, where it was multed out to multiple channels, each being processed individually to play back the feedback tones at a different relative pitch. This meant that whatever the input signal did on the SSM, polyphonic forms would fall into place around it, and remain in tune no matter how the initial pitch deviated. Further individual channel processing allowed for these pitches to play back at different staggered rates, and low-pass filtering via a Moogerfooger was also applied to tame many of the high frequencies and noise. The final full mix was sent into a Roberts 450A reel to reel tape machine (using a custom cut tape loop) for an additional layer of analog congealing, and then to a modest modular synthesizer rig (which utilized spectral processing inside Mutable Inst. Clouds) before being recorded digitally and cleaned up within a DAW. released June 16, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, May-June 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB8, 8th in the Vibratelepathic Antiviral Broadcast series ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mahogany (4:00) 02. Milieu - Smokestacks (3:14) 03. Milieu - Playground Memories (4:41) 04. Milieu - Three Thirteen (2:15) 05. Milieu - Paddyscapes (3:44) 06. Milieu - Motorbike Trail (3:28) 07. Milieu - Drain (7:20) 08. Milieu - Kellychord (3:44) 09. Milieu - Smokestacks [Remodelled] (3:18) 10. Milieu - Eightyskate (3:32) 11. Milieu - Kontour (3:59) 12. Milieu - Summer Islands (1:48) 13. Milieu - Borealis Theme [2005 Version] (3:18) 14. Milieu - Biketrail 2 (4:28) 15. Milieu - Kosmos Track (4:20) 16. Milieu - Macropsis (4:07) 17. Milieu - Stray Trains (4:45) 18. Milieu - 120 Free (7:31) Stray Trains comes from a somewhat foggy time in my creative sprawl, when I was newly married, living in a tiny room in the back of my inlaws' country house, sleeping all day and making tracks all night on two absolutely awful desktop computers in a small corner next to a closet. During this time, in the Summer of 2005, we moved into the place where my Rolling Knoll studio would take root, and the rest of what became Stray Trains was recorded there. Going back to material from this era is difficult for me because I was learning new things and exploring new ideas constantly, which resulted in a lot of music being recorded but very little of it being recorded with fidelity in mind. As such, Stray Trains is home to many moments of clicks, pops, digital distortion and mixing decisions that I'd stop myself from doing less than a year later, but you learn by making mistakes, not by hitting the bullseye the first time you use a bow and arrow, so Stray Trains is forgivable in this light. I've done my best with the tools I have now, to clean up and somewhat clarify the music itself, fifteen years later. It almost doesn't even feel like I'm listening to my own music at this point, while other very specific parts recall vivid memories of staying up super late, sampling drum breaks on Prince and Kraftwerk albums, watching Michel Gondry videos and posting ridiculous shit on the long-gone Experimedia, Earstroke and Metanoia Media forums. The music reflects the time, a playful but also bittersweet atmosphere with elements of what I hoped would show Milieu in a more "dance music" mode at that point. Milieu had already recorded things like Slow Lid Close but not yet finished Night Currents, so Stray Trains illustrates aspects of both of those things quite well. Another point to mention, is that Stray Trains was made specifically with Luke Hazard and his Earstroke Records label in mind. Luke has always been a part of the Milieu orbit, a brilliantly creative mind that has influenced much more than credits or copy might imply - he was the handshake between myself and Jeremy Bible, linking us up to release Gunkajima and Slow Lid Close...he did original design work for Slow Lid, and other Milieu releases like Simple Stations Repeat and Three Tone Quintet...when my ambient albums like the Milieu self-titled and Beyond The Sea/Stars manifested, Luke did beautiful paintings for all three. He provided Polaroid photography for Of The Apple, A Warm Wooden Hollow and several other releases at Second Sun and Install, and here on Stray Trains, he appeared in a collaborative musical role for the first time ever. The track "Drain" was made using melodic elements Luke had sent me as file transfers, and "120 Free" was created in a similar fashion with single-chord samples of an organ Luke played and a couple drum breaks he'd sent over. I am mostly certain that we'd discussed a lot of plans for a full album collaboration, and for one reason or another, it just didn't manifest (or did it?), but Stray Trains still stands as an affirmation of the work we did together. Regarding the expansions included here, all tracks except "120 Free" have been previously released before now, in various places. Two alternate versions appeared on Remodelled at Boltfish, outtakes cropped up on different volumes of the Bent Appletrees series across years. The reason these pieces were included here is not because they were all from a singular traced session, but rather, they all resemble each other in several ways, and were recorded within the span of about a year, with the earliest being "Summer Islands" cut in late 2004 and the latest being "Biketrail 2" in Autumn of 2005. After going back through early demos and master disk backups to assemble this reissue, it became clear to me that Stray Trains was much more the pursuit of an idea or a feeling rather than a strict attempt at specific songs, as many tracks that ended up released under other names later on were tagged in some way to be included on Stray Trains - things like "My Friend The Dawn" on Our Blue Rainbow (which, coincidentally, Luke remixed) and even "Sway Leaf" on the In Hills Made Of Clouds EP (also released at Earstroke with the first-ever Milieu stickers!). The cuts included here all feel very much in unison with the time and place and horrible desktop computer workflow they were made with, so it is my hope that the mastering I've done has helped to unify them that much more. Altogether, this reissue sits well alongside other similar collections like Foxhill Pastels or Sun Bleached Piano, where these blurry recollections of sporadic creative seasons have a pretty bow placed upon them, offering them up for modern consideration and nostalgic listening. Hopefully, these old tracks are not without purpose or joy in the current age, and find their way into car stereos and headphone walks for many sunny days yet to come. released July 3, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger, except "Drain" and "120 Free" - Written by Brian Grainger & Luke Hazard. Recorded at Foxhill and Rolling Knoll, 2004-2005. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. Luke Hazard appears courtesy of Earstroke Records. This is Milieu Music number AD49, and the 49th issue in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Empty Space In Red, Yellow & Blue II (1:16:20) The ninth ANTIVIRAL BROADCAST is the second recording from the EMPTY SPACE IN RED, YELLOW & BLUE sessions, created using a complex signal chain that begins with feedback and ends in beautiful glassy tones, reminiscent of FM synthesizers and some of my favorite recordings by Alvin Lucier. To begin, RYB was created by wiring up an SSM-1750 Optimus mixer (built and sold by Radio Shack in 1995) into a feedback loop between the mixer's input channels, the mixer's output, and a Nady MM14-FX mixer between the two, to provide additional amplification and modulation via the Nady's built-in analog delay. Careful shaping of the feedback tones was done via the SSM's onboard three-band equalizer, and this output was then routed to a Peavey FX2 mixing desk, where it was multed out to multiple channels, each being processed individually to play back the feedback tones at a different relative pitch. This meant that whatever the input signal did on the SSM, polyphonic forms would fall into place around it, and remain in tune no matter how the initial pitch deviated. Further individual channel processing allowed for these pitches to play back at different staggered rates, and low-pass filtering via a Moogerfooger was also applied to tame many of the high frequencies and noise. The final full mix was sent into a Roberts 450A reel to reel tape machine (using a custom cut tape loop) for an additional layer of analog congealing, and then to a modest modular synthesizer rig (which utilized spectral processing inside Mutable Inst. Clouds) before being recorded digitally and cleaned up within a DAW. released July 13, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, May-June 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB9, 9th in the Vibratelepathic Antiviral Broadcast series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Inverse Grey I (42:53) INVERSE GREY I is the first of two "inversions" of the RED YELLOW BLUE session material - tangential paths explored while en route to completing the main body of work - using reversed and re-pitched tape, underpowered delay FX units and heavy use of low-pass filtering and dbx noise reduction to counteract the large amount of noise generated from the low powerage. The resultant two pieces are interesting perspectives on the original source (mixer feedback) that, at this stage of processing, more resemble processed vocal sounds, perhaps along similar lines as Ligeti's choral works as they appeared in Kubrick's 2001. released June 25, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, June 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number PATHOS 2. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Inverse Grey II (1:31:03) INVERSE GREY II is the second of two "inversions" of the RED YELLOW BLUE session material - tangential paths explored while en route to completing the main body of work - using reversed and re-pitched tape, underpowered delay FX units and heavy use of low-pass filtering and dbx noise reduction to counteract the large amount of noise generated from the low powerage. The resultant two pieces are interesting perspectives on the original source (mixer feedback) that, at this stage of processing, more resemble processed vocal sounds, perhaps along similar lines as Ligeti's choral works as they appeared in Kubrick's 2001. released July 17, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, June 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number PATHOS 3. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Empty Space In Red, Yellow & Blue III (1:26:34) The tenth ANTIVIRAL BROADCAST is the third and final recording from the EMPTY SPACE IN RED, YELLOW & BLUE sessions, created using a complex signal chain that begins with feedback and ends in beautiful glassy tones, reminiscent of FM synthesizers and some of my favorite recordings by Alvin Lucier. To begin, RYB was created by wiring up an SSM-1750 Optimus mixer (built and sold by Radio Shack in 1995) into a feedback loop between the mixer's input channels, the mixer's output, and a Nady MM14-FX mixer between the two, to provide additional amplification and modulation via the Nady's built-in analog delay. Careful shaping of the feedback tones was done via the SSM's onboard three-band equalizer, and this output was then routed to a Peavey FX2 mixing desk, where it was multed out to multiple channels, each being processed individually to play back the feedback tones at a different relative pitch. This meant that whatever the input signal did on the SSM, polyphonic forms would fall into place around it, and remain in tune no matter how the initial pitch deviated. Further individual channel processing allowed for these pitches to play back at different staggered rates, and low-pass filtering via a Moogerfooger was also applied to tame many of the high frequencies and noise. The final full mix was sent into a Roberts 450A reel to reel tape machine (using a custom cut tape loop) for an additional layer of analog congealing, and then to a modest modular synthesizer rig (which utilized spectral processing inside Mutable Inst. Clouds) before being recorded digitally and cleaned up within a DAW. released August 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, May-June 2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB10, 10th in the Vibratelepathic Antiviral Broadcast series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Second Coat (1:15:29) SECOND COAT is the first of a number of different recordings that will be released and detailed within the VIBRATELEPATHOS series. Recordings bearing the SECOND COAT designate are sourced from the Korg MS-20's two VCOs for their provenance, and were in fact the first recordings made with the modular R-EW Audioholistics path. On a topical level, SECOND COAT implies a vast scenic overlook, similar to those I used to stop at frequently while traveling with my wife through the Appalachian mountains. Impossibly tall peaks covered in deep green and mossy brown, with hints of orange slowly overtaking the landscape as the Autumn looms closer. Valleys filled with trickling streams that turn into great rivers, eager to churn forward to the oceanic terminus, mindless in their droning rush. Skylines that are like paint-splattered canvases of melting blues, offwhites and yellows. The MS-20's beautiful way with high and low-pass filtering and rich subharmonic response illustrates this scene in perfect clarity. In a technical way, what SECOND COAT is conveying is the sound of the MS-20 externally sequenced via an SQ-1 analog sequencer, playing back a set of hand-tuned pitches in a random order, and the resultant sounds are then routed into a JVC KD-A11 cassette deck's analog signal path veins for a slight emphasis of gain on the MS-20's sumptuous triangle-wave curvatures. From there, the signal is multed into the R-EW modular rig where it is sampled in realtime and pulled apart into granules, as well as sent to other FX destinations such as a Digitech pitch shifter, an Alesis Quadraverb and a Danelectro Reel Echo. This system is left to generate the recordings in a self-referential way, and the final takes are digitally recorded on a Peavey FX2 mixing desk and migrated to a DAW for final parametric equalization, volume leveling and very light compression work before arriving here at Bandcamp, cleverly hidden behind a play button. In a slight break for the series, in terms of sequencing, SECOND COAT recordings will continue intermittently, since there have been more of them than other more singular sessions, and this is only a testament to the absolute beauty, range and power of the MS-20 as an instrument - that it cannot accurately be conveyed or fully detailed in even these expanded runtimes, any more than Monet could capture and define the sunlight falling across the Rouen cathedral. released August 24, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, February 2020, using a Korg MS-20 and the R-EW Audioholistics modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB11, and 11th in the Vibratelepathos series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Morning Acid [2019/05/23 Dialup Mix] (1:13) 02. Milieu - Morning Acid [2020/03/18 Karp Harp Mix] (7:52) 03. Milieu - Morning Acid [2019/05/23 Johannes Loch Mix] (14:07) 04. Milieu - Morning Acid [2020/02/03 Glass Brades Mix] (5:30) 05. Milieu - Morning Acid [2019/08/30 HVAC Mix] (48:34) Morning Acid could be considered a post-Housework series Housework entry. It collects several different live Milieu sessions that all feel unified through the selection of hardware they are composed with, and although the title of this collection implies acid and techno, there are certainly other colors and temperatures of braindance present also. The various sessions presented here were recorded many different mornings while barely awake, often only moments after I would return home from driving my daughter to school, waiting for the coffee to kick in and nudging some faders with a half-melted mind. One was even performed while an HVAC repairman was doing work in my basement, though I'm not sure what he even made of it in hindsight. Like the Bismuth Cosmolog volumes at RP, Morning Acid showcases my playful and slightly weird side with analog machines and filter squawking, and feels much more cogent with all the different pieces assembled into a single, acid-fried whole. released September 4, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, various dates 2019-2020, using an all-hardware rig through a Peavey FX2 mixing desk, with a DAW handling post-process at the end of the chain. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML149. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Second Coat II (1:15:21) SECOND COAT II is the second of a number of different recordings that will be released and detailed within the VIBRATELEPATHOS series. Recordings bearing the SECOND COAT designate are sourced from the Korg MS-20's two VCOs for their provenance, and were in fact the first recordings made with the modular R-EW Audioholistics path. Contrasting against the verdant and mountainous landscape of the first SECOND COAT session, this second piece conjures up images of a vast and open sea, dark blues and glimmering whites and yellows, pulling you further and further out, every moment a free-falling point of no return, headfirst into uncertain waters. Yet, for all of this, it still feels comforting, knowing even - the hand of god moving across the waves, bringing you ever closer to some grandiose and unfathomable spectacle, some unknowable region at the heart of the operatively endless Atlantic. released September 16, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, March 2020, using a Korg MS-20 and the R-EW Audioholistics modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB12, and 12th in the Vibratelepathos series ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mother Of Cosmos (1:11:46) The sounds of a resonant temple, perhaps existing inside the mouth of some great bestial mother, vibrating and reverberating in a hypnotic sway. A meditative raga, ululating the eternal "ra", in a waking sleep, in a dark stone chamber, in the compound eyes of a god. released September 17, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded using the R-EW modular path, exploring the voices of Emi Itō and Yumi Itō from behind the wall of sleep. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number PATHOS 4. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Brush & Mirror (6:16) 02. Milieu - Eightyskate (3:10) 03. Milieu - Smokestacks (3:12) 24Bit released September 22, 2020 Written by Brian Grainger Mastered by Árni Grétar ![]() foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Starview (2:28) 02. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn (5:10) 03. Milieu - Days Behind (4:14) 04. Milieu - Alvin Sparks (6:11) 05. Milieu - Tiffany Lane (3:53) 06. Milieu - Glasshill (4:55) 07. Milieu - Mellow U (3:03) 08. Milieu - Kieran Moth (8:06) 09. Milieu - Rainy Daylight (5:33) 10. Milieu - For Katie Asleep On The Bus (5:09) 11. Milieu - Auroral (5:17) 12. Milieu - Blue Rainbow (2:58) 13. Milieu - Auroral [Sarcophagus Mix by EOD] (4:56) 14. Milieu - Mellow U [Covered by Brian Ellis] (4:53) 15. Milieu - Kieran Moth [Naphthalene Mix by Wisp] (6:15) 16. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn [Devils Vanish Mix by Ourson] (7:08) 17. Milieu - Days Behind [Am-Boy Mix] (4:34) 18. Milieu - Tiffany Lane [Photophob Mix] (6:34) 19. Milieu - Alvin Sparks [1983 Rebuild by Coppice Halifax] (6:12) 20. Milieu - Blue Rainbow [Eluder Mix] (4:34) 21. Milieu - Starview [David Tagg Mix] (8:28) 22. Milieu - For Katie Asleep On The Bus [Lucid Scape Mix by Dissolved] (4:17) 23. Milieu - Glasshill [Mrs Jynx Mix] (5:14) 24. Milieu - Rainy Daylight [Grexed by Adam Pacione] (12:06) 25. Milieu - Starview [Hidden Mix] (4:42) 26. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn [Rainy Morning Mix by Drexon Field] (2:38) 27. Milieu - Mellow U [Brian Ellis Original Mix] (3:56) 28. Milieu - Starview [David Tagg Original Mix] (6:51) 29. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn [Rocky Meadow Mix by Drexon Field] (3:32) 30. Milieu - Blue Rainbow [Endless Blue Horizon Mix by Electricwest] (4:58) 31. Milieu - Alvin Sparks [Fourth Of July Mix by Pisgah] (5:09) 32. Milieu - Glasshill [Eric Poplin Spies Mix] (9:15) 33. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn [Hazy Liftoff Mix by Drexon Field] (3:30) 34. Milieu - Gourd [Days Behind Rebuild by Ophibre] (3:04) 35. Milieu - My Friend The Dawn [Candle Lit Mix by Drexon Field] (2:45) 36. Milieu - Rainy Daylight [Grexed by Adam Pacione / Original Mix] (19:34) For the odd-numbered occasion of the fourteenth anniversary since it was first issued, OUR BLUE RAINBOW is once again in print (after a brief reinstatement on I, Absentee in 2010, itself already a decade gone) and comes backed by the OUR BLUE REMIXES and OUR BONUS REMIXES albums of reworkings, in a special third edition 3xCD set. Musically, OUR BLUE RAINBOW always seemed to exist in the in-between spaces, with things like SLOW LID CLOSE or NIGHT CURRENTS right behind us and NEW DRUGS or COLORTONE coming up soon after. It feels like aspects of all of those albums, and yet still also maintains a bittersweetness that isn't really so saturated anywhere else but here. There are many very upbeat moments of optimism and bass-pocket groove juxtaposed against chordal sequences that sound like rainclouds. There are down-tuned and slow-tempo moments that give way to sunny daybreaks and THC-fried memory fog. OUR BLUE RAINBOW is everyone's look back through a breath-smeared bus window, ready to go home, never quite able to, Summer forever around the corner or clipping at your heels as it swiftly passes you by, another wasted magic season in the curvatures of another blurry year. For me, my Blue Rainbow is full of aching and longing, missing my old friends, my parents, my sister, an electric plant, a lake. Thinking about my old Beretta, bummed out boredom-soaked weekends, having a band but never having anywhere to play. Writing out lists of ideas and names that refused to take form until years, sometimes decades later. Saving things and carrying them around only to realize that the weight of their accumulation wasn't worth the steep ticket fare, and then...here we are anyway, after all, right where we belong. And here you will find twelve original recordings that hopefully suffuse these thoughts and images into something more valuable than the aggregated act, and if not, you've got two whole albums of excellent remixes from the likes of Am-Boy, Ourson, David Tagg, Adam Pacione, Mrs Jynx, EOD, Brian Ellis, Wisp, Drexon Field and many more, even me hiding in plain sight with a Coppice Halifax remix when Fieldtriqp couldn't make the deadline. All of it collected here in a single tripartite set, ready for another ten years of sad Summers. NOTE: The I, Absentee reissue in 2010 came with a bonus album called BENT APPLETAPE, which was an unreleased album from 2006. This has been separately reissued on CD-R in conjunction with OUR BLUE RAINBOW and can be purchased here: released October 2, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger, except disks #2 & #3: Written by Brian Grainger / Produced and remixed by the credited artists. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This reissue utilizes the remasters completed in 2010 for I, Absentee's second edition of the album. Design by David Tagg & Brian Grainger. Text and physical package design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD54, 54th in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mother Of Cosmos II (1:11:08) The sounds of a resonant temple, perhaps existing inside the mouth of some great bestial mother, vibrating and reverberating in a hypnotic sway. A meditative raga, ululating the eternal "ra", in a waking sleep, in a dark stone chamber, in the compound eyes of a god. released October 8, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded using the R-EW modular path, exploring the voices of Emi Itō and Yumi Itō from behind the wall of sleep. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number PATHOS 5. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Second Coat III (4:21:53) SECOND COAT III is the third of a number of different recordings that will be released and detailed within the VIBRATELEPATHOS series. Recordings bearing the SECOND COAT designate are sourced from the Korg MS-20's two VCOs for their provenance, and were in fact the first recordings made with the modular R-EW Audioholistics path. The longest SECOND COAT session yet, III clocks in at just under 4.5 hours in a single, slow exhalation of cool air. Laid to digital tape in February while the weather was still chilly, it feels apt to revisit it for public release now, on the heels of Autumn's arrival, with wafts of smoke in the air, the crackle of leaves falling and cinnamon sunsets bathing our evenings in diffused purple and orange light. Tonally, III most resembles the first SECOND COAT iteration, but where that first session felt more lyrical in its melodic presentation, III is a sedate and drifting affair with very slight and occasional plumes of duophony, bubbling up to the great surface, a wide and shallow pool to meditate in, built with long nights in mind. released October 8, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at the White Pillar Workshop, February 2020, using a Korg MS-20 and the R-EW Audioholistics modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB13, and 13th in the Vibratelepathos series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Apennine Hashish (2:09:25) Deep in the tree-lined valley, the setting sun is still bright enough to squint the eyes of weary messengers, slowly working their way back to their lord's castle on the crest of the forest's edge. Their duties fulfilled, scrolls delivered, heraldries pronounced, they now sit by the last nightly fire of their trek, gazing back down into the embers centered in the small encampment. From miles away, they can hear the day's last bells ringing out from the chapel beside the castle, although from this distance the tones are smeared through the dusky air, and instead resemble sustained resonations of metallic horns, pealing out for a last call indoors, before the primordial forest darkness consumes what's left of the day, along with everything in it. They exchange glances, the two emissaries, while passing a small pipe back and forth between them. The greenest grass from the whitest kingdoms, the harvest's finest crop, prized by the farmer, the random varietals that perennially form the spice of life itself. The sunset slows the rigorous pace of the journey to a syrupy slink downward, while eyelids become heavy and the purple sky begins to resemble a vast velvet curtain laid across the glassy firmament. 2020/04/04 SESSION NOTES: Recorded using the Behringer MS-1 to sequence an SSDP Jade Series as3340 VCO, an analog oscillator with a novel waveform, while the results of this sequencing and voice pair were then routed outward in several different directions - Mutable Inst. Clouds for granular synthesis, the Korg MS-20's external signal processor and CV patchbay, a Moog LPF and ring modulator, and reverb/delay units such as the White Pillar staples of Pioneer spring reverb, Alesis Quadraverb, BBE Two Timer, Danelectro Reel Echo and Synthrotek PT2399 delays and pitch adjustments from a Digitech WH4, with all signals collected and mixed via a Peavey FX2 24-channel mixing desk with custom designed internal DSP FX. released November 6, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded April 4, 2020 at White Pillar Workshop, using an SSDP Jade Series as3340 VCO in tandem with a Behringer MS-1, a Korg MS-20 and the R-EW Audioholistics processing path, mixed on a Peavey FX2 mixing desk with numerous outboard FX. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB14, and 14th in the Vibratelepathos catalog ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - In A Vale Of Soft Green (8:10) 02. Milieu - Meristem (18:20) 03. Milieu - Panic, Across Fields (5:58) 04. Milieu - Dithent (8:07) 05. Milieu - Peranimand (14:28) 06. Milieu - Quomb (14:28) 07. Milieu - Thandminexas (1:15:11) Retraced Paths is a double-album collection of beatless Milieu recordings, dating between 2016-2020, which includes three previously unreleased pieces from my archives. "In A Vale Of Soft Green" and "Dithent" are both more current recordings, drafted for Lee Norris' Neotantra label in the UK, while "Panic, Across Fields" was a pre-Daughter session track given to Luxury Sky District's 4/20/'96 compilation on double-cassette. "Quomb" was a generative piece created on the Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer for Dusk Transmission at Moody Drones - previously digital-only and presented here on physical format for the first time. "Meristem" and "Peranimand" were both, like "Panic", pre-Daughter session recordings that were realized just before the full grasp of what Daughter's process should be became clear, and neither have been issued anywhere prior to this. "Thandminexas" is another one from the vault, recorded in the anguish-filled August of 2019, at the same time as Four Passages For Faun, Tin Bell and Lyre. It was considered for release as "Passage Six" but this was abandoned in favor of Passage Five feeling more resolved and final at that moment in time, so it appears here as a massive second disc addition that both reflects the other six pieces on the first side, and contrasts against them with deeper realms of drone and sustained-tone bliss. Altogether, these seven recordings feel unified in many ways, not just because they originated from the same studio and sometimes, the same equipment, but in some deeper, unspoken way that can't really be quantified without simply listening. It is my hope that assembling them here creates something that is more substantial than the different parts themselves, and reaches across the time(s) and space(s) between us to offer some comfort and warmth as the Winter of a long, hard year approaches. released November 6, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, various dates, 2016-2020. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photograph by Brian, Dayton Summer 2020. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD054. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Garlind (1:00:35) GARLIND, a new Milieu ambient pastorale for the 2020 holiday season, available as a name-your-price download for the rest of this horrific year. I have not released any new holiday-themed Milieu since the SNOWRADIUS triple-album three years ago, and although GARLIND was a conceived idea on paper back then, it took a few more Christmases before I got the formula right. What you're hearing when you press play is the vocal coda from "Merry Christmas Darling" by The Carpenters, processed live through my R-EW Audioholistics modular system, augmented only by a two-note sinewave bassline generated with a self-oscillating SSDP Jade Series phaser, sequenced on an Arturia Keystep Pro. The session was broadcast live on my Twitch channel just a few days ago, and after a careful mastering job and the application of a field recording detailing wind through leafless trees, GARLIND is finally ready to be published. Why sample The Carpenters, you ask? Well, as a kid, my father had one or two homemade mixtapes of Christmas music that he'd assembled via dubbing them on the fly from WKZQ, the FM station we listened to a lot in Myrtle Beach through the 1980s and 1990s. One of these tapes contained a transitional moment before a track, where the vocal coda of "Merry Christmas Darling" was left intact before playing the track he wrote on the tape label, and for this reason, my nostalgia in and of Christmastime is directly connected to those few seconds of close vocal harmony. I've wanted to find a way to expand this sample at the molecular level for years, to canonize it within my own creative landscape, and now I feel that I have finally been able to realize it properly after spending the entire year building a modular synthesizer system. You might also listen to this and find yourself wondering why it seems as dark as it is? GARLIND, for me, bottles up all of the frustration and depression of carrying on with Christmas amid a global pandemic, a shitshow election and all kinds of other local/national/global problems, and attempts to make sense of it using the voice (and likeness) of Karen Carpenter, a neutral and time-separated sample of childhood nostalgia, a counterweight of positivity, optimism and pure youthful exuberance. Somewhere in there, the dark Winter of 2020 can be brightly lit by the hopeful warmth of a new year, and if my music can be another voice in that choir of empathy, forgiveness, charity and humility, I am happy to provide it. released December 18, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Principally recorded live at White Pillar, December 2020, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, with subsequent edting and mastering work following three days later. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMC010. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Blurry Thursday (19:34) 02. Milieu - Housewares and Highlighters (13:42) 03. Milieu - Terpentine Xylophone (7:45) BLURRY THURSDAY is the affectionate title given to three new Milieu pieces, developed in tandem between a hardware setup of analog synths and drum machines, a couple different FM synth boxes and a DAW with more overdubs, sampling and FM synths to round everything off. The result exists contentedly in the post-SUN CAST landscape, with lots of melodic melancholy, funky bass riffs, 83 BPM drum grooves and slow-burn dynamism that lets you get comfortable for the ride. The title track could be a sister recording for SUNDAY MEADOW BLUSH, as both recordings are whole-side-of-a-12" affairs, and both revisit the very "downtempo" Milieu sound of the earlier albums. "Housewares & Highlighters" picks the pace back up again with a breezy house feeling, slipping in hints of my influences from DJ Sprinkles, early Metamatics and Kerrier District, coalescing with some distinctly New Wave bass work and some acidic subtleties for added bounce. Closing the album's second side is "Terpentine Xylophone", the first piece I've recorded with the Yamaha TX81Z, which drapes a cloak of quiet contemplation over the last eight minutes, recalling music from prior recordings like IMPROVISATIONS FOR HYLIAN PIANO & WOODWINDS, ELIDE and some of the VIBRATELEPATHIC ANTIVIRAL BROADCASTS. Altogether, BLURRY THURSDAY represents a "best foot forward" contribution from Milieu, with the optimism of a new year in mind, being the first recording of its kind to appear in 2021 so far. As you can plainly hear, Milieu is alive and well beneath all that Ohioan ice and snow, and as Spring and Summer approach, with their green revivals, you'll be hearing from him more and more. released February 5, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, 2020-2021 using Korg Volca Beats/Bass/FM/Sample/Kick/Modular + KP-2, Boss DR-110, Radio Shack SSM-1750, Pioneer SR202W, Yamaha TX81Z, Arturia Keystep Pro, Peavey FX2 + DAW sprinklings. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photo, text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD055. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Solartone (3:34) 02. Milieu - Glow Kid Lows (3:52) 03. Milieu - Endora Borealis (3:48) 04. Milieu - Nude Drugs For Unclear Families (4:48) 05. Milieu - Remiddled (4:16) 06. Milieu - Sour Bloom Rainbow (5:09) 07. Milieu - Bellend Dither (5:28) 08. Milieu - Night Currants (3:42) 09. Milieu - Soapwater Patrol (5:58) 10. Milieu - M Is For Monogram (5:40) 11. Milieu - Swimming Poms (3:00) 12. Milieu - Reverse Microgramma (4:49) 13. Milieu - Sand We Found In The Songs (4:32) 14. Milieu - Burnt Appletrees (3:48) 15. Milieu - Sun Cats (7:25) 16. Milieu - Phosphate Weather (4:47) I am beyond happy to present a special new album called Memory Maker, created using a one of a kind system designed for capturing and recording audio from within actual dream states. This new system, which uses patented No-Fuss Telepathy technology, allows a musician like myself to enter into one of several different levels of sleep and generate music directly from my brain's activity (monitored using a special piece of equipment called the Invisible Digital Instrument Onboard Transport) onto a proprietary clear plastic disk, similar in the practical size and shape of a standard CD. As this revolutionary new system is still within the beta-testing phase, it follows that these clear disks are only playable on specialized systems that have replaced the archaic laser reader with a Filtered Algorithm Keytone Extractor (soon to be available separately), which is what translates the unique recording format into sound that can be experienced outside of actual dream states. However, early testing has also shown that once listeners fall asleep, they are able to easily access the files on these clear disks regardless of their hi-fi setups, by using only a few simple meditation techniques that build upon Pauline Oliveros' deep listening studies in the 1960s and the fundamentals of the Goodiepal Equation. Supporters of this release will receive a printed guide, which details in a step by step list how to access the No-Fuss Telepathy methodology and begin listening to Memory Maker. Finally, there's no longer a need for clunky media formats like tapes or vinyl, or even localized files on streaming sites or digital storefronts! With Memory Maker, you can lie down in your bed, close your eyes and go to sleep, knowing that a vivid musical experience is not far behind you. Why not treat yourself to a new and enthralling way to hear music? Memory Maker can be played again and again, as often as you feel like doing it, and can sound different every single time. It can be a short album of jungle tracks, or an impossibly long monolith of ambient drift, because in your dream state, time no longer exists, and subsequently, music heard within that state does not need to adhere to any normal constraints. It is a psychologically proven fact that a person's perception is often more realistic to the senses than the actual state of reality being experienced, so why not give up on life and record collecting entirely? Buy the last album you will ever need, and go to sleep forever. You'll be glad you did. NOTE: The digital files featured here are only demos of the actual dream-state Memory Maker audio, and should be considered supplemental and completely inferior to their otherwise elegant and lush master takes. released April 1, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded using No-Fuss Telepathy and the Invisible Digital Instrument Onboard Transport at the White Pillar Workshop. Mastered, engineered and manufactured by Distrans Telekomm. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMAF01. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Kitty Come Here (4:06) 02. Milieu - Can't Do That, Dave (0:40) 03. Milieu - Bomb #20 (3:27) 04. Milieu - Shuttlecraft To Med-Bay (3:12) 05. Milieu - Fornax Quarian Centerfold (1:16) 06. Milieu - Astrolabe Dub (4:45) 07. Milieu - Hard-Light Helipad (8:38) 08. Milieu - Redshirt Red Alert (2:29) 09. Milieu - Miss December 2183 (1:17) 10. Milieu - Holographic Atmo-Burn (5:41) 11. Milieu - Elcor Dialup Fuzz (0:38) 12. Milieu - H Is For Helmsman (0:41) 13. Milieu - Radiation Fume Funk (2:56) 14. Milieu - Fremen Blue (6:57) 15. Milieu - "Boy, Have We Got A Vacation For You" (3:45) FROM THE AUTHOR, SUMMER 2021: Fifteen varied, colorful and sometimes off-kilter tracks from the H IS FOR HOLOGRAM sessions, arguably sharing their concepts of space with Pink Space, and offering a lighter listening experience to accompany the main affair. Desserts and a digestif, following a cosmically exhausting jaunt across the galaxy. Originally outtakes from H IS FOR HOLOGRAM, the tracks on ENJOY YOUR STAY have been lovingly remastered from their point of origin, covered in digital dust, now cleaned up with the tools of the future to provide a more robust and detailed playthrough. Here, ten years later, ENJOY YOUR STAY also receives a renewed design by Atoll Intercom Systems, matching the accompanying HOLOGRAM/SLEEP reinstatements, with some fresh new fantasist copy included on the CD edition as well. Seasoned Milieu fans as well as science-fiction geeks will recognize many of the references made here to books, television shows, video games and films, although the music itself should offer enough diversion with or without these topical connections. ENJOY YOUR STAY contains a wealth of bedroom electronics and space-age grooves, seemingly conjured via a starship radio operator, fumbling the dial through the bands in search of a station to refuel at. ORIGINAL COPY, 2011: So 2011 is ending, and you're sitting in your DeLorean thinking "What about the future?"...just then, a blinding flash of light slightly stuns you as Ace Rimmer appears in a sparkly clean space-suit with Berlin playing in the background. He hands you a small square disk not unlike the outmoded floppies PCs used in the 80's and 90's. This one has "Get your ass to Mars" scribbled on it with a smiley face giving a thumbs up. Before you can ask what it's for, Ace is gone, leaving only the faintest space-dust trail behind his rocket. You pull out your communicator to call Doc Brown, he'd probably know what to do with this disk. Upon arriving at Doc's lab, he knowingly inserts the disk into his Pip-Boy 7000 and decodes the data, which is revealed to be a 15-part message detailing the location of a swank holographic lounge, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. After about a week of calculating Pi with Doc's fancy AI (conveniently named Holly) you know enough to build a transporter device to get you to the party just in time. A second blinding flash of light, and the feeling of being poured out of a bottle and into one of those tie-die machines...and suddenly you're naked and confused in the back of a smoky nightclub. You're approached by a silvery droid that asks "Nice night for a walk?" to which you reply "Your clothes - give them to me, now" and the robot kindly produces a red Starfleet uniform. Knowing what this means, you fear for your life until you open the door to the dancefloor and hear "Last Night Ace Rimmer Saved My Life" and realize all is as it should be. You make your way to the glowing neon bar and order a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the Asari Matriarch behind the counter. After a few sips, your vision blurs, blurs some more and before you know it you're cosmic surfing past Jupiter and well beyond the infinite. After the effect wears off you realize you just passed out on the Holodeck with a Ligeti record stuck in a locked groove. You tiredly walk over to the kiosk, take the LP off the turntable and curl up in the lovely soft bed sitting conveniently nearby. A tall dark monolith appears at the foot of the bed to say goodnight and turn the lights down. What a day. Next time you're totally going to Westworld instead. released July 14, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll and Botany Bay, 2010-2011. Remastered Summer 2021 at White Pillar Workshop by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Design by Atoll Intercom Systems. This is Milieu Music number AD58C in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. © + (p) Oscillog 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Pure Tone Calibrations) (1:15) 02. Milieu - Starway To The Stairs (7:08) 03. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Phoss Hi-Gloss) (3:53) 04. Milieu - Celestial Affective (5:53) 05. Milieu - Jefferies Tube (Caladan Waveforms Pt. I) (7:04) 06. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Horse's Asteroid #2056) (3:21) 07. Milieu - Holodex (6:50) 08. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Foreign Contaminant) (2:51) 09. Milieu - Passworthy's Progress (7:14) 10. Milieu - Sapho Flask (Caladan Waveforms Pt. II) (8:23) 11. Milieu - Mimieux Telepathos (7:04) 12. Milieu - StarCom Ident (TLX 008 WXM AT) (1:46) STELLAR DEBRIS began life as a dim awareness in my mind, a handful of unfinished pieces that were gathering digital dust in the stasis of an old hard drive, that I assumed might amount to an EP of material I could excavate for the occasion of H IS FOR HOLOGRAM celebrating its tenth anniversary on this planet. Well, clearly my memory is made of the rotting swiss cheese that it feels like between my ears, because not only was the entirety of STELLAR DEBRIS waiting for me to materialize it, but two additional EPs as well (which will be released in August and September, respectively). Initially, I approached the material somewhat cautiously - finishing music that I started so long ago comes with its own sets of rules and requirements, in order to not lose the focus of what the original idea may have been - but after spending some time with these compositions, the feel-good endorphins came flooding in to the studio, in big technicolor waves of synaesthesia, and it was decided that any such rules surrounding outtakes from a decade ago ought to be thrown aside in favor of simply having fun with it, so STELLAR DEBRIS is very much a first in the large and long-running Milieu catalog for this reason. It exists with spacesuit boots in both worlds, in both times, a bridging of the past and the future of that past, a musical handshake between two time-travelers moving in different directions, meeting up for a quick coffee between systems. So, the question for the listener to answer becomes the following: When you press play, are you listening to Milieu in 2010-2011? Or are you listening to Milieu in 2021? Is there really a difference, that my ego would prefer to believe is present? I guess if there's no difference at all, that means only two things are possible: 1) I have the subconscious ability to revisit my past lives, slipping into roles that I have long thought were done and over with, or 2) I haven't changed or grown nearly as much as I would like to think I have, and that this exercise is all just one big cosmic feedback loop, coming full circle in the most elaborate and melodically accessible ouroboros ever. Or is it a third answer, an even more all-encompassing possibility? Are all the things I've worked on, and "made" by the terms and definitions of the role I've played as a man inside a room with synthesizers, inevitable? Are these pieces truly the stellar debris that I have named them? Floating in the ether, possible pasts and possible present, all at once, peripherally existing like Michaelangelo's statue, waiting to be exhumed from the slab of stone. I'll tell you, for my part in all of this, it's hard to feel like I'm not breaking my swiss-cheese brain just trying to grasp it all. So, let's all just sit down and tell ourselves that it's just a show, that we should really just relax while Milieu arranges and catalogues Stellar Debris. Get yourself comfortable, that play button won't push itself. See you on the other side! released July 17, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop, 2010-2011 and 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Design by Atoll Intercom Systems. This is Milieu Music number MMD058. © + (p) Oscillog 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Stanford Taurus (5:26) 02. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Bow Face) (1:29) 03. Milieu - Heighliner Dub (5:07) 04. Milieu - Undreamt (2:43) 05. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Walter Gripp’s Quiet Repose) (1:21) 06. Milieu - Beached 3978 (Caladan Waveforms, Pt. 3) (7:01) 07. Milieu - “There Will Come Soft Rains” (4:20) STANFORD TAURUS is the first of two supplemental EPs to follow the STELLAR DEBRIS album. It contains seven tracks not included on STELLAR DEBRIS that originated during the same recording sessions. In some ways, the material offered by STANFORD is both more angular and more subdued than the LP tracks, providing further windows of context for the tangential creative process that produced them. For those of you not looking for details: STANFORD TAURUS is another seven tracks of space-age electronic music, designed to delight and distract both fixed and free-form attention spans. released August 6, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop, 2010-2011 and 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Design by Atoll Intercom Systems. This is Milieu Music number MML158A. © + (p) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Afterlife Blues (6:44) 02. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Electric Supermen) (4:44) 03. Milieu - Dustybootz (4:23) 04. Milieu - Eight Mentat Day (8:20) 05. Milieu - StarCom Ident (Hasslein Timecurve) (2:28) 06. Milieu - White Holes (Caladan Waveforms Pt. IV) (8:23) 07. Milieu - Almaz Iso-Tanks (3:50) Following the STELLAR DEBRIS album are two EPs of additional material from the same sessions, cultivated from final-glossing tracks started in 2010-2011 a decade later - STANFORD TAURUS was the first of the supplemental recordings, and this, AFTERLIFE BLUES, is the second. Where AFTERLIFE differs slightly from TAURUS is the presence of three tracks that are alternative versions of tracks included on H IS FOR HOLOGRAM - the title track, "Dustybootz" and "Almaz Iso-Tanks" - while the other four tracks are entirely new compositions. The three mixes came about while I was going through the original archived recordings for HOLOGRAM, with intent to remaster them, so they were well-suited to being included in the STELLAR DEBRIS session, which was much more a case of transfiguring the past into something suitable and cogent in the present. In this way, the versions can be seen as updates on their decade-older counterparts. Altogether, AFTERLIFE BLUES offers a set of heavier dance music with distorted rhythms and unusually textured percussion and bass, intercut against beautiful deep ambient techno pieces - the latter including the fourth entry in the extrasolar Caladan Waveforms suite...could there still be others? With AFTERLIFE BLUES now published alongside the ambient epilogue of ANDROMEDAN DELTAS, the entire cycle of H IS FOR HOLOGRAM's 10th anniversary celebration is over. Everything brought up to current standards and practices, here in the future, hopefully ready to weather another ten years. It only makes sense to assemble a special set collecting all seven entries, so if you're interested in acquiring all of the HOLOGRAM reissue materials and their adjacent new works in one go, please check out the STARCOM SEPTET package here: XXXX released September 3, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop, 2010-2011 and 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Design by Atoll Intercom Systems. This is Milieu Music number MML158B. © + (p) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Ambrox Orange (7:03) 02. Milieu - Quilla [Black Wick Mix] (3:36) 03. Milieu - Ether Cymbal (1:53) 04. Milieu - Pan Of Green Fables [Black Wick Mix] (4:44) 05. Milieu - Dusk Treader (4:48) 06. Milieu - Beached 3978 [Black Wick Mix] (4:46) 07. Milieu - Endora [Black Wick Mix] (4:45) 08. Milieu - Riverbed 2 [Black Wick Mix] (3:13) Milieu has had a busy year, with regard to issuing "pop" albums of melodic composition and rhythmic reliability - Blurry Thursday, Thalline Dress, Stellar Debris and the Fan Club exclusive High In The Middle all see me in ultra-stimming mode, programming all kinds of details in my little square-pushing drum machines and coaxing all manner of color-tonality overload from a varied synthesizer collection and a 1.5-year old modular system that seems to be finally able to pull itself up on furniture and occasionally say "Daddy." So then, it should come as no surprise at all that I've still not yet exhausted myself on this pop-music funtime trip I seem to be on, and I have a new single packed tight with the good stuff, ready to be vaporized in celebration of the arrival of Autumn. '21 has been a shit year for the most part, just like '20, and perhaps this is what has compelled me toward both hyper-melodic and stimulation-seeking ends (as well as further into the deep end of meditation and disconnection via Vibratelepathos and Workingman's Drone sessions) - it's not possible to be sure, but in lieu of certainty and self-assurance, I am happy to offer up yet another slice of self-deprecating bedroom techno for you to peruse, hopefully subtracting you from our miserable worldly situations just that little bit more... AMBROX ORANGE feels like it could have been included on Thalline Dress or Stellar Debris or High In The Middle, and perhaps for that reason, it's better to put it out alone...or nearly alone. It's a psychedelic wide-lens barnburner that isn't quite acid or jungle or glitched out braindance, but somewhere between all of those things like a piece of sun-dried bubblegum in the sidewalk. It also brings me back to moments on Academy Stripes and Polypsilon, which is nice because it means there's a lot going on in only seven minutes. I've been lucky to come into five (!!!) chopped and screwed and totally BLUNTED remixes made lovingly by BLACK WICK (aka the owner of the illustrious Illuminated Paths tape label that issued Daughter and the remastered Dusty Box, among other things - he is also half of Poolside Rail Bus with me, for those wondering). Needing some sequential glue, as I often do, I dug out a couple outtakes from various sessions this Summer and last and included them here - ETHER CYMBAL, a tropical wonk interlude from a livestream session, and DUSK TREADER, a reduced version of the lesser-known b-side BORIS & HIS BEDROOM BEAT. All eight tracks coalesce to form a unique and slightly spooky experience, music for trick-or-treating in Milieu-Land if you like. I'm calling AMBROX a single, but in truth you're getting almost 40 minutes of jams. Special thanks are due to Black Wick for his talents and time, and Sophia for helping out with titles and putting up with me getting stoned and playing back tracks over and over again to get my mixing notes straight. Extra special ORANGE thanks to Ross - without his Juno 106-shaped contribution to the Workshop, this recording could not exist. released October 1, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger, except #2/4/6/7/8 written by Brian and produced by Black Wick. #1/3/5 recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML153. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All flights reserved ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Garlind (Post-Chordal Wall) (1:03:51) While recording GARLIND during the holiday season of 2020, numerous variations and precursory alternatives were recorded and discarded as rehearsals prior to arriving at the final live broadcast and recording. I've toyed with the idea of issuing some of this embryonic material as another Xmas gift, for most of the year, eventually deciding to use it in a more transfigurative way and create a newer piece of music, with the GARLIND session materials providing only half of the new body as composted sound. What manifested from these efforts sits before you now, somewhere between a remix, a rehearsal and a reprise, but also none of those things - perhaps it is best to consider this recording as GARLIND plucked from a parallel universe, the same but different. In any case, and however you choose to listen to it, if you listen to it at all, GARLIND is hopefully exactly what it says on the tin: A post-chordal wall of Wintery blanket and introspective disconnection. Happy holidays to everyone celebrating, and even to those who are not. Long life, good health and many happy returns in 2022. released December 6, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded 2020-2021 at White Pillar Workshop. Built using the vocal coda of "Merry Christmas Darling" by The Carpenters, in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, an Arturia Microbrute monosynth and a Yamaha TX81Z FM synthesizer. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Cover design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMC010B. ©+(P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - White Alice (Blissed) (14:01) 02. Milieu - White Alice (Rain Washes Over The Beached Memory Bell) (1:01:16) 03. Milieu - White Alice (Asleep Beneath The Waves) (1:03:20) 04. Milieu - White Alice (Golden Apples Hidden Within The Sunken Holds Of Lost Ephesian Ships) (13:19) 05. Milieu - White Alice (Blue Sand Carried Across The Dawn-Burnt Desert) (51:54) 06. Milieu - White Alice (A Distant Fanfare Of Cedar Horns) (25:01) While working on several different sessions throughout the second half of 2021, all focused upon the exploration of my recently acquired Roland Juno 106 synthesizer, I'd accumulated a large amount of material that was recorded either for signal tests or rehearsal takes, or simply experiments with new patches that deviated from whatever the primary goal was at that moment in time. My growing and esoteric modular system has stepped into a more active role in reprocessing any and all audio such as this, informally recorded or flawed in some other way, and removing it from a cutting-room-floor fate, instead transfiguring and elevating it into something entirely new. So now, offered here in periphery with the White Alice sessions at Vibratelepathos (see: vibratelepathos.bandcamp.com/album/white-alice-i-ii ) are the White Alice Variations - the recognizable sound of the Juno, weathered and sometimes distantly recalled through the myriad channels and processing paths of my R-EW Audioholistics system, as well as FX devices such as the Alesis Quadraverb, Danelectro Reel Echo and Lexicon Alex. This is a visage of White Alice displaced, transplanted, partially dissolved and regenerated by memory - a bell rung in a mountain top lighthouse, vibrations carried across waves, woods and fields, to be absorbed by the clouds and vaporized by the golden sun. released February 4, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, various dates Summer-Winter 2021. All sounds generated with the Roland Juno 106 polyphonic digital synthesizer, in tandem with various FX devices and the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D, using a photograph taken in 1987 by Technical Sgt. D.L. Wetterman. This is Milieu Music number MMD062. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Isochronous Waves (1:10:48) Following in the vein of February's 'Silver Ore / River Garden' - which is to say, recordings that emerged from the many different Vibratelepathos sessions that felt distinct enough to issue separate from that imprint - is the Isochronous Waves session. Recorded live on the evening of April 27th, 2021, and broadcast online at Twitch as well, Isochronous Waves was an improvisation built with the ARP Odyssey monophonic analog synthesizer and the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. The ARP Odyssey used here was purchased from David Tagg, and it has since become one of my favorite synthesizers I've ever had the pleasure to use. Not only does this machine possess what I consider to be one of the most functional and beautiful design interfaces out there, it also seems to continually avoid destabilization when it is pushed into directions that most other synthesizers fail to reach. What I mean by this, is that the three filter types, the ring modulator, even the sample and hold - they all seem to convey eloquent and interesting curvatures and textures, no matter how hard or incongruously they are driven and modulated. The ARP is, in this way, very much like the Roland Juno 106, and every single time I've sat down with these instruments, they assert their own distinct personalities within the framework of whatever recording is underway. Musically, this session conjured up imagery of great whales slowly bowing up and down beneath the ocean's surface. Dappled in ribbons of golden sunlight that flutter through the slate blue like unspooled tape, their songs echoing out through the dense watery forests like angelic horns filling all the rooms of a deep blue heaven. In this place, time is slower, movement is muted, light is softer. It is a perfect analog for the stillness of meditation and the mindfulness of deep breathing, and has accompanied me for the last year while I do those exact things. I offer it here to the public, in the hopes that it can facilitate even just a little bit of manual disconnection from the impossibly depressing world outside. I hope it helps you sleep, or think, or perhaps even just read something or rest your eyes, blotting out the day's headlines with a long slow brush stroke. released March 4, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, April 27th 2021, using an ARP Odyssey monophonic analog synthesizer in tandem with the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path, channeled through the veins of Mackie ProFX8 and Peavey FX2 mixing desks, with onboard custom DSP FX and outboard rack FX (Alesis Quadraverb, Lexicon Alex) providing supplemental reverberation and filter/EQ processing. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD064. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - A Jade Drum Brushed With Softwood Ash (7:38) 02. Milieu - Wind Green (25:38) 03. Milieu - Lime Trees And Olive Groves Line The Reach Of The Mossy Fortress (12:19) 04. Milieu - A Fractured Sun Of Newborn Emeralds And Painted Glass Ampoules Pours Into The Spring Valley (24:41) released April 1, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, 2019-2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D based on a work by Alphonse Mucha, 1897. Prose by Brenda Ginger. This is Milieu Music number MMD066A. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Beached And Stoned Upon The Crest Of The Indigo Sea (17:31) 02. Milieu - Wind Blue (15:05) 03. Milieu - Night Port Beneath Rusted Spires (20:22) 04. Milieu - Columbia Washed In Ultramarine (13:41) released April 1, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, 2021-2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D based on a work by Alphonse Mucha, 1897. Prose by Brenda Ginger. This is Milieu Music number MMD066B. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Planet Everfree (7:11) 02. Milieu - The Sunflower to Disappear (1:37) 03. Milieu - Burgundy Boredoms (Zwei Kreise Zkrx) (6:34) 04. Milieu - Landrace Eraser (6:51) "Planet Everfree" is the first single from The Flower to Disappear, the forthcoming new Milieu album, due to release on June 23rd 2022 on digital and ltd. edition CD formats. Recorded during Summer of 2021 for inclusion on the 11th Cottage Industries compilation at Neo Ouija, it was not apparent until Winter that this track was not merely a one-off, but the first step of a new Milieu album. With a title lovingly plucked from the angelic harmonies of Kate and Cindy, the cut conjures up visions of a beautiful green and blue landscape, a peaceful place and time, filled with joy and contentment - a distinct and deliberate contrast against the state of the world we live in today. I decided to focus the work I was doing for this album on the act of escapism - what could facilitate it? For myself, rituals of escapism include so many things, most of which I need on a weekly or even daily basis in order to keep my head on my shoulders - coffee, jazz and metal music, sunshine, creative work, time spent with my family, willful ignorance of headlines and the information overload of the internet, THC, cozy slippers, domesticated animals, literature and poetry, MST3K, vintage cartoons, comedies and sitcoms, conversations with friends and respected colleagues, video games, sleep and meditation. That's a long list, and not nearly complete, but it really convinced me that this was the way forward - the mechanism I needed to cut through the mire of suffering, pain and war - and that in doing so, I would be able to bring these tools to others, in the hopes that they could use them as well as I have, to escape, even momentarily. Some methods of facilitating escapism are not necessarily healthy, either, and I wanted to outline this difference with my work as well. Self-care is not selfishness, escapism is not egotism, and there can be no us without you and I being here first. So, "Planet Everfree" and by extension, The Flower to Disappear, are both my direct contribution to the facilitation of escapism through purely pleasant, safe and hopefully enriching paths. The further I go into the realms of philosophy and the deeper my understanding of the uncompromising universe we find ourselves in, the more apparent it becomes to me that we could accomplish so much for ourselves and each other by simply being kind, by embodying empathy, patience, forgiveness and love, because the universe is not designed with these things in mind. The void is the void, an abyss that cares not, sees not, gives and takes without reason or justification. I often see people quoting that phrase "You must be the change you wish to see in the world" - and this is a good start - but I happen to believe that this is not merely enough. Embodiment of change and principles of progress only gets us so far. We must go further, inspire ourselves, challenge ourselves and each other to do better, to build things, to reach past the mundane survival we have barely kept up, and to really truly work, toward a better time and place for everyone. It's funny to me, that I just turned 39, and you'd think that with middle age comes some kind of conservatism, the dreaded "Get off my lawn" disconnect of all of our lives, but instead, I continually feel that the older I get, the more naive I somehow become. The more I learn, the less I know. It's as if I have decided that the teachings of the modern world that I and everyone else have drilled into ourselves when we become adults are just constructs, designed by others, devoid of empathy, things built to perpetuate the way things have been, the way they already are. With my work, here in the musical world and elsewhere in the written word and visual metaphor, I refute these systems and structures, I deny them and return them to whoever invented them to begin with. They do not serve us, they do not carry us forward - only hope and love can do that. This is a lot, I know, especially for copy on a single of electronic music, but I promise you, as someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to the creative act, that it can get better. Make things, be kind, be constructive and not destructive, be mindful of others, try to learn something new each day, try to understand that you can't ever know everything either. Know yourself, and help others get to know themselves, and while I cannot say any kind of karma exists in the world, I am certain that positive thought leads to positive action, and positive action leads to a better world for everyone. On the road to a better world, we're going to need all the relief we can get - we will all need a flower to disappear. So here are four different strains of pleasurable escapism for you - two of them filled with polymetric psychedelia and enough stimming and sensory overload that the spectrum-dwellers like myself out there listening will feel right at home. There is a short composition for finger-picked 10-string acoustic guitar and Karplus-Strong synthesizer, as well - a palate cleanser I hope. Finally, there is a fantastic alternative mix of "Burgundy Boredoms" (another LP cut) from near and dear friend Zwei Kreise, which recalls many of our favorite textures and shapes from the late 90s-early 00s electronic sound. I have also assembled a video for "Planet Everfree" which contains mutated visuals built from a 1936 cartoon I grew up watching, and some prose written for the new album, and you can watch that here: youtu.be/OCmVorGhyRk Finally, there is a special listening party event scheduled for 7 PM EST on Wednesday June 22, 2022, where ticket holders can listen to the entirety of The Flower to Disappear ahead of release, while enjoying semi-generative visuals and a jovial chatroom. You even get a bonus EP download when you grab a ticket: milieumusic.bandcamp.com/merch/milieu-the-flower-to-disappear-new-album-listening-party-ambient-modular-set released June 5, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2021-Spring 2022, except #3 written by Brian / produced and remixed by Zwei Kreise, May-June 2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling from Dave and Max Fleischer, 1936. Text by Brian, June 2022. This is Milieu Music number MML174. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Planet Everfree (7:10) 02. Milieu - Pinewheels (6:40) 03. Milieu - Burgundy Boredoms (7:52) 04. Milieu - Brightened Field (2:27) 05. Milieu - White to Pale Yellow (17:21) 06. Milieu - Electrothanasia (5:05) 07. Milieu - Winterette (9:14) 08. Milieu - Moth in the Milkglass (7:48) 09. Milieu - The Flower to Disappear (8:50) 10. Milieu - The Million-Year Picnic (6:33) The Flower to Disappear is, as many of my albums have been before it, a confluence of ideas, themes and patterns, woven painstakingly together into a tapestry that is hopefully pleasurable and diverting enough that it betrays the utterly cartoonish amount of work that went into creating it. I broke ground on it last year, in an isolated session that produced "Planet Everfree" for a Cottage Industries compilation album, without quite realizing that I'd already begun writing the record. Sometime around my daughter's 10th birthday, I could feel it happening, and sensing the approaching work, rolled my sleeves up and dove right in. The weeks that followed were filled with some of the most scatterbrained and wildly unhinged creative tangents I've obsessed over since perhaps Sun Cast, although, like having children, the traumas and stresses of the creative act become largely forgotten as you begin to gain some distance from the work, and were this not true, no one would ever make more than one record. The Flower to Disappear is so full of polymetric composition and incommensurable patterns that much of the definition of each melodic or rhythmic event becomes slightly eroded beneath the hazy surface of the final mix. Every song included here has been revisited a dozen times or more, overdubbed upon like airbrushed paint, melted down, reformed, broken apart and rearranged into something that hopefully conveys a pop music sensibility. Despite the dense and complex processes that went into creating this music, pop music was always the ideal goal - something accessible, easy to listen to, topical and relatable - and although pop music does not tend to be a regular aspect of electronic music most of the time (at least in my own experiences), I find that pop music's general method of directness is a useful tool to apply to electronic music's unbounded and experimental nature. For example, imagine your favorite drummer. Then, imagine what they may have been able to accomplish if they were able to operate in not only the percussive force, punctuation and decibel-level domains their instrument exists within - what if they could affect pitches within each drum hit? Glissandos? What if they could reverse their kit like samples in a sampler, or sporadically shift the texture, fidelity and stereo placement of the instrument? I don't know if I've managed to accomplish any of this, at least as it appeared to manifest in my mind. I think that, 1000+ releases down the line, I have become more and more content with each album being what it wants to become, allowing myself to be less and less uptight about the "what" of the work and focus instead on the "how" of the work. So here we are again, as we always are, me orating out into the blank white void of this digital space, hoping that somewhere, you're listening, or reading, or remembering - perhaps all three. If you are, there is really only one message I'd like to impart with The Flower to Disappear, and it is this: Take time for yourself, and for those you love, so that when the world outside your door requires that you roll your own sleeves up and step out into the uncertainty of it, you and your loved ones are that much better prepared to handle the inevitable suffering that will come your way. Find the things that make you happy, and enjoy doing them. Help others do the same, as much as you can. Try to learn from this each time, and understand that discovering things is truly one of the finest joys that this ridiculous life has to offer. The Flower to Disappear is the accumulation of many such things that I have discovered along the way, things I get excited about doing, seeing, listening to, talking about and sharing here with you. It is a defined branch in the path, where I may hold out my palm and offer you a momentary scenic route as a passenger. We'll get back on the main road again soon enough, don't you worry. I know where this road leads, as I've taken it many times over, and I think you'll like it. We can roll the windows down and hear the birds, feel the sunshine, or we can stay behind them, voyeurs taking in the uninterrupted splendor of the view. Your choice is your choice, and there are no wrong answers. As Harrison once said, "I'm happy just to dance with you" So please accept my Flower to Disappear - a mere whiff of its magical blue petals, and we'll be off - bounding through a surrealistic landscape, happy to be carried for a while - and we can stay here as long as we'd like. The album, musically as well as thematically, has been designed to be functionally recursive - it ends only if and when we wish it to - and like all the little ripples in that cool pond, dappling outward from a single sinking flower, we'll remember all the times that came before, because remembering is also completely up to us. We can keep the happy, and subtract the sad - or maybe keep just a little of the sad, because it's where you've been, and not where you're going, that makes you who you are. A million branching paths behind us, a million conscious and subconscious decisions, all leading us both to this terminus of the here and the now, to the us of ourselves. This Flower to Disappear, it is only the next choice we can make, but just as each of those millions of decisions were necessary to bring us here, we must always decide where we will go next. So please, for my sake and for yours and for everyone else's, let us choose to be happy. Let us choose to continue, together. released June 23, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2021-Spring 2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, Summer 2022. Design by ABM&D and Atoll Intercom Systems, using visual sampling from Max and Dave Fleischer. Text and prose by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MML175. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Consonance of Joy (Live Broadcast June 19, 2022) (1:54:46) Thanks to everyone who attended the release party for The Flower to Disappear. It was my favorite one I've done so far, and it is all thanks to you. This piece was patched and recorded especially for the listening party broadcast, with the intent being to essentially design and convey a picturesque landscape that could exist just outside of the album. Textures, scales, timbralities, pacing, all things that carry over from the sequencing and presentation of Flower. It makes me feel hopeful and happy, it sounds vibrant and alive and sun-coated, and I hope that it sounds that way for you too. PATCH NOTES: The Consonance of Joy consists of a fully generative, hands-free modular arrangement. Two Buchla VCOs within a 258t module were routed into two low-pass filters - 2HP and Doepfer 121-3 - where they were modulated pre/post-filter by incommensurable LFOs (sourced from Dreadbox Ataxia/Utopia, Buchla 281t) and multed into two different FX processors (Strymon Magneto digital tape delay module and Mutable Instruments Clouds granular/probabilistic reverb), with stereo outputs from both machines sent into a Behringer 308 for quad panning. For triggers/clock, Missed Opportunities was used to generate four different random but subtractive trigger outputs, and these were sent into Ornament and Crime (on Quantermain pitch quantizer mode), which used them to convey two different major pentatonic scales, with the internal CV source from a fractal sequence of the interspersion A163253 ( oeis.org/A163256 ), and the same incommensurable modulation sources listed above were also sent as four different inputs to further animate the fractal sequences' attributes. released June 23, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at/broadcast from White Pillar on June 19/22, 2022 using the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D using a modulated piece by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, circa 1900. This is Milieu Music Limited 176. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All lights observed. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Worn, Heartless (2:13:58) A two-and-a-quarter hour symphony of drone that morphs throughout, changing sonic colors, a slowly spinning pane of plate glass. Distant echoes, like twinkling of long-dead stars released August 27, 2022 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Up Late in the Upstate (7:22) 02. Milieu - My Bike (4:26) 03. Milieu - Seventeen-Oh-One (5:54) 04. Milieu - Flying M (7:11) 05. Milieu - Drysummer (6:01) 06. Milieu - Veedol (2:56) 07. Milieu - Petrol in Pink (7:12) 08. Milieu - Tydol (7:38) 09. Milieu - Neon 9000 (5:58) 10. Milieu - Rabbit Hills (8:38) 11. Milieu - Eagle Nebula (8:36) 12. Milieu - Sleepy Explorers (7:37) Tidewater Petrol celebrates ten years, although this is a bit of a misnomer, as the recordings themselves were already in excess of two years old by the time it was published on a limited CD-R edition in 2012. Musically, this places Tidewater as the liminal bridge between Swaying Palms and H is for Hologram, and the album could be appropriately described as being fully informed by aspects of both of those albums, with spacious and humid reverberated melodies and pad chords washing like colorful waves over more dancefloor-friendly rhythmic arrangements, peppered with science-fiction references and more topical associations with defunct petroleum companies (which have seemed to be completely overlooked and/or misunderstood by everyone listening for the last decade, understandably). The Tidewater sessions were also notable at the time for being my first truly devoted experiments with polymetric composition, with a track like 'Eagle Nebula' feeling like a surrealistic outlier at the time, only now lining up more evenly against things like 'Sets U Free' from Sun Cast, or the majority of material on The Flower to Disappear. Tidewater illustrates a moment of Milieu in flux - many of the voices used to convey basslines, lead flourishes and even the drums were digital things like FM synthesizers and Karplus Strong engines, abandoning the sample-heavy nature of earlier efforts, replacing drum breaks with a Korg ER-1 and Boss DR-660, and filling the studio sandbox with deprecated VSTs from Cakewalk and Jeskola Buzz - already outmoded software in 2009. A well-hidden Mick Travis quote, spoken by Malcolm McDowell in 1968, provides a small echo of the psychedelic shorelines of Swaying Palms - 'There's only one thing you can do with a girl like this - walk naked into the sea together as the sun sets, make love once, then die' - a deliberate and tongue-in-cheek implication from the Brian of twelve years ago that Tidewater was very much meant to be a vessel of progress and transition at the time of its creation. Also audibly present are aspects of parallel developments, such as the Euflorian strains of sound design and melodicism in 'Sleepy Explorers' or the drifting tape ambience weaving through the backdrop of 'Petrol in Pink', which recalls Ocean Lion II. A lot of music was being drafted in 2008-2009, and pieces of all of these sessions are observable in the three EP Reverb Microcoma set, which attempted to organize most of the material overflow. On a technical level, a number of these tracks were mixed rather badly, as the momentum of the project's exploration of new territory seems to have outpaced my ability to properly organize the wealth of often obtuse and unorthodox sound design. As a result, twelve years after the fact, I've had to dig deeper than usual into my archives for session files, discontinued sound fonts, effects processors that have long since been removed from modern device support, and so a significant portion of the remastering had to be completed in defunct builds of software, sometimes even rebuilding aspects of the tracks themselves where something did not load with its original settings - the utterly ridiculous fallout of using software tools that no longer exist - so I ask for a bit of patience and understanding, perhaps even forgiveness, for any unavoidable differences from the original mixes of Tidewater. Every effort has been made to retain the shape and sound of the original album, although due to my longtime use of randomizers in arpeggiation, modulation envelopes and filter behaviors, the differences between this remaster and the original takes are a fundamental part of the process. For this reason, I will continue to make the original mix of Tidewater available digitally - this remaster does not seek to overwrite or invalidate what came before, but instead, offer a different perspective on the fidelity of the recordings, with some minor (and in my view, inconsequential) changes. released October 27, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Rolling Knoll, 2008-2009. Remastered at White Pillar, Summer 2022, by The Analog Botanist. Text by ABM&D. Illustrations by Greg Lawhun. Design and layout by Atoll Intercom Systems & ABM&D. Inner gatefold photography/video source by Brian, captured at Rolling Knoll, 2013. Printing and duplication by Atomic Disc. Previously issued as MMD023 & MML061. This is Milieu Music number AD32, 32nd in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. Tidewater Petrol is dedicated to the memory of PSC. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Bones of Autumn (58:17) 02. Milieu - The Bones of Autumn II (1:10:27) 03. Milieu - The Bones of Autumn III (58:29) As the Summer wound down to its appointed end, I spent about a week processing some very potent thoughts, after a meeting with someone left me with a tangle of unresolved emotions, primarily involving mortality, and the loss of awareness as it approached. Much within the art world has been done in the name of trying to grapple with mortality, and the degradation of human memory, and this triptych of recordings is not attempting to say anything new or particularly profound about it. It is simply my way of coming to terms with things that are not normally brought so directly before me in my day to day life. I meditated, I wrote a poem, I wrote another poem, and then I recorded this session. It felt like enough. It would have to be, because I prefer to use any creative mechanisms I possess or have access to in order to figure out how I really feel about something, in order to keep myself from fixating on it, letting something like grief, depression or worry self-oscillate and spin out into something more mountainous. The sessions sat unnamed on my hard drive for a while, and all last month I considered them in the back of my mind, feeling that they were appropriate for the onset of Autumn weather, texturally speaking, but they still remained bereft of any finer details that elevate the mundane to the meaningful. They were named, then they were renamed, then I left the work again to consider the changes, until returning to it now, discovering almost too quickly the real identity of these pieces. They have been renamed a second time, with a phrase that I mindlessly uttered aloud one night walking along the sidewalk, looking at the fluttering blanket of orange leaves that now covered my front yard. I laughed and wondered what it meant, and then realized what it meant, and felt as if I'd simply quoted someone. No online searching turned anything up, and so it is with many of my titles that arrive in a purely subconscious way, that there are always processes in motion somewhere in my creative mind, things that even I am unaware of, meanings I know, but bury or ignore or simply cannot detect until a window opens and they are allowed to surface, like driftwood wrested free of an ancient shipwreck beneath a stormy sea. Perhaps this is evidence of whatever mental defragmentation I underwent, by way of my writing and my modular patching, that the system works, albeit without a time table, and I have once again transmuted grief into gold. After some time away from these sessions, I find them much more comforting than they felt at the time, pouring out of so many cables and pulsing lights. They feel like a complete thought, a literal beginning middle and end, and now they should be published so that the public may read and write into them what it will. I have given you my reasons for making them, but you should have your own reasons for listening to them, and you do, whether you know that or not. I'm hopeful that they will add to your day or night, rather than subtract from it, and as always, it never ceases to surprise me the variance of fruits borne from my strange modular tree, and I am thankful to be so lucky, to have such useful tools within my grasp, when and where I need them. released November 4, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, September 19th 2022, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and Behringer's reproduction of the Blue Marvin ARP 2600 monophonic analog synthesizer. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D, using visual sampling of Frantisek Kupka's 'Mme Kupka Among the Verticals', circa 1911. This is Milieu Music Distributed 70. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Creation (00:00:00-01:57:27) (1:57:27) 02. Milieu - Creation (01:57:28-03:55:00) (1:57:34) 03. Milieu - Creation (03:56:01-05:53:43) (1:58:43) 04. Milieu - Creation (05:53:44-07:52:10) (1:58:28) 05. Milieu - Creation (07:52:11-09:49:32) (1:57:23) 06. Milieu - Creation (09:49:33-11:54:56) (2:05:25) Creation is a twelve-hour generative work, originally broadcast via YouTube on October 19th 2022, consisting of Karplus-Strong synthesizers, analog filtering, Euclidean sequencing, granular processing and a number of spatial and modulation effects. It has, by necessity, been presented here in separate sections, due to Bandcamp's file size restrictions for individual uploads. As today is the midterm election day in the United States, I wanted to publish something lengthy, soothing and freely downloadable, in an attempt to thrust some good back into the world, which as of this writing, still feels quite certain about dragging us into the darkness. In many discussions with my wife, my daughter and my friends, I repeatedly voiced my discontent with the nature of these elections, how utterly ridiculous it is to be perpetually stuck in a situation that feels so totally out of our control, while also being doomed to bear the grief of the outcome ourselves. How I'm still longing for a world where we could go cast our votes, and not feel that so much sanity and balance in our day-to-day lives is held in the clutches of so many misinformed and self-righteous strangers. I realize this is all "pie in the sky," that I'm showing my naivete as some kind of stoned idealist who just wants everyone to get along and be nice to each other - what an absurd notion - but as I said before on various copy texts, inaction and silence are guaranteed to result in things not only not changing, but actively getting worse. You cannot expect systems to improve by refusing to participate in them, but at the same time, you cannot feel as if you've accomplished any change at all by simply participating. This is where I have decided, again, that what I *can* do is offer creative work to the world. Art for the sake of art. Addition instead of subtraction. The pursuit of life, love and happiness. And so Creation is exactly, and only, this - a refutation of the negative, with as much strength as I can muster from behind my studio desk, and I am just so tired. Tired of everything, ready for something easy, something soft and happy. Let this be my contribution to that conversation. N.B. The original broadcast can be listened to without breaks here: youtu.be/gTl1BrKM0ns released November 9, 2022 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated by the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and broadcast in real-time on October 19th 2022 from the White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D, using visual sampling of 'Creation' by František Kupka, ca. 1920. This is Milieu Music Distributed 71. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods (Part I) (2:06:03) 02. Milieu - A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods (Part II) (2:01:11) 03. Milieu - A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods (Part III / Section I) (2:02:23) 04. Milieu - A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods (Part III / Section II) (3:01:13) 05. Milieu - A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods (Part III / Section III) (2:38:30) 'A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods' was originally broadcast for about fourteen hours from the evening of December 27th to the afternoon of December 28th, 2022. It is a piece of generative music, created with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, primarily focusing upon the Karplus-Strong synthesizer within Noise Engineering's Versio module (running Spectra mode in the user-designed Multi Versio firmware), which played soft and fuzzy ambient music in a custom scale. I revisited the patch two different times during the night, each time in a progressively more relaxed and sleepy state, which allowed for three distinct variations to materialize. This recording follows November's 'Creation' in form and function, and is designed as a name-your-price longform ambient work that I hope will offer you some relief from the world when it is tiresome, and also enrich that same world when you are ready to return to it. There is no right or wrong way to use this recording, and I encourage listeners to experiment with it as if it were a renewable utility in their day to day lives. Twelve hours of the original broadcast were captured and archived at YouTube here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=csaqqBaYTOk PATCH NOTES: Voice: Noise Eng Multi Versio (Spectra mode) Sequencing: Multi Versio (Custom tuned scale) Timing: Cute Labs Missed Opportunities, Blue Lantern CMOS Party (Boolean) + Doepfer A-160-1 divider Filters: 2HP LPF, Doepfer A-121-3 LPF Modulation: Behringer 150, Buchla 266t Source of Uncertainty FX: Mutable Inst Clouds (Vanilla) Mixer: Behringer 305, Zoom H1 released January 23, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and recorded at White Pillar, December 27-28, 2022, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D, using visual sampling from 'Colour Planes, Winter Recollection' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1913-1923. Poem by Walt Whitman. This is Milieu Music number MMD072. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Cirrus (4:25:24) The third free release of longform ambient music, following November's 'Creation' and January's 'A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods' (both of which run about twelve hours apiece) is 'Cirrus' - a more "modest" recording of only four and one-half hours, excerpted from a much longer overnight broadcast from October 29th-30th, 2022. 'Cirrus' differs slightly from prior recordings in this vein, due to it manifesting in a minor key, although to my ears it has never felt "sad" so much as "isolated," bringing to my mind visions of primordial Earth, perhaps during the Carboniferous period, filled with forests of enormous trees and dense swampland covering the globe, lush and alive, but absent of anyone like you or I to be able to appreciate the view. A reverberant intonation of stillness beneath a shifting sea of clouds and sunshine. PATCH NOTES: Voices: SSDP Jade series AS3340 VCO, Buchla 258t dual VCO Filters: 2HP LPF, Doepfer A-121-3 LPF, Disting Mk4 (D5 mode) FX: 2x Mutable Inst Clouds (Parasites / Miverb) Sequencing: Ornament & Crime (Black / Harrington 1200), Ornament & Crime (Silver / Quantermain / Minor pentatonic scales / Turing machine CV source) Mixing: Behringer 305, Zoom H1 released February 17, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, October 29-30 2022, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D, using visual sampling of 'Hindu Motif, or Graduated Red' by Frantisek Kupka, c. 1921. Poem excerpt by Walt Whitman. This is Milieu Music number MMD073. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Moth in the Milkglass (7:48) 02. Milieu - Plinth Punk (10:53) 03. Milieu - Now U 92 (7:09) 04. Milieu - Riverfree (11:27) 05. Milieu - Royal Rover (7:20) Almost a year following the release of The Flower to Disappear, I have finally returned to it with a second single, a mini-cornucopia of warped Milieu melodies, sad-happy guitars and sun-warmed basslines, cast over chopped breaks and gate-abusing drum programming. 'Moth in the Milkglass' is my favorite track from the second "side" of The Flower to Disappear, and I am happy to revisit it here on what is less a single and a bit more of an EP. The b-sides offered here are psychedelic jaunts of varying shades and temperatures. 'Plinth Punk' is a love letter to The B-52s (among many other things) and was written in/named after a 5-string guitar tuning of my own design, in a nod to the forever missed Ricky Wilson, and fellow B's fans will likely pick out a good few references to their sound. Never before has there ever been another band or artist who have influenced so much of my work, especially on Milieu recordings. 'Now U 92' follows the ten-minute excursion with an alternative take of the midsection from 'White to Pale Yellow', a looping and droning nearly shoegaze mantra that brings the song's 1960s sample provenance a bit more to the forefront, and still deep fries it until it somewhat resembles something from Magic Arrows (or my take on it), another perennial favorite here. The EP continues with 'Riverfree', something that began life as an alternative mix of 'Planet Everfree' but gradually shapeshifted into something a bit Halifaxian, a bit Bike too, which is how something ends up situated as a b-side to begin with I think. Imagine if 'Planet Everfree' was produced during the 'River Mural' sessions and you're close. 'Riverfree' is the only track on this EP that does not include guitar, incidentally. Closing the set is the slow-burn feelgood 'Royal Rover', echoing more than a few shapes on the Thalline Dress album, which to my mind remains one of my strongest statements for the arrival of Spring. For all of the misunderstood ladies who wear the Thalline Dress, the 'Royal Rover' is their vessel, and I have built it to weather the seasick waves just for them. Now that the Winter is withering away, and I've broken ground on composed work such as this, it is my sincere hope that I can finish my next album of arranged and ornamental music, ideally in time for my birthday, but I am hesitant to promise. For now, here is 'Moth in the Milkglass' - a branch in the path before us that is always there, the ever-present 'other' simply waiting to be chosen. released March 3, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Summer 2022-Winter 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling from Max and Dave Fleischer. This is Milieu Music number MML181. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Zephyrean (Part 1) (2:53:28) 02. Milieu - Zephyrean (Part 2) (2:12:22) 03. Milieu - Zephyrean (Part 3 / Section 1) (2:30:51) 04. Milieu - Zephyrean (Part 3 / Section 2) (2:30:34) 05. Milieu - Zephyrean (Part 3 / Section 3) (2:29:46) 06. Milieu - Zephyrean (Part 3 / Section 4) (2:31:05) Like 'Creation' and 'A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods' preceding it, 'Zephyrean' is a long-form generative ambient work totaling fifteen hours, which was broadcast live as it came into being from the evening of February 9th to the afternoon of February 10th, 2023. The weather throughout the day on the 9th consisted of heavy winds that bowed my house in different directions, animating the metal chimes in my kitchen window with a constant frenzy, and so this patch developed in unison with that atmosphere, although it has been presented only partially, with the sound of the wind, the feeling in the air and the glittering metal chimes not reproduced as part of the recording. In the week leading up to this, I'd been exhausted by a heavy grief that hung over me like a shadow, which finally relented and resolved itself as the wind blew through the valley. It felt cathartic, to be able to really breathe freely again, and to have the world inhaling and exhaling along with me. As it usually tends to be, my modular system and the sound it unspools are particularly useful mechanisms for processing emotional and physical stress, and so 'Zephyrean' was both a reaction to the receding shadows and the colorful weather, as well as a presence all its own that filled in the empty spaces between these ideas and events. I enjoy broadcasting these sessions as well, if only for the secondary effect they have on the voyeuristic participants who can look into my studio with curiosity, and hopefully then a sense of calm disconnection. Many such listeners have remarked to me during these broadcasts that they wish they'd go on forever, that they enjoy being able to drop in and out of them as if they were a radio station somewhere, and so it is all the more fruitful for me to polish them up afterward, and publish them here free of charge. It brings me so much joy to know that this system of machines that I've arranged in such an esoteric way can provide similar comforts to people I've never met, will never see or know, regardless of their geographical location, language or perspective. I am continually in a state of two minds about creative acts such as these, however. In one sense, there is a duty to know yourself and have something cogent to say when you decide to express yourself, etched into the stone for all artists, baked into our minds as they are still forming their understanding of this work, and I don't necessarily disagree with it. While there is always room for "art for art's sake," the richer experiences are always going to be those that are designed with a sense of purpose or interactive usage. On the other hand, when I am dealing in such abstracts as these long-form broadcasts, with my machines operating on a deep well filled with my own decisions, using those to generate their musical shapes in real-time without any additional input from me, there is a very real sense that even I do not yet know what these things could mean - that for artistic purpose to be fulfilled, it must first be defined by a meaning of some kind - and if I do not yet understand that meaning, does this mean the music is without any purpose? Is it uncouth of me to release this ambiguity upon the rest of the world? Or is this simply the nature of things, both human and artistic? That there is never a rigid relationship between the artist, the work and the world they inhabit - that these things are not plateaus but gradients, and understanding can only come where and when it is naturally in alignment between those three things. It begs the question: Is something more or less useful if its purpose is only revealed over an indeterminate amount of time? And with extended, and operatively endless, works like 'Zephyrean,' is the amount of time these things require to fully communicate their purpose relative to how much runtime they actually occupy? I don't really have any answers to any of these questions, but in the end, I don't think I need to. The work can exist as a monument outside of me, outside of my understanding, even if I am the person who allowed it to exist in the first place. I relish this superposition, this state of ambivalence I am allowed to work within, where generative and procedural art are accommodating. It feels enthralling to be a passenger, like yourselves, rather than holding the reins of some wild horse that I pretend to hold dominion over. The truth is, I've never made anything - it's just happened. Patch notes: Voice: Doepfer A-121-3 bandpass filter (self-oscillating) Time: Missed Opportunities, CMOS Party (Boolean), Doepfer A-160-1 clock div Sequencing: Ornament (Black/Hemispheres/Squanch, Lydian scale) sent into Ornament (Silver/Vanilla/Harrington 1200) Modulation: Behringer 150/1004 EG: Ornament (Black/Hemispheres/ADSR), Doepfer A-135-2 Filters: Behringer 1047/1006, 2HP LPF, Disting Mk4 (D5 bandpass) FX: Strymon Magneto, 2x Clouds (Vanilla & Miverb), Multi Versio (Micro Looper) released March 3, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, February 9-10, 2023, with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of Frantisek Kupka's 'Organization of Graphic Motifs II' ca. 1912-1913. This is Milieu Music number MMD074. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Chiasmus (00:00:00-04:00:44) (4:00:45) 02. Milieu - Chiasmus (04:00:45-08:31:20) (4:31:20) Chiasmus follows the considerable lineage of longform generative ambient works such as Creation, A Small Fire, Cirrus and Zephyrean with a nearly nine-hour meditation on the duality of nature, the cross-modulation of desire and contentment and the gradient of temperature and barometric changes in the transition from Winter to Spring. All of these things exist definitively within Chiasmus, and yet, Chiasmus is simply a wordless expression of a process, guided by the ghost of emotional impulse and preconceived notions of what the future may yet become. It fills the empty vessels of space and time with an invisible element that vibrates and resounds, and echoes back the questions I hadn't quite thought to ask. It is this mirrored relationship between mind and pseudo-mind (or machine, for those following my abstract analogies) that conveys the real and true purpose of the creative act - the ability to build just enough of a facsimile of my own thoughts and decisions in order to converse with it, and hopefully understand better what I thought I understood before. Have I taught myself anything? Is this even possible? Is the feedback of talking to oneself about oneself capable of accumulating into an expansion of awareness? Or is the human condition simply this mundane and easily tricked? Are all the elaborate programs and systems we design merely fragmented mirrors of our own thinking, capable only of surpassing us in our most fleeting of resources, our greatest and irreparable weakness - time? Does the act of fast-tracking human decisions and thought processes in fact give us a new vantage point on a life fully lived, a program run to its logical completion? Is a generative system, in this way, a window to that oft-imagined afterworld? The divinity of the last new knowledge? And when I say this aloud, and write it in the air, as I am saying and doing right now, do we share in this moment of disconnected understanding? If I slip a message into time's frothing currents, and I am gone by the time you receive it, does my message change? Am I doomed to be the only one to ever ask or answer any of my own questions? Chiasmus is an offering of gentle and sonorous sound, to soften the blow of these considerations, to round off the edges of this tragic philosophical maw. I would like it to be something that leads you slowly by the hand, whispering secrets in runic murmurs, drawing you toward exotic and unexpected lands of discovery, all the while tracing a line like a river across the map, where the terminus leads not only to a wider, endless ocean of new understanding, but the realization that you have been alone all along. released March 18, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded and broadcast live at White Pillar Workshop, on the evening of December 13, 2022, using the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Poem by Walt Whitman. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of "Cathedral" by Frantisek Kupka, 1913. Additional text by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMD075. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Relief Upon the Landscape (00:00:00-05:00:29) (5:00:29) 02. Milieu - Relief Upon the Landscape (05:00:30-08:39:56) (3:39:27) With the Spring season fully annunciated by windy rainstorms and sun-kissed green growth in equal measure, it is an apt moment to publish 'Relief Upon the Landscape', a nearly nine-hour ambient recording laid to digital tape in an overnight broadcast on the evening of February 16th, 2023. Like 'Creation', 'A Small Fire in the Snowy Woods', 'Cirrus', 'Zephyrean' and 'Chiasmus' before it, 'Relief' is a fully generative work, produced and performed hands-free by my R-EW Audioholistics modular system, with no external processing tools or augmentations. It is music that exists as the manifestation of many dozens of my own compositional decisions, accumulated into a network of controlled voltages, which combine in a designed arrangement that writes "one minute of music in one minute of time," as Bill Evans was fond of saying about improvisation. More and more, I have enjoyed the fruits of my modular patches so much that I've opted to allow the public a voyeuristic awareness of their sound as it unfolds in my studio. For what is ultimately a tangential and highly experimental process of designing sound, I find it impressive how truly accessible these recordings can become, which leads me toward repurposing them as holistic broadcasts of soothing and sleepy ambient music, sound as a utility, and this of course then forms an ouroboros as it factors into my creative decisions when I sit down in front of this strange machine and decide how it ought to function. I sincerely hope you find some relief in your own landscape, with this recording, because mine is filled with suffering and darkness far too often, and so I use my machines to push back this negativity, to fill the void with somnolent waves that can carry me away from the modern world and all of the terrible things within it. Spring is here, and with it, a colorful and vibrant reminder that the world keeps on moving and growing, perhaps even more than it becomes still and recedes. It should be celebrated to know that change is the only constant in our lives, that "bad times are just times that are bad," to quote a fortune teller I know. As I have mentioned alongside broadcasts such as this one in the past - let this work be my contribution to that conversation. released April 7, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop with the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Broadcast overnight at YouTube on the evening of February 16th, 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Poem excerpt by Robert Frost. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Around a Point' by Frantisek Kupka (ca. 1920-25). This is Milieu Music number MMD076. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Hold Me in a Field (Part 1) (46:59) 02. Milieu - Hold Me in a Field (Part 2 / Section 1) (3:00:12) 03. Milieu - Hold Me in a Field (Part 2 / Section 2) (3:00:27) 04. Milieu - Hold Me in a Field (Part 2 / Section 3) (3:00:06) 05. Milieu - Hold Me in a Field (Part 2 / Section 4) (2:06:38) In what has come to be affectionately referred to as the 'Sleepbuilding' series, I offer you another twelve-hour pastorale of generative ambient music: 'Hold Me in a Field' was broadcast overnight on March 11th, 2023, and has now been dutifully cleaned up and mastered for publishing here. 'Hold Me in a Field' was created using the Spectra mode oscillator within Noise Engineering's Versio module (running the alternative Multi Versio firmware), alongside a slew of filters, two granular processors and a digital tape delay unit with four heads. It conjured up images of flower fields and orange sun that was a bit too far away to really be that warm. Sometimes I find that these overnight broadcasts bring a lot of ideas and considerations bubbling up to the surface of my awareness, and other times, I experience a pleasantly empty-headed feeling, somewhere between momentary contentment and a low-level drip of topical stimulation. 'Hold Me' is absolutely the latter, a comforting (force)field to be cradled within, where everything just feels cozy and pain seems very distant. I chose to issue this recording on Earth Day as well, owing to the aforementioned sensation of happy stasis, because every day seems to bring more doom and gloom in the news, a continually heightened awareness of the world not actually being very okay, and with this, a perpetual reminder that I can do very little about it. As my brain always tries to find a way to refute failure, to reactively push back against it to perhaps re-balance the scales when negative things happen, I return again and again to my self-care rituals such as the one that brought 'Hold Me in a Field' into existence. Music used as a holistic recovery method, with as much automation and as little fuss as possible in the making - that is all this is. Whatever I find inside its wide and shallow landscape as time passes is secondary, whatever it means to you is entirely canonical. Happy Earth Day - be well, be kind and try not to work too hard. released April 22, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded and broadcast live at White Pillar Workshop, March 11th 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling from 'Drawings of Curves' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1926. This is Milieu Music number MMD077. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Rain Curtain (00:00:00-02:30:09) (2:30:10) 02. Milieu - Rain Curtain (02:30:10-05:00:28) (2:30:20) 03. Milieu - Rain Curtain (05:00:29-07:30:46) (2:30:19) 04. Milieu - Rain Curtain (07:30:47-10:01:21) (2:30:36) 05. Milieu - Rain Curtain (10:01:22-11:40:47) (1:39:26) The eighth published session from the "Sleepbuilding" overnight broadcasts, 'Rain Curtain' was generated and streamed online on February 17th, 2023 from the White Pillar Workshop. Running for almost twelve straight hours, this patch on the R-EW Audioholistics modular system yielded deep blue hues for sleeping and waking listener alike. Primarily centered around the Karplus-Strong voice in Mutable Instruments' Braids module (otherwise known as PLUK), 'Rain Curtain' is a minor pentatonic scale explored via two Ornament & Crime modules - one running the Harrington 1200 chordal-triad algorithm and the other running Squanch, which is a simple but effective shifting quantizer - with timing information stemming from a complex trigger array of Missed Opportunities, a Doepfer clock divider and a Boolean divider (CMOS Party). Musically, it was somewhat patched alongside a particularly spirited rainstorm that was passing over my home (hence the title), with the patch providing an interesting counterpoint to the erratic thunder, metal windchimes on my porch and the white noise of the rainfall itself. The absence of all of these sounds and textures from the recorded piece, which is simply the isolated modular system's output, makes it a bit easier to recontextualize the work, which feels detailed enough that I never really get the sensation of missing a vital element when I listen to it now. This release, like the seven others before it (links below), will remain free to download, and this is especially important to me because this particular stream was a much-needed respite after an incredibly difficult week in my personal life. I am happy to have these broadcasts, and the modular system itself, for the selfish purposes of facilitating a continuous balm in a recuperation ritual, and it makes me feel better in a selfless way to know that these recordings are able to reach others and accomplish this same purpose too, entirely apart from whatever guided my hand when I was plugging in so many cables. The Sleepbuilding broadcasts offer balance of self and anti-self, they foster connection through their disconnection. Here are twelve more surrealistic hours to color your days and nights with. released May 5, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at and broadcast from the White Pillar Workshop, February 17th 2023, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, April 2023. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling from Frantisek Kupka's "Blue" ca. 1914. This is Milieu Music number MMD078, and #8 in the open-ended Sleepbuilding series. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Beside a Green Window (1:01:39) On May 7th, 2023 I unexpectedly recorded something very pretty with my modular system, troubleshooting a couple modules after a power blip and testing their fidelity after a full day without being powered on. I plugged up a very simple patch with the Buchla 258t dual-oscillator, playing a Mixolydian scale with timing information coming from a Turing machine, into two granular processors and a tapped delay. The resultant recording felt both active and still in beautiful ways, and after a little post-processing and overdubbing an uneventful field recording from my basement window in June of 2018, Beside a Green Window was complete. I'm issuing this recording for free on the occasion of my fortieth year on this planet, wanting nothing more from it than a simple relaxing pastorale to accompany a pleasantly empty day of reflection and time with my family. Whatever meaning you find within it, or place upon it, is complete and correct. I seem to forever find myself beside one green window or another, pondering and patching and playfully exploring things while the sun goes up and comes back down again, day after day. This is a sunny day like any other, notable only because I can look back to 5:45 PM exactly forty years ago, and look no further, and this recording is something for me to mark that passage of time with. I hope to be here a while longer to share things like this with you, wherever and whenever you are when you discover them. It goes without saying, but I'll say it all the same, that I am very proud to know my work has brought any sizeable peace or distraction to anyone besides myself - that I am content to be a part of it myself, just as you are, and to know that in the crystallized moment, frozen in the perpetual now of these recordings, we're able to be together, and I can say the things I want to say without speaking to you at all, and you can understand them too. Thank you for reading all of my verbose meandering, listening to and experiencing these wordless clouds of vibration with me. It means more than you think. released May 17, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, May 7th 2023 using a Buchla 258t dual oscillator (Turing machine timing, Mixolydian scale) in tandem with two granular processors and a tapped delay. Field recording dated June 6th, 2018, Workshop basement window. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music Distributed number 82. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Compline (00:00:00-02:23:15) (2:23:16) 02. Milieu - Compline (02:23:16-04:46:19) (2:23:05) 03. Milieu - Compline (04:46:20-07:09:27) (2:23:09) 04. Milieu - Compline (07:09:28-09:32:30) (2:23:04) 05. Milieu - Compline (09:32:31-11:39:05) (2:06:36) Compline' is the ninth published recording in the ongoing Sleepbuilding series, originally broadcast live on February 26, 2023. It consists of the beloved 2HP Pluck synthesizer, a paraphonic Karplus-Strong device, playing an Aeolian scale with timing information for the sequencer originating from a Turing machine, even-numbered and Boolean clock dividers and Missed Opportunities' probabilistic/subtractive trigger array. This is all an overly detailed way of explaining that 'Compline' is a fully generative composition, like all Sleepbuilding broadcasts, made manifest by an arrangement of directed electricity and some simple mathematics. A small note about the title I have chosen for this piece: 'Compline' is the last of the canonical hours in the day, observed in many variations by many different Western religions, which is devoted to late night introspection, relaxation and silence. It is my intent to only use the visual idea of this canonical hour to represent something that is designed for late night usage - a vibratelepathic candle to light beside your bed, perhaps - and not imply a deeper or more symbolic reference to any religious view at all. I have always felt that one can be in accord with spiritual matters while also not ascribing to religious considerations, and this is the context I wish to invoke for 'Compline.' Of course, if you are yourself a pious person, then my intention for 'Compline' should not exclude you from enjoying the piece either. As with all prior and subsequent Sleepbuilding broadcasts, 'Compline' will be a free release, offered in the optimistic hope that it can and will meet others where and when they are, and be whatever they need it to become in that moment. I become more fond of stating with every new release that there are no wrong answers here, no way to use this sound-material that will betray its purpose. It continues to bring me joy to find that other creative work has been facilitated in part with the presence of my own in someone else's time and space, but it is equally gratifying to know that this music is helping someone to sleep, or read, or simply tune out the noise of the outside world. Don't work too hard, take care of yourself and please be well. Enjoy the soundwaves. released May 26, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded and broadcast live at White Pillar Workshop with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, on February 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Poem by Walt Whitman. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Visual Planes III' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1912-1913. This is Milieu Music number MMD079. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Imagining a Forest (Part 1) (1:29:31) 02. Milieu - Imagining a Forest (Part 2 / Section 1) (2:30:26) 03. Milieu - Imagining a Forest (Part 2 / Section 2) (2:30:27) 04. Milieu - Imagining a Forest (Part 2 / Section 3) (2:23:42) 05. Milieu - Imagining a Forest (Part 2 / Section 4) (2:21:05) 06. Milieu - Imagining a Forest (Part 3) (4:30) 'Imagining a Forest' is the tenth published overnight broadcast in the Sleepbuilding series of longform generative ambient sessions. It was streamed as it was composed on February 22nd 2023, The further in I cut a path into my overgrown creative real estate, the more apparent it becomes that there must exist certain works that can act as beacons - well-lit gates of welcoming, easy to locate, open and unconditional in their acceptance. Not only do I feel obligated to build such functional structures, out of the basic need to share things that bring me to a state of happiness, but also because these open doors are a logistic necessity - realms of familiarity, pinpointed across the map, anchors of orientation. 'Imagining a Forest' is one such work, one of several I could now name that, for my experiences with them, could be a lighthouse in a dark and stormy night on the coastline. It is both a dream hovering in the dim air above a sleeping automaton, and the machine itself, having the dream. It presumes nothing about us, voyeuristically listening in, while we wonder if we are a part of this dream ourselves. The machine is ambivalent, it continues on as it dissolves the lines in the air that separate the two worlds. In this moment, which the machine emanates for twelve hours, nothing happens, and for that, I am in awe of the beauty of being comfortably inert. The machine has grown this massive forest from only a single branch, and so it is my doing to build a fire at its entrance, where we can all sit and gaze at the soft colors fluttering in the even softer breath of this surreal blue wood. released June 13, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded and broadcast live at White Pillar on February 22nd, 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Abstract Composition' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1935. This is Milieu Music number MMD080. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Forgotten (50:46) 02. Milieu - The Liminal (Section 1) (2:23:48) 03. Milieu - The Liminal (Section 2) (2:23:25) 04. Milieu - The Liminal (Section 3) (2:23:12) 05. Milieu - The Liminal (Section 4) (2:23:15) 06. Milieu - The Liminal (Section 5) (2:21:17) 07. Milieu - The Transgressive (2:02:51) 08. Milieu - The Divine (1:38:50) 'Burned Oath' is the eleventh overnight Broadcast to be mastered and released, selected from a steadily growing archive of Sleepbuilding sessions. It was generated by the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, using the voice of a 2HP Pluck Karplus-Strong paraphonic digital synthesizer playing the Locrian scale. It was originally broadcast on April 7th, 2023, following the listening party event celebrating the release of 'Ocean Lion IV' by Coppice Halifax. Owing to this earlier starting time, 'Burned Oath' runs even longer than the twelve-hour runtime that has come to be (more or less) the working standard for the Sleepbuilding releases. Musically, this session exists somewhere between very formative Milieu recordings such as 'Beyond the Sea Lies the Stars' (which was semi-generative) and elements of the 'Sun-Day' series, evoking a sepia-tinted remembrance of a shoreline, a sea breeze, forestial islands scattered across a purple-orange horizon, held just above the surface as they allude to ruins and shipwrecks beneath the waves. A drowsy orange sun hovers overhead, warming the air into a blanket that compels us downward and reclining upon the soft sand, blinded in the radiance, until the starry firmament unfurls, inverting everything. Considering how many sessions have already come to pass in this fashion, I've begun to play with how I even approach this now well-developed process, from selecting which broadcast to publish next, aligning it with a Kupka painting and a passage of poetry, and reassessing what the entire act even means to me. In order to arrive at 'Burned Oath' I decided to consult the void on the subject, and threw the I Ching, which I take quite seriously in the sense that I have no business asking the universe what it thinks if I am not willing to accept the answer. This is a wondrous method of deductive logic to use in the creative act, because if I realize that I am too afraid of getting an answer from the I Ching that I will not like, I have effectively determined what I desire the outcome to be, and have answered my own question. In some situations, I prefer to embrace the chaos of this process, and so the I Ching suggested that I break with tradition a bit, and to not see anything before me as rigid or predetermined. It is for this reason I selected this broadcast, because it has been (to date) the only broadcast that came to pass without a given name, simply being labeled as "Sleepbuilding" in my haste of preparing the entire 'Ocean Lion IV' album, and its subsequent listening party and afterparty ambient patch all within two weeks. In mulling over what I could name this session for publication, I felt compelled to give the individual partitions of the work unique names, rather than labeling them all in deference to the overall session, but until the I Ching pointed out that this should be the way forward, I'd put it out of my mind as breaking with the format I'd come to enjoy with these broadcast releases. And so, like all aspects of the Sleepbuilding sessions that seem to derive their idiosyncrasies from a deep well of my decisions, inspirations, experiences and desires, the titles chosen here have been plucked from a novel that affected me quite profoundly - themselves the name of a fictional philosophical lecture given within the story - and offered without any further contexts, despite their quite pointed relationships with either my own personal life at this moment, or some aspect of the creative process and the tools used that would be uninteresting or irrelevant to just about anyone else. As the Whitman passage explains - "ample are time and space" - the void contains everything, and in doing so, remembers it for us, and this is functionally mirrored in the generative music I've been so enamored with this year; a prolific configuration of nesting dolls that each illustrate a specific law of their own universe, cascading and reflecting their incommensurable paths over and under one another, until the tangle of electricity and decisiveness accumulates a critical mass, and is vaporized in a single suspended moment of bliss. Surely, somewhere within our universe, or any other, we can find the answers we are willing to accept, if we are bold enough to ask the questions. And, if we are not yet confident enough in our convictions to inquire, then we already know, and have already decided. released June 30, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and broadcast live from White Pillar on April 7th 2023, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, June 2023. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Study for Verticals' by Frantisek Kupka. This is Milieu Music number MMD081. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Beams of the Declining Sun (Part 1 / Section 1) (2:00:48) 02. Milieu - Beams of the Declining Sun (Part 1 / Section 2) (2:23:18) 03. Milieu - Beams of the Declining Sun (Part 1 / Section 3) (2:39:40) 04. Milieu - Beams of the Declining Sun (Part 2) (2:14:48) 'Beams of the Declining Sun' is the twelfth published recording in the open-ended Sleepbuilding catalog of generative ambient music, culled from overnight broadcasts on YouTube with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, Open Broadcaster Software and two budget webcams. This piece runs for nine and one-half hours, and was created using the voice of the 'CSAW' sawtooth synthesizer mode in Mutable Instruments Braids (modeled after the Yamaha CS-80 from 1977) to play the Ionian scale, with a complex array of probabilistic/subdivided triggers for timing and a Turing machine-based sequencer. It was originally broadcast on April 25th, 2023. Musically, the piece feels empty - not in a necessarily sparse or minimalistic sense (although it is still very much both of those things), but in a pastoral sense - like a landscape open in all directions, stretching beyond the vanishing point, composed of unoccupied space. Ground, distance and sky, lit by the remnants of a sun that has already sunk beneath the horizon. It is beautiful and also debilitating in its loneliness, the fullest embodiment of being truly lost and disconnected, an ocean of terrestrial space. Following my previous consultation with the I Ching for suggestions on where to go, what to do, with 'Burned Oath,' it felt pertinent to once again ask the void for a direction. This time, the I Ching impressed upon me two clear ideas: Reduction of speed when I am able to detect a positive situation, and subsequently making progress through a dangerous situation without fear that something bad will happen to me. As with any aspects of the I Ching, there are many ways to interpret the poems, and apply them, but in this case, I feel that the key notion at play here is the sense that I am able to carry the warmth of happiness with me through the darker lands of uncertainty, that the work I'm doing to offer something constructive to the world can insulate me when the doom closes in again. So I find myself weary at the end of long days of work, which as of late have been filled with brain-scrambling compositional chiseling and pedantic programming for what will eventually be my next significantly composed work. It is comforting for many different reasons to have these extended seas of pleasant emptiness within arm's reach, to slip into and slow down beside. The open landscape is not really so lonely after a while, only still and quiet, and it's reassuring to know that when I am fed up with wracking my brain over a microbial detail in a song that only I will notice has changed, this painterly plain of ego erasure is never too far away. released July 13, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at and broadcast from White Pillar Workshop on April 25th 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, July 2023. Text by Brian. Poem by Walt Whitman. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of Frantisek Kupka's 'Study for Cosmic Spring / Amorpha' ca. 1911-1912. This is Milieu Music number MMD084. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 1) (3:20:14) 02. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 2) (4:37) 03. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 3 / Section 1) (2:00:42) 04. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 3 / Section 2) (2:01:11) 05. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 3 / Section 3) (2:01:54) 06. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 3 / Section 4) (2:02:59) 07. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 4) (3:26) 08. Milieu - Natural Green (Part 5) (2:56:17) 'Natural Green' is the thirteenth Sleepbuilding broadcast to be published, continuing the expansive lineage of long-form generative ambient recordings that are offered digitally for free to everyone. It was broadcast overnight on June 25th, 2023 at YouTube, and like 'Burned Oath' before it, runs over twelve hours long - nearly a full day of sonic utility with no right or wrong application. This composition was a first for the series in that it used the Arturia Microfreak to convey the sequencing and synthesized voice, rather than the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, which usually handles these tasks. I've written prolifically about the Microfreak before, and once again, it displays a fantastic versatility and range as an instrument that can in many ways keep pace with a fully developed modular system. The sound of 'Natural Green' consists of a formant synthesizer voice I developed alongside the machine's complex patching matrix, making efficient use of the non-stepped sample and hold low frequency oscillator, the bandpass filter and a very slow arpeggiator cycling through four paraphonic notes (in the Mixolydian scale) with multiple different randomization attributes applied. The R-EW Audioholistics system supplemented the Microfreak by providing timing/tempo information from a Turing machine and probabilistic/subdivider trigger array, as well as generating a stereo image from the Microfreak's monophonic output with constantly evolving reverberation, modulation and some additional filtering via Strymon's Starlab module. Texturally, the Sleepbuilding broadcasts tend to fall loosely into two categories when I listen to them: daytime listening, and nighttime listening - with 'Natural Green' decidedly feeling more a part of the former category to me. It feels vibrantly alive in a floral and sunny way, with dapples of orange light fluttering across leaves and blooms in a warm Summer breeze. The melodies shift in and out of focus, at times distant and spacious like a blue sky, and at others, closer and intimate, a macro-lens view of a thriving ecosystem. I chose this recording for publication after a number of factors were considered - a longtime listener who works in the visual art world asked about it, having enjoyed it when it was first broadcast, and then following this, I consulted with the I Ching to determine where the series might next go, with the I Ching illuminating 'Natural Green' in such a way that I felt like I'd missed something obvious up to that moment. In many ways, both topical and conceptual, 'Natural Green' is about sharing space, familial with the Earth, acknowledgement in an almost spiritual sense of the reality that none of us are really alone in this world, and that wherever we might end up if we are to enrich and evolve our place in the universe, we must go there together. released July 26, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar on June 25th, 2023 using the Arturia Microfreak in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Prose excerpt by Friedrich Hölderlin. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Blue and Green' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1921-1923. This is Milieu Music number MMD085. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. Special thanks to A.T. for the gift of the Microfreak and to S.A. for the poetry. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Zaftig Lime (5:58) 02. Milieu - Free Phase (4:57) 03. Milieu - Jaded Coral Segoid (5:00) 04. Milieu - Golden Lassitudes (7:26) 'Zaftig Lime' is the first single for/from the forthcoming new Milieu album Watch the Head and carries with it three non-album tracks as b-sides, which hopefully give listeners some idea of what to expect from the album, even though (paradoxically) b-sides are outtakes and therefore recordings that did not make the cut for qualitative reasons, so in this sense, your mileage may vary. Pedantic needling aside, 'Zaftig Lime' is full to the brim with all the Summer Milieu tropes that you probably know by now - happy-sad melodies, bouncy rhythms with lots of stimmy detailing, loads of basslines that blur the boundaries between lead and support instruments, sun-baked chords emanating from tape-warped keyboards. Altogether, there isn't anything entirely new offered here at a topical level, and that suits me just fine. Comfort and familiarity come at the cost of not breaking new ground at every turn, but with that said, I do feel like a lot of the progress I've tried to make with my compositions is happening at a deeper level, affecting arrangements and metric designs and spatial definitions. Who knows? (The Shadow knows) As I write this now, on the last day of July, I am still in the midst of shaping and finishing Watch the Head, which I wanted to be completed by now, but it's difficult to give yourself constant challenges in what your work *is* and have those fairly align with when that work *happens* - so, onward we go. 'Zaftig Lime' is more of a progress report than an extract from a completed work, something etched into a tree in this winding forest that's placed here just as much for my navigational sake as it is for your orientation. So, please enjoy this scatterbrained set of Summer jams. I'm fond of each of them for one or several reasons, but aside from the title track, these are little scenic jaunts off the main path that are pleasantly diverting, as my wife would say. For the "too long, didn't read" crowd - imagine if Shallow Earth, Housewares and The Flower to Disappear had a mutant baby, and you're probably pretty close. released August 4, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, Spring-Summer 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML183. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Flooded Vestibule (Part 1 / Section 1) (1:59:26) 02. Milieu - The Flooded Vestibule (Part 1 / Section 2) (1:59:53) 03. Milieu - The Flooded Vestibule (Part 1 / Section 3) (1:59:49) 04. Milieu - The Flooded Vestibule (Part 1 / Section 4) (1:59:54) 05. Milieu - The Flooded Vestibule (Part 1 / Section 5) (2:06:52) 06. Milieu - The Flooded Vestibule (Part 2) (1:09:24) The Flooded Vestibule' is the fourteenth Sleepbuilding broadcast to be mastered and published at Bandcamp. It was originally streamed overnight on February 18th, 2023, and was another tangential exploration of a Karplus-Strong synthesizer voice playing the Dorian scale. Notably, this was the same instrument and scale employed for the very first Sleepbuilding session, 'Creation' in November 2022, and yet 'The Flooded Vestibule' feels a world apart from it. Following on the thread of these considerations, the piece thematically reflects the sensation of being in a familiar place that has been changed in some way, thereby recontextualizing it, and its title illustrates this; a beautiful castle of white marble, decorated with alcoves that contain statues, cascading up a long spiral staircase dotted with plinths. In contrast to such a place, it has partially filled with sea water, coming in from some unseen peripheral ocean, and above us, where the staircase winds up so far that we can no longer see the top, we can hear birds and wind. The conversation between the man-made and the natural world is one I've thought about quite a lot throughout my creative life, and delving further into the realm of modular synthesis and generative music has only compounded my fascination with these relationships. This castle, or any other, was hewn from stone held within the Earth, and no matter how long it stands, or is repaired during our lifetimes, it will inevitably become reclaimed by the Earth. I often invoke this notion as a creative mantra of sorts - 'The statue remains inside the stone' - and it feels apt here also, to acknowledge the impermanence of anything I could think to build, and to instead find contentment in what already exists in the world; the first great work, authored by no one, or at least no one who can be found today to explain their intent. 'The Flooded Vestibule' remains still beneath the weather surrounding it, accepting the gently swaying blue water line as an old friend, or some long forgotten part of itself that has returned to both reclaim and itself be reclaimed. We are here too, interlopers in this epoch of unnamed and unrecorded music, suspended beneath the weight of this sublime moment, waiting for the next change, knowing it must come, whether we are witness to it or not. released August 14, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and broadcast live from White Pillar on February 18th 2023, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, August 2023. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Study for Arrangement on Verticals' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1910-1911. This is Milieu Music number MMD086. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Slumbering Pillar (00:00:00-01:58:20) (1:58:20) 02. Milieu - The Slumbering Pillar (01:58:21-03:56:27) (1:58:08) 03. Milieu - The Slumbering Pillar (03:56:28-05:56:17) (1:59:51) 04. Milieu - The Slumbering Pillar (05:56:18-07:55:00) (1:58:43) 05. Milieu - The Slumbering Pillar (07:55:01-09:52:29) (1:57:29) 06. Milieu - The Slumbering Pillar (09:52:30-11:54:54) (2:02:26) 'The Slumbering Pillar' is the fifteenth published release in the Sleepbuilding series, originally broadcast overnight on February 21st, 2023. It consists of two major pentatonic scales playing each of the oscillators in the Buchla 258t dual-oscillator, with sequencing informed by the usual probabilistic/subtractive/Boolean trigger array and multiple Turing machines handling modulation of the scales, all within my R-EW Audioholistics modular system. This session was chosen for release after throwing the I Ching, and being given direction toward something that halts progress, albeit with the caveat that this only means a decision must be made, that continuing as before is no longer possible, clarifying that any choice made to proceed will be correct and fruitful. 'The Slumbering Pillar' stood out to me from the other sessions, as I considered this - it is the lone session from the backlog of broadcasts that specifically refers to stillness in its title, and the fabric of the sound itself reiterates this, with slow arcs of chordal tones, intermittently lit in the darkness by flickers of illuminated texture. It sounds like a recording of a resting place at the bottom of a sea, except that the waters are warm and convey a sense of the most divine and comfortable sleep I can imagine. Overall, the Sleepbuilding releases have been designed for a number of different purposes, lending themselves well to several waking, working and resting states, but 'The Slumbering Pillar' somehow feels more inert to me, a truly drowsy and soporific ambient work. Perhaps this is the deeper level awareness of the major pentatonic scales - easily the most recognizable and widely played scale in Western music - and hearing them played in the absolute opposite of melodic composition is what makes the air around the sound seem to slow down. 'The Slumbering Pillar' knows not, cares not. It rests, in the most absolute of all possible rests - musical, physical, philosophical - and the world moves on above and beyond it. Here, time is a worthless bounty of riches, gold and jewels left to rot in the rib cages of sunken ships, allowed to dissolve wastefully as we join in a long contented sigh with the sound waves. The end of all progress, planted like a plinth in the seabed, where making no decision at all, ever again, is the only path left to take. released August 29, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and broadcast live from White Pillar on February 21st 2023, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, August 2023. Text by Brian. Poetry excerpt by Walt Whitman. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Elementary Games' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1932. This is Milieu Music number MMD087. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Mint Collar (2:31) 02. Milieu - Cat Hath Hewed (4:27) 03. Milieu - Brannigan & Skeetch (2:44) 04. Milieu - His Master's VCO (3:10) 05. Milieu - Machen's Psychic Weald (3:50) 06. Milieu - Polly Metrix (2:15) 07. Milieu - Bacchus 3000 (4:22) 08. Milieu - Milkmaiden (5:47) 09. Milieu - Callipygian Dub (8:03) 10. Milieu - Sad Mauve Liminoid (6:31) 'Wash the Hand' is not *the* new Milieu album, but it is *a* new Milieu album, in the grand tradition of "music generated in a wild tangent during the frenzied creation of another entirely different work." It is a stopover, a rest stop with some well-stocked vending machines, a connecting flight en route to 'Watch the Head' and it was made, top to bottom, in under a week, in a self-imposed exercise of getting loose while the claws are still sharp, and following in the working template of earlier Milieu/CH contributions to the super fun Project 168 (wherein participants were given a start date and one week to create a brand new work - 'Simple Stations Repeat' and 'Giants in the Desert,' as well as the '1983' album from Coppice Halifax were recorded during such events). Musically, it contains a lot of stimmy sensory-seeking ADHD constructions, which is to say in layman's terms, so many dense sound events that it is not really possible to perceive them all in one go - and this is by design, where I feel a bit of camaraderie with the inimitable RDJ who said somewhere in an interview that he writes his tracks in such a way that he is able to be surprised by them when he listens back. It was years ago, and I could be entirely off thinking about it now, but that's the gist of what I've been doing here. There's also a bit of ridiculous nostalgia happening here, as six of the ten tracks offered were created in deprecated music software, with deprecated softsynths and effects processors that have not been updated or meant to be used in a DAW since a decade ago. Why? Because it's science, that's why! The process of doing this was also a lot like 'Shallow Earth' was following the completion of 'Sun Cast' - a month of less-than-serious musicmaking following eight years of brow-furrowing surgically precise madness - and the idea was more or less that 1) it would be good for my brain to do something free-for-all and a little unhinged following the completion of 'Watch the Head' and 2) if anything golden really happened in the sessions, well, it wouldn't be too late to sneak it into 'Watch the Head' too. The latter did not end up happening, but 'Wash the Hand' still gives me enough of a purposeful vantage point from which to view 'Watch the Head' in a more favorable light. 'Wash the Hand' is the scruffy and disheveled Maynard Krebs with the caffeine jitters while 'Watch the Head' is the clean-cut but hopelessly lovesick Dobie Gillis, forever longing for the world beyond his own. (Apologies to those of you reading who are not as into 1959 teen sitcoms as much as I, it's a decent analogy though) The cover art here is a real prize piece to me as well, having been done in under a week by the local wunderkind Greg Lawhun, a titan of visual storytelling who you may recognize from his work on the 10th anniversary 'Tidewater Petrol' reissue/remaster last year. Greg has been commissioned to create the visual world for 'Watch the Head' and of course, when this tangent appeared, graciously offered to work on something for 'Wash the Hand' to keep the visuals "in universe" between the two releases. It's a joyous riff on Blue Note jazz LPs I love, Maynard and Dobie (the sitcom teens as well as my two catto brothers who are named after them) and the illustrative style Greg and I both love from a number of different comic books. Greg would be bashful about being praised so highly, but he shouldn't be - 'Wash the Head' is a synaesthetically perfect blend of ideas and I owe him much more for that than I could ever afford to pay him (so buy this record so that I can pay Greg more!). So this isn't the new album, it isn't a single and it's too long to be an adjacent EP, but it hopefully draws a cogent and enjoyable line from the 'Zaftig Lime' single to 'Watch the Head' itself when it lands later this month. There's a lot of references here, see how many you can find! I really hope that 'Wash the Hand' is as fun for you to skate through as it was for me to build it, but as usual, there's no right or wrong answers here. Your mileage may vary, the Dude abides, et al. A quick one while he's away! released September 1, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, August 25-31, 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Illustration and coloring by Greg Lawhun. Title bar and text design by ABM&D, the laziest in jazz since 1983. This is Milieu Music number MML184. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Psilomelane (5:55) 02. Milieu - Green Anagram (4:55) 03. Milieu - Soliflore (1:04) 04. Milieu - Electric Age Cassiopeia (6:58) 05. Milieu - Polarity Switchboard vs. Time Forest (5:53) 06. Milieu - Imnanx (7:55) 07. Milieu - Blue of Flower (6:14) 08. Milieu - Zaftig Lime (5:59) 09. Milieu - Eudian Proxemics (6:21) 10. Milieu - Tan Relio (8:43) 11. Milieu - Nodens Monolith (5:57) 12. Milieu - Echogee (5:17) 'Watch the Head' is the kind of album that, to me, comes on more like a season - a once or twice a year itch that I feel compelled to scratch, feeling like the generative modular work I tend toward more and more has again led me, perhaps predictably, to something composed and programmed. It's a bit humorous to me to think that all of my music was made this way, in the earlier years, and I think I can draw a line around 'Sun Cast' as the moment where I realized that heavily composed work was now going to become something so exhausting and absolute that I could only really bear to do it once or twice in a calendar year. As I get older, I have realized that I am more than content to spend most of my time alone at sea, and in times like these, I feel called back to land, to civilization, to communion - but I always return to the unreachable horizon line beyond the sunny waves. The albums that have followed that tack have slowly become more planned and plotted, refined and directed, and last year's 'The Flower to Disappear' felt very much to me like "phase two" of this approach to record making, where I'd set aside months of the year to devote almost completely to making *one* album, vacating the modular patch forests and generative curiosities to actually put pen to paper and *say* something again. So, what is it that I wish to say? Having just turned forty a few months ago, I can unironically tell you that I don't think I've got much to say that I haven't said somewhere else before. 'Watch the Head' is not the best album I've ever made, nor does it strive to be (and certainly "best" is a rare word for me in these last few years, as I greatly dislike quantifying in absolutes), but it is the best album I can make right now. This is, as the I Ching might say, sufficient. "Close enough for government work" as the Brian of five or ten years ago would have said with a smirk. I think, for this push on the swing, the things I wish to say are not necessarily to you, Constant Listener, but to myself, albeit in the presence of friends who I feel have come to understand me and accept me. That would be you, any and all of you who have paid for a Milieu or CH album even once since 2005 - the fact that you've encouraged all of this has affected my decision to *continue* to do it, but after years of laboring over things, chasing tangents and reorienting myself, I've had a lot of time to consider what this act of expression really means to me. I've found that, generally, music that has been fashioned as something representative of where my mind is at a given point in time tends to succumb to an inevitable erosion of clarity - that given enough time, it simply becomes an object or a time capsule perhaps, and I think this is where and how I end up revisiting the process, trying to find myself inside it all over again - trying to excavate the statue from the stone. This approach is a bit comedic, inherently, because I'll probably never get to some plateau point in my work where I feel that my work is finished, that I've built this monument and everything I feel is bound up within it. Instead, I am constantly falling behind myself, trying to catch up and perhaps outrun my work a little bit, and each time I feel that I've exhausted all my curiosity and made the best possible recording I can make, there's an inescapable sense that I'll always be back again, taping over what came before, defining the new definitive. So here we are, together again at a branch in the path. It's always the same as before, and never the same, and if either of those statements were completely true, I question whether or not either of us would continue to care. There must be a feeling that something can be "mostly true" that we both understand, and we can feel it running through these tracks as surely as the path we're walking. Whether or not we can ever really be sure is just another thing to wonder about, but for now, let's laugh and enjoy each other's company while we can. I'm glad that you're you, and I feel content with being me, at least in this moment. released September 26, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, July-September 2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Illustrations and coloring by Greg Lawhun.Text layout, disc face and print alignment by Atoll Intercom Systems. Visual concept by Brian, Greg and AIS. Manufactured in the United States by Atomic Disc. This is Milieu Music number MMD088. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - April's Blissed Communion (Part 1) (45:12) 02. Milieu - April's Blissed Communion (Part 2) (3:13:50) April's Blissed Communion' is the sixteenth Sleepbuilding session to mastered and published. It was broadcast on the evening of April 24, 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, primarily focusing on two granular samplers that were being fed the signal from Wildfire Laboratories' Yanqui oscillator - a fixed-frequency 389 hertz CMOS oscillator with no controls whatsoever - as both samplers were then directed to relay this audio information back in the Dorian scale. A much more 'modest' length of session, 'April's Blissed Communion' offers an accessible return to the Sleepbuilding series after taking a month off, in order to complete recording work for 'Watch the Head.' Although it was recorded in April, as rainstorms coated the green valley with the yearly promise of new life, the textural personality of this session felt apt for the onset of Autumn as well, now creeping in very slowly and subtly this year. Sometimes, there is enough cool air and wind compelling it over the Far Hills, that if you were to close your eyes, Spring and Autumn in Ohio would feel interchangeable. Having spent 33 long and sweltering years in the green Hell of the deep south, I am always in awe of the abundant beauty of where I now reside. It is my sincere hope that this soft-focus synthesizer pastorale also accompanies you, wherever you are, in a gentle and pleasant way. '23 has been a long and chaotic year, and now, it is finally ending. released October 13, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and broadcast live overnight on April 24, 2023 at White Pillar, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, October 2023. Text by Brian. Poetry excerpt by Thomas Brerewood, 1770. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of "Nocturne" by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1910. This is Milieu Music number MMD089. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 1) (26:01) 02. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 2) (2:19:30) 03. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 3) (1:14:34) 04. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 4) (35:24) 05. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 5) (1:38:40) 06. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 6) (1:40) 07. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 7 / Section 1) (1:40:20) 08. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 7 / Section 2) (2:36:20) 09. Milieu - The Glowing Book (Part 7 / Section 3) (2:20:07) Originally broadcast overnight on May 23, 2023, 'The Glowing Book' is the seventeenth Sleepbuilding session to be released. Like all others before it, it is a free download, now and forever. It focuses on a study with the 3340 "Curtis chip"; so proliferated throughout many synthesizers (namely the Roland SH-101, a personal favorite), playing Flamenco scales with a Turing machine, two granular processors and multiple delay and reverberation paths. Selected from the growing archive of unpublished broadcasts by careful consideration with the Book of Changes, 'The Glowing Book' echoed the stormy hexagram cast by the I Ching in an electrical sense - producing a paradoxically sonorous sound from a small universe of patch cables, pulsing lights and directed current, invisible beneath the stoic exterior of the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. This felt like an apt thing to consider as analogous to oscillation itself - a wave of current, bending up and then down again - or perhaps it is on and off, or opening and closing - and this wave can be mirrored by simply inverting voltage, a paradox in the pauses, and the inverse paradox resolving into a sound. What could be more illustrative of the core philosophy of the Book of Changes? Oscillation, before it is musical, before it is audible, before it is even electrical, is simply a season of change, a gradient from one polarity to another. Always leaving, and (as Eno may have been thinking when he said) always returning. Or was it Dylan? "From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn plays wasted words, proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying" - I'm fairly certain both men have been reading the same book I have, which is remarkably older than a lot of other books in the world today. So, here is my contribution to that recursive discussion of perspective, my glowing mass of soundwaves and digital pixel text, beaming to (or through) you right this moment, a book with no pages, no words, no binding, no spine. A self-negating statement of silence to weave another paradox. N.B. Due to errors in the recording of the original broadcast audio, sections of 'The Glowing Book' have been edited and revised, however the casual listener will likely notice no differences, as the core of the music and its function remains the same. released October 22, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Generated and broadcast live overnight on May 23rd, 2023 at White Pillar, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, September 2023. Text by Brian. Poetry excerpt by Walt Whitman. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of "Cosmic Spring II" by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1910-1911. This is Milieu Music number MMD090. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Hand of the Wind (00:00:00-02:00:01) (2:00:01) 02. Milieu - The Hand of the Wind (02:00:02-04:00:39) (2:00:38) 03. Milieu - The Hand of the Wind (04:00:40-06:00:45) (2:00:07) 04. Milieu - The Hand of the Wind (06:00:46-08:00:52) (2:00:08) 05. Milieu - The Hand of the Wind (08:00:53-10:00:59) (2:00:08) 06. Milieu - The Hand of the Wind (10:01:00-11:54:15) (1:53:17) The Hand of the Wind' is the eighteenth Sleepbuilding release to be published, originating as an overnight broadcast on February 19, 2023. It explores the unique voice of the Pulsar VCO in Expert Sleepers' Disting Mk4 multipurpose module, playing in the major pentatonic scale. Musically, it seems to recall moments from my 'Statuettes' albums, with a counterpoint between a lower register bassoon-like bass and a higher register flute-like lead profile. This composition is one of several that feels profoundly close to my own "manually" written work, which brings to mind different philosophical considerations when it is in fact a fully generative piece conceived on my modular system, which has been provided with some basic instructions for possible output configurations, with room for variation based on probabilities, and I myself have spent more time on the shaping of the timbral character of the piece rather than the sequencing or the melodic nature of it. Where I end, and the machine begins, is a nebulous and undefined area, because the modular is prosaically a mechanical mirror - it only does what I tell it to do, when I instruct it to. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. Yet, when given a list of possible choices I'd make when offered a branch in the path forward, the machine invariably explores avenues that I myself may not have chosen to pursue. If this were untrue, I doubt modular music and generative composition would remain interesting in even a topical way, it would simply be an echo of something I was already more than capable of doing on my own, and in the age of machine assumption in many areas of our lives, I have no issues putting the effort in for a more human result in my work. And so, in this way, the machine is demystified - it is no longer an advanced collation of factors and moving systems, it is simply a conglomeration of screwdrivers, gardening tools and mindless electrical relays that only react, never truly act. I remain the central motivating force behind everything the machine does, even when I am not even in the same room with it, and this is an interesting consideration for me, because when this happens, I feel as you do - a voyeur looking in on an ecosystem in motion, marveling at it and enjoying it in a passive way - and yet still I remain somewhere buried beneath all the cables and voltage and flashing lights, decisive and direct, my mechanical mirror image echoing my will perfectly. Generative music has been a continual path of progress toward many different ends for me, across the years I've explored it. First in software systems, then using tape machines, loop devices and samplers, and now within the vehicle of modular design - and each time I find a more efficient way of accomplishing a task that I set out to do, I find several other possible paths that intrigue me enough to feel as if I could become lost all over again. It is in this surrealistic state of superposition that I already exist and do not yet exist within my own work, and the Sleepbuilding sessions illustrate this sensation quite well. 'The Hand of the Wind' is a free download, like all seventeen prior Sleepbuilding releases have been, and I sincerely hope this music aids you in a constructive and pleasurable way during this most invited of Autumns we're in at the moment. Be well, thank you for your support, and I hope to see you again next time. released November 17, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, February 19-20, 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Poem excerpt by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Astrazione a Colori' by Frantisek Kupka, ca. 1931-1936. This is Milieu Music number MMD092. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Quirinal Silver Boa (Part 1) (3:16:49) 02. Milieu - Quirinal Silver Boa (Part 2 / Section 1) (2:14:50) 03. Milieu - Quirinal Silver Boa (Part 2 / Section 2) (2:14:35) 04. Milieu - Quirinal Silver Boa (Part 2 / Section 3) (2:07:56) 05. Milieu - Quirinal Silver Boa (Part 2 / Section 4) (2:01:33) 06. Milieu - Quirinal Silver Boa (Part 3) (1:38:20) Quirinal Silver Boa' is the curiously named 19th Sleepbuilding release to be published for free. It is unique in its source - a deep exploration of a single-note sample from a fellow synthesist, integrated into the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and used as a molecular seed to generate the piece. It was originally broadcast overnight on May 26th, 2023. Due to the external sample usage that shaped this piece, 'Quirinal Silver Boa' is perhaps the most proof of concept broadcast to be included in this series thus far. It is highly illustrative of the worlds of variation that are possible with a deep-dive of modular processors, granular resamplers, and a large amount of filtering, equalization and reverberation. Musically speaking, 'QSB' is played in the Ionian scale, and offers a distinct sense of isolation - notes of sound blowing in a slow desert wind, becoming a dusky perfume as they mingle with the grains of Urth. Outlining surrealistic structures that hover in the air, between the dirt and the clouds, the melodic lines wander through almost-night darkness, and find us here, between waking and sleeping, waiting and listening for them. I would like to express my gratitude to S.A. for his friendship, lively conversations and of course for contributing his creative effort to the whims of my machines. This is a whole universe, grown from something too small to even see, and that makes it remarkable and unremarkable at once. It is a view of the peripheral that always exists, the horizon line behind the next hill, and I will never tire of the walk toward whatever we will find there. released November 24, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, May 26, 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, exploring a single-note sample created/offered by S.A. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Animated Spaces' by Frantisek Kupka (1922). Poem excerpt by Friedrich Hölderlin (1797-98). Special thanks to S.A. for his friendship and collaboration, and for suggesting the Hölderlin poem. This is Milieu Music number MMD093. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - The Water's Path (Part 1 / Section 1) (3:00:25) 02. Milieu - The Water's Path (Part 1 / Section 2) (3:00:18) 03. Milieu - The Water's Path (Part 1 / Section 3) (3:00:34) 04. Milieu - The Water's Path (Part 1 / Section 4) (2:53:42) 05. Milieu - The Water's Path (Part 2) (2:59:48) The Water's Path' is the twentieth Sleepbuilding session to be released on Bandcamp, and it exists as a referential look back to where the series began in November 2022, with 'Creation' - a Karplus-Strong synthesizer in my modular system, playing the Dorian scale, left to meander through the night as I slept. 'The Water's Path' clocks in at fifteen hours in length, and offers a soporific disconnection from the outside world. I find that this piece offers a wonderful perspective when placed as a counterpoint to the start of the series - to indeed observe the length and breadth and depth of the water's path - and considering the commonalities between the design of both compositions, they are both extremely similar to one another and entirely different. This state of superposition is one that I find myself referring back to often, with modular music, because within this set of peripheries and possible tangents, I myself remain the one constant, the one element that does not and cannot really change. I can follow the river where it goes, and I can direct it sometimes in order to excavate the visions I dream up from inside the stone, but ultimately, it goes where it will, and anything I could fashion out of the natural world would return to it anyway. Whitman's words again bring me some gentle reassurance here, in the dissonance of these moments. It is good to accept that I am content where and when I am, and to be doing the work that I find worthwhile and inspiring regardless of whether or not you are here beside me. I've written a lot here about time, about my place in all of this machinery, and in the end there's always a pervading sense that I might as well say nothing at all, because the music itself always speaks far more clearly and completely than my struggling tongue can. I can laugh at the dissolution of the statues I've built, I can be assured that I am a part of everything just as the grains of the Urth are. The water and the air, the same but different, move across the surfaces, carrying me away and bringing us back together again, where we will have the same conversation once more, wondering why it feels so familiar. released December 1, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, August 17 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Poem excerpt by Walt Whitman. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of 'Creation I' by Frantisek Kupka (1920). This is Milieu Music number MMD094. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu feat. RoundGlass - Heartbeat of Spring (3:20) 24Bit foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu feat. RoundGlass - Lost Minutes (4:24) 24Bit foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 1) (4:19:02) 02. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 2 / Section 1) (1:02:27) 03. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 2 / Section 2) (43:59) 04. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 2 / Section 3) (21:30) 05. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 2 / Section 4) (36:40) 06. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 3 / Section 1) (1:48:13) 07. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 3 / Section 2) (2:11:12) 08. Milieu - Recurrent Irrigation (Part 4) (3:15:51) It is another new year. Paradoxically it never feels different enough to be new, but we must always carve our lines of measurement into the world around us, and time is no exception. Despite this arbitrary nature of counting everything, I nevertheless feel compelled to begin each year with a defined statement - something that exists in the Venn space between a meaningless resolution and a sincere sentiment - and in the spirit of this dual-purpose expression, I am content to offer you 'Recurrent Irrigation' as my best foot forward, as the saying goes. On the technical side, 'Recurrent Irrigation' was originally broadcast on the evenings of November 14-15 in 2023, and was my first in-depth session work with the Moog Subharmonicon analog synthesizer. The two nights' patches explored Just intonation and 12-TET, with the aid of the usual tools in the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, and together they constitute the 21st Sleepbuilding release to be published here. (As usual, detailed patch notes are available in the 'track info' sections of this page.) At the end of each year, I have made it an annual tradition to take some leave from my work, such as it is, starting on my wedding anniversary (12/16) and not returning until sometime in early January. This is less of a 'vacation' and more of a decompression, a bit of much-needed asceticism and radio silence during one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year. During this break, I spent a long time considering what would be my first published work of the new year, and although I knew it would be one of the fourteen unreleased Sleepbuilding broadcasts, I consulted the ever-illuminating I Ching to help me decide. The I Ching sagely acknowledged my decision paralysis, and pointed out that I should not try to reach for any larger goals, and that it is just as good to work on smaller ones. It reinforced that even if I am returning to the studio for work in the new year, that I can continue to lay low and keep things simple. All of these notions led me back to the thematic details I'd been developing with 'Recurrent Irrigation' - a topical reference to the electrical current running through the many patch cables in my workflow, as well as a more pointed commentary on the branching paths and tributaries that continue to split off from the proverbial river of my creative work - how it is always the same and never the same, which I have written here several times before. I found that somewhere beneath the surface of these sessions was the idea I wanted to carry into this new calendar year, following on the strength of twenty prior extended sessions, acknowledging the path behind me while also renewing my understanding of why I was doing it in the first place. If you repeat anything often enough, the definition can become lost in the oscillation, initiatives can become rote exercises, so it can be fruitful to open up the machinery and re-evaluate the way things work from time to time, even if only to put the gears back together exactly the way they were, content in your assurance that the system does not need changing. Sleepbuilding releases will thus continue, free long-form ambient music created procedurally, the recorded output of a machine that both inspires my curiosity and echoes my will, drawing a line through this map and carrying a current of peace and placidity in somnolent tones. There will always be another hill for the river to bend around, another undreamt landscape, so for this forty-first circumnavigation, I will follow the sun. released January 9, 2024 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, November 14, 2023 using the Moog Subharmonicon and the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling from 'Abstraction' by Frantisek Kupka (1931-1935). Text by Brian. Poem excerpt by Walt Whitman. This is Milieu Music number MMD095. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2024. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Occur - Drum 1 (13:42) 02. Occur - Drum 2 (17:00) Drum is the debut release by Occur, a collaborative effort between Brian Grainger (Milieu, Coppice Halifax, etc) and John-Paul Kramer (COAL, Casio Commander, etc). This christening work follows a live remixing collaboration on the Coppice Halifax release Okazi [Enkorpigita] (that's Esperanto for Occur [Embodied]), issued as part of CH's Deep Earth series: malfokusita.bandcamp.com/album/okazi-enkorpigita Musically, Occur exists as a proper collaboration should - live, in the moment, unplanned and improvised on a wide array of analog and digital synthesizers, drum machines, outboard FX and laboratory equipment. As such, Occur affairs tend to be tangential and sporadic across long-form runtimes, which are filled with bright prisms of color, dimly lit corners and everything in between. Taking influences from classic works by Aphex Twin, AE/Gescom, Pan Sonic and other early 1990s electronics, as well as more modern trailblazers such as Demdike Stare and Omit, Occur attempts to use both vintage and modern approaches to studio performance in an immediate and impulse-driven way. On Drum, this wide range of styles is funneled into two tracks of rugged, heavy techno that themselves unfurl and melt away into ambient pools of imagined raindrops. Using a DJ turntable with such vinyl sources as African tribesmen, opera music, piano etudes and political lecturers from the 1960s, these sounds are heavily manipulated in realtime and played alongside a studio rig built for dub techno session work by Coppice Halifax (who was using the studio at the time). Indeed, Occur's initial session was something that simply materialized organically on its own, by virtue of both parties being present at that point in space and time. Occur literally just happened. At present, there are already three to four subsequent Occur releases in hand, which are currently being mixed down and mastered. As Occur's artistic philosophy aligns strongly with Recycled Plastics' own mission, it only made sense to create the OCR subcatalog expressly for the band. Physical editions of Drum (and the following OCR releases) are forthcoming, pending materials needed to produce such editions. All physical versions will be exclusively available at Occur's own Bandcamp page here: opacitycontrastresolution.bandcamp.com released August 18, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, March 2017, using the following equipment: Korg ER-1 / Grass C-TCM / Gemini PDT-6000 / Behringer US600 / Boss RV-3 / Boss SL-20 / Moog LPF + Ringmod + MIDI MuRF / Alesis Quadraverb / Pioneer S202W / Digitech Synth Wah / Peavey FX2x24. Mastering & design by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number OCR1. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Occur - Dropper (20:24) Dropper is the second EP released by Occur, issued out of chronological sequence due to the fact that it was recorded and subsequently released in August, 2017 for an emergency charity compilation, to raise money for hurricane and flood victims in Houston TX. Here, it finally sees physical issue, and a place in the OCR catalog proper. Musically, Dropper bears some likenesses to Occur recordings that are not yet released - namely Topo (OCR5) and Range (OCR6) - in that it explores the band's more braindance side, with warbling acid lines, warm drum machine bounce and majestic analog synthesizer passages, doused in reverb. Dropper is the kind of recording that might have been found in a pile of lost DATs at Rephlex or Warp in the early to mid-nineties - emotive and spacious, while also remaining very rhythmic and dancefloor appropriate. Like all Occur releases, Dropper was improvised live on a mostly analog hardware setup, without overdubs or computers. While this release exists in the Recycled Plastics OCR catalog, the band also maintains their own catalog at opacitycontrastresolution.bandcamp.com Additionally, an ambient distillation/expansion of Dropper will be released as DOE at sister-label Psoma Psi Phi. released February 11, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer. Performed and recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, August 2017, using Korg Volca Bass / Beats / Keys, Akai XR-20 and Yamaha RY-20, in conjunction with Alesis Quadraverb / BBE Two Timer / Boss RV-3 / Pioneer SR202W and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, September 2017. Design and logo by ABM&D. This is Recycled Plastics number OCR2. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Occur - Syrup 1 (18:47) 02. Occur - Syrup 2.1 (11:59) 03. Occur - Syrup 2.2 (2:27) 04. Occur - Syrup 2.3 (10:40) 05. Occur - Syrup 3.1 (15:01) 06. Occur - Syrup 3.2 (14:05) Syrup is the third official Occur release, and the band's full-length debut. Clocking in at just over seventy minutes, Syrup siphons out a colorful array of sound-play from a surprisingly minimal hardware setup. Improvised live, with no overdubs, on two analog monosynths, one analog polysynth and two analog drum machines, the recording sessions were subsequently finalized with one last coat of paint via software post-processing. Despite Dropper being released as OCR2, Syrup was in fact recorded directly after Drum, chronologically. Sonically, Syrup shows Occur in a lethargic, almost drunken and drugged mode, with notable references to screwed-and-chopped hip hop, smoked out dub techno and psychedelic synthesizer jaunts that hang like discreet curtains in one moment, and fall down a flight of Berlin-school stairs in the next. Syrup is often a thick, foggy experience, wading through gelatinous oceans marked only by irradiated meteors crashing into the melting waves. Evident are the band's influences things like Autechre's Amber and Oversteps albums, Cylob's Cylobian Sunset, early Deepchord 12"s and platEAU. In addition to Syrup, both ambient and beat-based reconstructions have been drafted from Syrup's sessions, and these will see independent releases following this issue, with the former at Psoma Psi Phi (www.psoma.space) and the latter at Recycled Plastics (www.recycled-plastics.net). released February 13, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2017, with a Boss DR-110 / Korg Volca Beats/Bass/Keys / Korg MS-20 / Grass C-TCM / JVC KD-A11 in conjunction with Alesis Quadraverb / Pioneer SR202W / Moog LPF/Ringmod / BBE Two Timer / Boss RV-3 and a Peavey FX2x24 mixing desk. Mastered February 2018 by The Analog Botanist. Cover design by ABM&D. This is Recycled Plastics number OCR3 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. OCR - M¹ (36:55) 02. OCR - M² (39:49) OCR is the second nom-de-guerre for Brian Grainger and John-Paul Kramer's collaborative work - the first being Occur, which has (thus far) released two EPs and one LP at Recycled Plastics. Existing in tandem with Occur releases will be the OCR catalog here at Psoma Psi Phi - a parallel universe reimagining of the band's work, presented as extended beatless pieces instead of their more rhythmic electronic counterparts. This first release, simply titled M, consists of two lengthy de/reconstructions of Occur's debut EP, Drum. If Drum could be the sound of the not-too-distant past in the history of electronic music, M is the incredibly far-flung future, where life as we know it has been wiped from the Earth, and all of civilization breaks down into so much dust and empty space. M solemnly hangs in the sour air, like a burned flag sagging off of a bent ruin. Gone are the signs of life or even nature herself, with only traces of regret and sadness running through the abandoned remains. A quiet night sets over the scene, looked down upon by meaningless stars in an indifferent sky. No more warmth, fire or blood. Just this. released February 18, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, February 2018 using only source from Occur's Drum EP. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design & texts by ABM&D. This is Psoma Psi Phi number OCCUR 1, first in the ongoing OCCUR subcatalog of works. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. OCR - Doe (34:52) The second installment of OCR recordings, which exist as "possible worlds" in timelines adjacent to ours, where their analogs are Occur releases, issued at Recycled Plastics. This volume, known as Doe, is an ambient configuration of the Occur EP Dropper, and is built using only the original session recordings for Dropper. Unlike M before it, Doe glows with a sunny pastoral shimmer, where perhaps the fallout of future has given way to a blooming, wild paradise of flowers and coppice. Spring eternal bursts forth from the coal-black death of the past, and life is triumphant once again. Majestic blue skies sit watchfully over this garden of re-creation, a once sleeping and pregnant mother heralding warmth and wealth anew. These bounding hills and dales are hers, and those people waking up on the horizon line - those are hers, too. released February 20, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger and John-Paul Kramer. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, September 2017, using only source material from Occur's Dropper EP. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and texts by ABM&D. This is Psoma Psi Phi number OCCUR 2, second in the ongoing OCCUR subcatalog of works. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Occur - Spassic 1 (22:55) 02. Occur - Spassic 2 (18:38) Occur returns with an encore to their first full-length, SYRUP - the two track SPASSIC EP. Containing two remixes of an unused outtake from the SYRUP session, reconfigured into exciting new shapes and sounds via extensive software automation and FX processing, SPASSIC represents the first of (likely many) junction points for the band. Being Occur's first software-centric production, it allows Brian and John-Paul to lean into their influences from modern Autechre, Demdike Stare and all manner of classic records placed in the "IDM" section of record stores around the world. Dense and blinding, like a tangle of forestial overgrowth, SPASSIC is a propulsive and cerebral affair, swinging wildly around a firm axis of a grooving KPR-77 drum machine, giving way to bursts of aural debris and high-velocity slices in the rhythmic pulse. A video has been produced for "Spassic 2", generated in realtime from the soundwaves themselves, which become transmuted into complex configurations of cuboid shapes and angular lines. NOTE: Due to the heavy use of flashing light and extremely fast visual cuts, persons suffering from epilepsy should refrain from watching this video. To accomodate this, we have included a visual disclaimer at the start of the video itself as well. We apologize for any inconvenience. The viewer assumes all responsibility for their personal well-being. youtu.be/MuILxgiOkkY Following this EP will be a related set of two concurrent releases, both of which utilize software processing in much different ways from SPASSIC to recontextualize material from an earlier Occur session that was unfortunately compromised during the recording process. FLOOR and LATT will continue to reshape and expand the notion of what Occur sounds like, and what it might continue to become. Additionally, an ambient reduction of Spassic has been issued at our beatless sister label Psoma Psi Phi, under the OCR header. PASS is a nearly opposite experience from SPASSIC, instead focusing on a deep and Impressionistic depiction of losing yourself inside the forest, while the ruins of cities fall behind you... released April 28, 2018 W/P by Brian Grainger & John-Paul Kramer. Recorded various dates 2017-2018 at White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Video, logo, text and cover design by ABM&D. This is Recycled Plastics number OCR4, and fourth in the ongoing Occur subcatalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Phe_ - A Bassinet (7:34) 02. Phe_ - Bosco (2:26) 03. Phe_ - Ptyalise Bend (5:22) 04. Phe_ - Slidden Antichoir (4:31) 05. Phe_ - Opal Trace (4:55) 06. Phe_ - Green Minor (5:52) 07. Phe_ - Wink (8:40) 08. Phe_ - Green Minor [Wisp Edit] (5:59) 09. Phe_ - A Bassinet [Simon Meredith Phemix] (4:40) 10. Phe_ - Slidden Antichoir [Cardamom Cosine Mix By Casio Commander] (4:40) 11. Phe_ - Green Minor [EOD's Glacial Alarm Mix] (6:55) 12. Phe_ - Opal Trace [Mrs Jynx's Meow Mix] (4:20) 13. Phe_ - A Bassinet [Yellow Night Mix By Night Sequels] (4:39) 14. Phe_ - Green Minor [David Tagg Version] (5:08) The debut self-titled album by Phe_ and Recycled Plastics' inaugural release. 40 minutes of original braindance material paired with 40 minutes of remixes by Wisp (Rephlex), Mrs Jynx (Planet Mu), EOD (030303), Night Sequels (Attacknine), David Tagg (Install), Casio Commander and Simon Meredith. released March 1, 2011 This is Recycled Plastics number RP1. All music W/P by Phe_ except tracks 8-14: Written by Phe_, produced by the credited artists. Copyright 2011 Recycled Plastics, all rights reserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. SEAS - Arctic (14:39) 02. SEAS - Lift (10:09) 03. SEAS - Birds (10:28) 04. SEAS - Night Surf (8:15) 05. SEAS - Blue Dub (18:46) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Dub Techno" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. SEAS - Quinacridone Industries (10:52) 02. SEAS - Lift II (10:38) 03. SEAS - Everglades (8:47) 04. SEAS - C2X Dub (7:53) 05. SEAS - Emptyglass (8:21) 06. SEAS - Southward (8:51) 07. SEAS - Distants (11:11) 08. SEAS - Cultivar (10:06) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015 REM GENRE Electronic ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. SEAS - EEDCD-09-BGWL-A (21:56) 02. SEAS - EED2-BGWL-B (1:17:16) SEAS, for the uninitiated, is the third collaborative project between David Tagg and Brian Grainger (the other two being VCV and Viking Destroyer, respectively). SEAS focuses on ambient techno and textural electronics, unlike the guitar-centric output of Brian and David's other collaborations, but a constant element throughout SEAS music is a steady backdrop of field recordings, white noise, feedback trails and textures of all kinds, openly displaying Brian and David's love for both organic and inorganic atmospheres. Assembled Landscapes is the isolated atmospheric backdrop of the duo's newest release, SEAS 2. The electronics and rhythms completely removed, revealing an expansive landscape of sound in motion, and mastered differently for this release to showcase the range and depth of the elements involved. Comprised of a collage-like set of field recordings made by Brian and David using binaural and contact microphones, layered over/under feedback experiments (David processing fireworks and white noise with a Roland Space Echo) and FX wizardry (Brian sampling everything from blank cassette hiss to flanger and phaser waves, and running the sound through loop setups and extensive EQ treatments)...Assembled Landscapes is a potent tapestry of elemental and imagined sound, and a worthy companion piece to the SEAS 2 album. This is volume one of a two-volume set. released August 30, 2012 Assembled and mastered by Brian Grainger, using location recordings by Brian Grainger and David Tagg in South Carolina and New York. Cover photo and processing by Brian Grainger. This is Install Digital Archive number IP015. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-A (6:33) 02. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-B (3:54) 03. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-C (1:50) 04. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-D (4:41) 05. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-E (2:26) 06. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-F (5:21) 07. SEAS - EEDCD-09-DTWN-G (18:12) 08. SEAS - EED2-DTFW-A (3:22) 09. SEAS - EED2-DTFW-B (5:14) 10. SEAS - EED2-DTSE-A (4:40) 11. SEAS - EED2-DTSE-B (4:01) 12. SEAS - EED2-DTSE-C (3:56) This is the second half of the two-volume set Assembled Landscapes, by SEAS - the duo of David Tagg and Brian Grainger. Where the first volume focused on Brian's collages of field recordings, textural grit, white noise and thin walls of effects processing, this stark second volume is much more minimal, centering around David's experiments with white noise, tape loops, analog delays and field recordings. Everything contained in these two volumes represents both a stripped-down "behind the scenes" listen of SEAS and SEAS 2, as well as an accurate portrait of the exact atmospheres the band aims to create in equal measure with the electronic side of their sound. These recordings were raw, unrestrained and in some ways, never meant to be heard in their naked forms, which the band now feels is a move well worth documenting, and hopefully an interesting insight into how SEAS create their music. released August 30, 2012 Recorded by David Tagg in Colonial Gardens, 2008-2011. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at Botany Bay, 2012. Cover photo and processing by Brian Grainger. This is Install Digital Archive number IP016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. AQV - Qav (6:56) 02. AQV - Vaq (7:29) 03. AQV - Qva (6:34) 04. AQV - Vqa (10:59) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "Electronic, Ambient, IDM" ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. AQV - Bywater Video (1:29) 02. AQV - Neon Clingfilm (5:31) 03. AQV - Wave Minerals (2:10) 04. AQV - Blue Lodge Phonebook (5:51) 05. AQV - Aquariel Peninsula (2:24) 06. AQV - Lowbatt Sleepover (6:20) 24Bit AQV returns with a second volume of bedroom electronics, following the first-ever Bedroom Compost release back in 2011. Blue Machine is a textured and mid-fi trip through an aquatic realm, wedged somewhere between the ending sequence from Splash and King Trident's kingdom in The Little Mermaid. Equal parts VHS defocus and analog synthesizer improvisation, Blue Machine conjures up waves and waves of sonic seawater to swim around in, in this ACID SUMMER. Performed live on equipment that all had the color blue present somewhere on its enclosure, with zero computers or overdubs present, direct to a fuzzy cassette tape on an old JVC deck. Additionally, the limited edition CD-R comes with a special 18-minute bonus track, "A Late One While She's Awake", which features (gasp!) psychedelic electric guitar playing and three-string bass playing by guest Plastician Casio Commander. released July 9, 2019 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, May 13 2017, using the following hardware: Roland SH-32, Boss DR-110, Memphis Blue Beat, Casio MT-210, Moog Ring Modulator, Alesis Quadraverb, Ibanez Phase Modulator, Boss RV-3. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC77, and #77 in the Bedroom Compost subcatalog. ![]() foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. VCV - 611 Valeria (7:58) 02. VCV - 17305 Caniff (8:50) 03. VCV - 1478 Vihuri (7:42) 04. VCV - 815 Coppelia (8:36) 05. VCV - 6871 Verlaine (14:35) 06. VCV - 11101 Ceskafilharmonie (11:17) 07. VCV - 29133 Vargas (5:26) 08. VCV - 952 Caia (2:35) 09. VCV - 13897 Vesuvius (12:14) ![]() Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011 REM GENRE "electronic, drone, ambient " ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. VCV - HR 8799 [Live in New York, December 2007] (23:58) 02. VCV - Barefoot Blues (8:26) 03. VCV - The Only Way You Can Go [Snow Version] (10:11) 04. VCV - Improvisation for Organ & Guitar (6:33) 05. VCV - Pine Reduction (6:25) 06. VCV - Live Drone Three (13:17) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Cloud One (5:16) 02. VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Cloud Two (7:22) 03. VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Cloud Three (7:22) 04. VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Cloud Four (5:23) 05. VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Cloud Five (7:02) 06. VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Cloud Six (7:24) From the blackest depths of silent space, waking from a hibernation that's lasted eons, VCV steadily descend toward our galaxy, observing it as a somber spiral isolated in the middle of nothing and more nothing. Upon entering the solar system, a signal is received from Earth. Japan, to be precise. A young man named Shinobu Nemoto is jamming experimental frequencies on several dozen pieces of audio equipment in his backyard. VCV read his signals, wait, and understand. The two entities converse and agree to meet, where else but the harsh climate of Jupiter, to combine their abilities and create a message for mankind. Long hot hours are spent in atmo-suits, combining modified audio frequencies with caustic chemicals found naturally in the Jovian habitat, and etching the results into exactly one-hundred black discs with ultraviolet light. The visitors depart, their mission complete. There are no goodbyes, only quiet, patient understanding. Their languages are very different and very unimportant, but the message has been created in a new tongue. What does it mean? You might never know. released July 1, 2011 This is Install number INSTLP02. Written and produced by David Tagg, Brian Grainger and Shinobu Nemoto. Mastered by Brian Grainger. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Vhom - Player Piano (13:17) 02. Vhom - The Hallway (4:59) 03. Vhom - Baseroom (5:36) 04. Vhom - Marianne (4:51) 05. Vhom - Typewriter (10:09) 06. Vhom - The Guest (11:28) 07. Vhom - Black Smokers (10:24) 08. Vhom - 1938 (8:22) 09. Vhom - Player Piano (4:24) 10. Vhom - The Hallway (4:54) 11. Vhom - Baseroom (16:13) 12. Vhom - Marianne (2:00) 13. Vhom - Typewriter (10:17) 14. Vhom - The Guest (3:53) 15. Vhom - Black Smokers (11:32) 16. Vhom - 1938 (7:36) Originally issued on a limited edition double-disc set for Halloween night, 2008, and now very out of print. Borley Rectory is a single album represented in two very different ways - the first eight songs are more ambient, while the second eight songs, themselves the same pieces as the first eight, are much more brutal and harsh. Intended as an homage to the famous haunted house of the same name in England, as well as a nod to some of my less-acknowledged influences, such as V/Vm (whose work Sometimes, Good Things Happen hugely inspired this album), Omit, Throbbing Gristle and even Merzbow. It remains a fascinating set of recordings that fit in well alongside the darker, more experimental sounds I've recorded under my birthname. released October 27, 2008 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Foxhill and 114RKD, 2004-2008. #6 assisted by John-Paul Kramer. #16 assisted by Acreil. Cover photograph taken by Brian at Foxhill. This is Milieu Music number MML044 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Vhom - #dro^n) (10:04) 02. Vhom - 6][Qz( (4:45) 03. Vhom - vQ5 ]+4 ) (5:04) 04. Vhom - 53q#((( (6:04) 05. Vhom - 4iz4(l{4 (5:19) 06. Vhom - k#7x7x7 (4:32) F^vex, the first new recorded effort by Vhom since 2010's guitar drone monument Firmamvnt, is a sprawling set of intense electronics. Taking obvious notes from things like Autechre, Pan Sonic and BRTLMN, with perhaps less-obvious nods to Aube, Omit, Throbbing Gristle and Vladislav Delay, this EP was created using several pieces of incongruous gear in tandem with unique things like reel to reel tape loops, buzzing devices that have been fed too much voltage and broken FX boxes. F^vex is techno music that has been literally broken down and recycled, with tiny bits of recognizable pieces appearing in an otherwise tangled and incomprehensible sonic landscape. Even the track titles allude more to compressed data than to anything resembling language. A perfect piece of bedroom compost for the Bedroom Compost series! There is also an additional ten-minute track on the CD-R version, for those of you who enjoy the feel of a lovingly stickered recycled cardboard square in your hands, especially one that contains a circular readable data disc that is compatible with your home machines! released June 20, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at ### with ### and ### during the summer of ###. This is Recycled Plastics number BC10, and tenth in the Bedroom Compost series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Vhom - Arc (53:09) 02. Vhom - Leaden (1:01:17) ( VOLTAGE / HARDWARE / OVERMODULATION ) Long wire tendrils sway between the steel overhangs, quiet metal bending in a burned-out breeze, swooning as if remembering a slow dance on a sinking ship. The sweetness of sleeping death seems so far away now that it is hard to remember how much of a relief it was. All the fire, molten green and alien, only now a distant thought, reduced to a layer of sediment on the surfaces of powerless machines. Blood-oranges and lemon-yellows, inert, suspended, unfathomably bursting into a beautiful purple, dragons of infernal smoke and black heat unfurling across the stone littered landscape, a quick breath, a flash of blindness, then so much vapor. The needles all frozen in the red, sentinels until the very end, rational and chittering and static, all rotting polymer and peeling paint and dead battery now. Barriers blasted open with the fervor of a thousand desperate souls throwing wide the obstinate doors of heaven itself, cracks running through the firmament, swine and bull and every weeping number wailing at the cloud-soft ivory walls, cast backward, downward, into a scorched Urth, now so deeply cradled on the rim of Hell that only these sulfuric breezes need whisper one last moment to brush the whole pustulent orb down into his shivering maw, doomed, damned, hanging on the precipice of the Last Great Orgasm as the Old Mother descends. N.B. 2022: Originally issued digitally at CTRL BURN on December 4, 2020 as catalog designate BRN102. 'Arc' and 'Leaden' are two mostly hands-free live remixes of COAL's 'Scorched Earth', using that album's parts as singular sound source in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics generative system and modular processing path. With the closure of CTRL BURN in 2022, Black Grass is republished here. released December 4, 2020 Generated and recorded live at White Pillar, Summer 2020, using only elements from COAL's Scorched Earth as provenance sound, in conjunction with the R-EW modular processing path. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography & Text by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD61, 61st in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All blights deserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Scant Orbit - Programme 0 (First Draft) (22:32) 02. Scant Orbit - Programme 1 (10:22) 03. Scant Orbit - Programme 2 (3:15) 04. Scant Orbit - Programme 3 (7:19) 05. Scant Orbit - Programme 4 (8:45) 06. Scant Orbit - Programme 5 (4:24) 07. Scant Orbit - Programme 6 (7:58) 08. Scant Orbit - Programme 7 (11:31) 09. Scant Orbit - Programme 8 (8:26) ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - VCR Man (5:39) 02. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Astro-Nuts On Your Anus (2:25) 03. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Sinewave Slut Bonwalla (4:21) 04. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - In His Pants (1:04) 05. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Casio Goes To Crotch Town (Kinda Weak) (4:41) 06. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Not Satisfied I Think You Need More Fart (0:49) 07. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Touch Wood (Or How I Learned To Stop Bleeding And Love The Doom) (5:09) 08. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Gaggin' And Scattin' (2:00) 09. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Rubber Pop (4:11) 10. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - The Skip Spencer Death Implosion (2:19) 11. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Axl Public Service Announcement (1:36) 12. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Meatball Acid (7:44) 13. Scant Orbit & MC Urine Gone - Closing Remarks (2:59) In the words of MC Urine Gone: "This is awesome, and you will enjoy it." What we have here is a sporadic performance of improvisations by the Scant Orbit lads, accompanied on lung projections by MC Urine Gone. A musical exercise in Murphy's Law, everything that can go wrong already has gone wrong, and you're only privy to the fallout afterward. Throbbing Gristle ain't got shit on this! Personnel: Carbon Tits - Pedals, organ, axe wailing Bat Citrons - Mixer, circuit bents, knobs MC Urine Gone - Super friends, space, food fucking released June 2, 2007 Stretched beyond recognition, pulverized, irradiated, puked on and fried on a hot sidewalk by Scant Orbit and MC Urine Gone. Cover art by Jack Rabbit. This is Buckhorn Records number CAPN014. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Dr. Paul Rogers - Ninety Foot High "Getting Ready" (6:36) 02. Dr. Paul Rogers - Listen To This Seven Times (4:12) 03. Dr. Paul Rogers - Bonus Male Gripping Enhancement Track (4:27) From the intrepid mind of Dr. Paul Rogers comes AN ALL-STAR LINEUP! Man-sized hunks of life knowledge, core values and power stances combine to help you harness the ancient energies that will allow you to move forward and upward in all aspects of your inner and outer self. Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day - give a man this record and he will chow down on the best of everything for the rest of his life, Creosote-style. As Confucius said: "All you have to do is tap it" released June 10, 2007 Functions of the family applied in 800 steps by Dr. Paul Rogers. Dictated to high-fidelity 8 track tape from a greasy plastic desk in Los Angeles, 1976. Bass guitar on #3 played by Michael Bacon. Michael Bacon appears courtesy of Shunt Head Records. This is Buckhorn Records number CAPN016. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Pink Space - Pussy Party Starter (3:00) 02. Pink Space - Pussies Of Tha Republic (1:00) 03. Pink Space - If You're Horny And You Know It (0:32) 04. Pink Space - Hair In A G-String (1:36) 05. Pink Space - Let It Be (Her First Time) (2:54) 06. Pink Space - Prophylactic Beats (5:00) From this moment on, you can call Pink Space the Fourteen Minute Man, because on this EP that's all it takes to get a party started, then empty the room by offending everyone with the foulest musical flatulence imaginable. Anyone brave enough to linger until the end of this techno circle-jerk will be forcibly ejected from the building with several hard thrusts from the P-Space Power Drums. Don't worry, we're using protection. released September 15, 2007 Smudged over, stuck together and peeled off like a scab by Pink Space, sometime in the end of Our Lord Busey, 2007. Cover art by Jack Rabbit. This is Buckhorn Records number CAPN021. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Pink Space - Los Christmos (3:47) 02. Pink Space - Carolers Have No Fucking Courtesy (2:50) 03. Facebiscuit - Here Cumz Satan's Claws (4:08) 04. Facebiscuit - Uncle Busey's Smeggy Beets (2:47) TENTH ANNIVERSARY GLITTERSPRINKLED REISSUE! A decade ago, Pink Space issued a special holiday-themed split EP with Facebiscuit, a band that (admittedly) consisted of Mr. Space and MC Urine Gone (his neighbor at the time). Is there a discernible difference between the two? Probably, but on this EP, you just don't get enough time to find out. Somehow, this gem has been kept offline for most of the last ten years, but rest assured, the idiots in charge of these things down at Buckhorn HQ have been unceremoniously fired. Happy holidays, pricks! released December 24, 2009 W/P by Pink Space (#1 and #2, green piss on the door) and Facebiscuit (#3 and #4, red diarrhea all over the floor). Recorded somewhere in Columbia, SC, 2009. Cover designed by Jack Rabbit for Thee Goode Captaine. This is Milieu Music number MMC002. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - October Orange (21:11) The debut Bike EP, originally released on a limited edition cassette at Boiler Room Sound in 2010, and long since out of print. Improvised live with no overdubs and without the use of computers. released October 1, 2010 Bike is: DR880, DR660, ER1, T414, Quadraverb, RC20 and R450A. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010. This is Boiler Room Sound number BRS#03. Cover art by Jack Rabbit. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Leafman Beats (4:07) 02. Bike - Leafman Effect (4:20) 03. Bike - Leafman Dub (5:04) 04. Bike - Leafman Convex (7:27) released November 11, 2010 This is Milieu Music number MML074 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Flanger (5:11) 02. Bike - Block (4:12) 03. Bike - Spine (4:51) 04. Bike - Wheel Acid (5:04) 05. Bike - Dark Blue (6:15) 06. Bike - Screen (5:10) released May 7, 2011 This is Milieu Music number MML077. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - LK (4:36) 02. Bike - Rops (5:55) 03. Bike - Icebrg (5:21) 04. Bike - Rector (6:25) released June 15, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010-2011. This is Milieu Music number MML078. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Rot (3:57) 02. Bike - Gel (4:31) 03. Bike - Egret (1:47) 04. Bike - Lobe (3:48) 05. Bike - Creek (4:58) 06. Bike - Mono (19:12) "Mono/Rot is a double EP (each side of the tape is an entire EP), by Brian Grainger (Aka. Milieu, Coppice Halifax, and more) as Bike. The Rot EP is a series of 6 tracks presenting a more rhythmic style for Brian. In general they feel like Aphex/Tuss doing a take on minimal dub techno, but with a certain Grainger uniqueness. On the other side, (no a or b here) Mono EP is a single long track that takes the style of the individual tracks on Rot EP, and works it into one long master track. I have to say this work is top notch, very unique and a great amount of detail to listen to. Pro-dubbed cassette tapes. Limited to 50 copies." -Cicada Shell Tapes, 2011 released November 10, 2011 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, 2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Cicada Shell Tapes number 空蝉003. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Phi-Lips [Modular Scaper] (5:14) 02. Bike - Phi-Lips [ØØ36] (5:51) 03. Bike - Phi-Lips [E18.M Rig] (5:47) 04. Bike - Phi-Lips [IIØ Cont. 5] (7:02) A pre-EP single for the leading track on the forthcoming AMBIKE EP, containing four alternative mixes for Phi-Lips. Generated during four different sessions, on four different hardware rigs, across two years. Mutant, thick techno that zooms in on a microscopic level and blows out your senses. Appropriate for both live speaker configurations and more discreet home systems. released April 6, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded various dates, 2015-2016, at Botany Bay and White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. #1/2 built using DR-880 / 3x Moog modular feedback. #3 built using only 3x Moog modular feedback. #4 built using 2x Korg Volcas / Boss DR-110. This is Milieu Music number MML116. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Lure (9:10) 02. Bike - Lure [Dub] (7:20) 03. Bike - Lure [Syrup] (2:41) The newest Bike material in a long time, initially generated from processed sides of Underworld vinyl, then mixed/mulched/mutated using Bike's DAW rig. Heavy, rugged and raw, the way a good Bike EP should be. Better louder. released April 6, 2017 W/P by Brian Grainger. Initial live recordings assisted by John-Paul Kramer. Subsequent DAW processing and production by Brian, March 2017. Recorded top to bottom at White Pillar Workshop. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number MML117. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Phi-Lips (5:20) 02. Bike - Face Mawed (6:21) 03. Bike - Valles (5:51) 04. Bike - Ambike (10:50) Ambike was recorded at the Botany Bay studio as far back as 2011, almost immediately after moving in there and setting up my equipment. For a myriad of reasons, it is only just now seeing a release, six years later. Prefaced by the Phi-Lips EP, which collected four alternative versions of Ambike's opening cut, this EP is perhaps the most accessible and "musical" Bike has ever been. Created entirely live using only three drum machines, two digital synthesizers (one of them a prototype), a small mixer and a handful of FX units, it vacillates between thick dancefloor-ready bass rattlers and more experimental dub-tinged cuts that bring to mind moments from the first two Autechre LPs, among many other things. From here, it is my express intention to broaden Bike's release schedule and continue forward from this specific point of origin with the project, as I've expanded my studio since 2011 considerably and am curious what Bike might sound like, coaxed from the machines currently at hand... released November 21, 2017 W/P by Bike. Recorded live at Botany Bay, Summer 2011, using a Korg ER-1, Boss DR-880 & DR-660, prototype Synthrotek NAND, Roland SH-32, Ibanez Phase Modulator, Boss RV-3, Alesis Quadraverb and Mackie ProFX8 mixing board. Mastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar Workshop, November 2017. Cover design by Brian. This is Milieu Music number MMD038. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Vliss Ø1 (2:33) 02. Bike - Vliss Ø2 (6:38) 03. Bike - Vliss Ø3 (7:08) 04. Bike - Vliss Ø4 (4:21) While the last two legs of the FACKS TRACS series are yet to be issued, Bike delivers a mentalist set of heavy techno trax built using only the Korg ER-1 drum machine. The ER-1 is a unique machine, in that it only utilizes raw waveforms to generate all of the sound it produces - more like an analog machine, in fact - rather than the more common rompler approach of other units from that time, which relied on digital sample libraries to provide a voice. As such, the ER-1 has been a polarizing unit among musicians - some people hated it, while others (yours truly) hold it in very high esteem. It sounds like no other machine, with the exception of perhaps a modular system that could be designed to function the same way. Loved or reviled, Bike puts the Korg robot through its paces, pushing it to breaking points via dual-routed feedbacking and copious amounts of motion sequencing that seem to overwhelm the machine at times. Minimal and maximal! released June 9, 2018 W/P by Bike. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, Summer 2017. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and text by ABM&D. This is Recycled Plastics number BC67, and 67th in the Bedroom Compost subcatalog. Breakthroughs in kinetic engineering provided by Korg. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Occlipse (13:48) 02. Bike - Occlipse [Kap Drips] (20:19) Following the spastic ER-1 showcase that was the VLISS EP, Bike has once again returned to RP with two lengthy tracks of live hardware improvisation: OCCLIPSE. Produced using a Boss DR-660 drum machine in tandem with four Korg Volca machines, a Roland SH-32 polysynth and the enigmatic Grass C-TCM medical unit, OCCLIPSE is full to the brim with ring modulated rust and sub-bass gristle. Still, perhaps uncharacteristically for Bike, it also contains strains of melodic melancholy, however distant and bent they may be, that recall Brian's influences from Loess, Musik Aus Strom and Arovane's early DIN 12"s, among the usual hallmarks from things like late nineties Autechre and Gescom material. OCCLIPSE is also the first release in the Bedroom Compost catalog to be made available for sale digitally, instead of name-your-price. With rising costs of operation, shipping hikes and all manner of other expenses associated with maintaining an ever-growing pulsating brain of electronic music, we at RP feel it is a small change that should be rather inconsequential to most of our listeners, and will allow the label a bit more assurances in staying open, through dry seasons and financial hardship alike. From this moment forward, all digital releases in the Bedroom Compost series have gone from $0.00 to $1.11. We thank you for your support, kindness and understanding. For supporters of the physical format: OCCLIPSE may or may not include unlisted remixes as bonus tracks, produced by unnamed parties. released November 11, 2018 W/P by Bike. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on February 24, 2018. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC73, and 73rd in the Bedroom Compost catalog. Text and design by ABM&D. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Bike - Rangefinder 1/3 (26:59) The first of three new BIKE EPs in a triptych micro-series called RANGEFINDER. These tracks have been created live with very little post-processing, using a custom built modular synthesizer rig and a single Korg analog drum machine. RANGEFINDER sees/hears BIKE reapproaching the format of a serialized release schedule, in a post-Facks Tracks landscape that accumulates all of the textural mutations and technoid design work that came before, and translates it through new machines, new designs, new structures waiting to be imagined or built. Influenced by Autechre's live recordings as well as Pan Sonic, Omit and other perennial shadows cast, BIKE continues to explore the liminal space between MILIEU albums and the COPPICE HALIFAX DEEP EARTH series recordings. released October 2, 2020 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar, July 2020, using the R-EW modular motherbrain and a Korg Volca Beats drum machine, channeled through a Mackie ProFX8 mixer with a Moog ring modulator on the aux send. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Photography, text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML147A. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Flax Harmonade - Flax Harmonade (5:38) 02. Flax Harmonade - Perk [One] (1:57) 03. Flax Harmonade - Pulboll Rondok (4:38) 04. Flax Harmonade - Halma Arden Fox (3:24) 05. Flax Harmonade - Cube Sulk Pumicite (4:26) 06. Flax Harmonade - Los Vegus (2:20) 07. Flax Harmonade - Forehand Malax (5:29) 08. Flax Harmonade - Cyclon Eightysix Pedal (4:09) 09. Flax Harmonade - Nactral Pluem (5:51) 10. Flax Harmonade - Perk [Two] (2:06) 11. Flax Harmonade - Eisid (5:09) 12. Flax Harmonade - Half Named Vixen (1:50) 13. Flax Harmonade - Siptur Crusk (3:53) 14. Flax Harmonade - Non-Mox (1:06) 15. Flax Harmonade - Elektromantic (5:31) 16. Flax Harmonade - Eisid 2 (2:30) 17. Flax Harmonade - Seventyfour (8:55) 18. Flax Harmonade - [#18] (1:28) Flax Harmonade is a collaborative project between Brian Grainger and Lee Batchelor, themselves better known as Milieu and Scup Bucket. This album was their first and only release, recorded between 2004 and 2006, and released on a limited edition CD-R at U-Cover in Belgium in Autumn of 2006. Influenced by all manner of playful braindance and classic bedroom electronic music such as early Aphex, Global Goon, Ovuca, the Mike & Rich album and Cylob, among many others, Flax Harmonade is closer to the acidy melodic dance music of Milieu's Polypsilon or Academy Stripes, and was fairly out of character with his audience in 2006. As such, the FH album went somewhat under the radar of many fans, and even now we're betting that many of you have never even heard of it. So, retrieved from the dusty vaults, a weird, funky, catchy and exciting album is once again available via Recycled Plastics. Enjoy! released April 10, 2015 W/P by Brian Grainger and Lee Batchelor. Recorded in South Carolina and Maine, 2004-2006. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, 2006. This is Recycled Plastics number BC40, and 40th in the Bedroom Compost catalog. Special thanks to Koen for originally releasing our weird album, and kindly allowing us to reissue it with Recycled Plastics. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.3.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. TMA3 - Incandescent Powder Fog (22:28) 02. TMA3 - Granite Decade Of Golden Suicide (11:23) 03. TMA3 - Floating Palace At 50,000 Light Years (43:21) 04. TMA3 - Rolling Crests Of Whitened Dawn (15:01) 05. TMA3 - Smoke From The Mouths Of The Holy (21:48) 06. TMA3 - I Walk Through The Path With My Eyes (40:37) 07. TMA3 - Atrophic Memory Forests (26:03) 08. TMA3 - Sloan Great Wall (44:07) 09. TMA3 - Viewing Earth From A Translucent White Aircraft (9:11) During the Autumn of 2010, I brought to fruition a project I'd wanted to pursue for a long time. Something that was equal parts droning minimalism, science-fiction ethos and space music. The name TMA3 was adopted and through October/November/December of that year, I recorded and released a conceptual triad of three-track albums. Musically, TMA3 drifts through movements of droning chords more formlessly than a lot of my other dedicated drone work. The runtimes are immense, there are no basslines to anchor you to anything melodic, and there aren't a whole lot of sounds used in the first place. It is complete, abject isolationist music, cosmic opera stretched out across light years, hurling silently through the void. Even as large and long as these pieces are, I recall thinking at the time that if physical formats allowed it, even these would grow to greater sizes. So perhaps think of them as momentary windows that allow a view of the endless. released March 14, 2014 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at 114RKD, October-December 2010. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Milieu Music number AD13, and 13th in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Tom Rimshot - TR101 (16:56) 02. Tom Rimshot - TR102 (5:40) 03. Tom Rimshot - TR103 (6:18) 04. Tom Rimshot - TR104 (8:31) 05. Tom Rimshot - TR105 (13:31) Tom Rimshot is a new face at Recycled Plastics. He specializes in making dedicated tracks for both dancefloor and deep listening purposes, but when he's not turning the Yamaha QY70 into rhythmic quicksand, you can call him Brian. Tom Rimshot Plays The QY70 is the first of what will likely be several records exploring the tonal and melodic possibilities of drums, drums and more drums, each time with the rule of utilizing a single make and model of drum machine. On this debut volume, Mr. Rimshot advances studies with the Yamaha QY70, a stellar little sequencer built in 1997, when Mr. Rimshot was but a lad of 14 years. With its soft buttons and non-backlit LED screen, much like that of a Nintendo Game Boy, the QY70 can often be overlooked as a dinosaur of its time. However, we would beg to differ on that topic, citing the 70's robust library of "XG" sounds and a slew of powerful editing capabilities - making the cute little thing the electronic musician's equivalent of an acoustic guitar. Take it anywhere, it runs on batteries, and you can make entire albums with it, and only it. Tom Rimshot does not attempt to push this machine to whatever boundaries it exists within, rather, he prefers to let it shine by casting all his weight into the QY's rhythmic programming and playing in it like a swimming pool - sometimes with graceful backstrokes and other times with big cannonballs. Recommended for fans of Profan, Rephlex and Kompakt's Speicher Series. released November 18, 2016 W/P by T.Rimshot. Recorded Summer-Fall 2016 in South Carolina and Ohio. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC54, and 54th in the ongoing Bedroom Compost series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Tom Rimshot - TR201 (1:32) 02. Tom Rimshot - TR202 (6:32) 03. Tom Rimshot - TR203 (1:48) 04. Tom Rimshot - TR204 (11:15) 05. Tom Rimshot - TR205 (12:08) 06. Tom Rimshot - TR206 (2:39) 07. Tom Rimshot - TR207 (14:09) Tom Rimshot returns to the Bedroom Compost series with his Korg Volca Sample! Employing a unique strategy of playing nine memory bank patterns already present and programmed in the machine (after it was purchased used from another producer) but with a completely replaced file structure/sample library. This means that where the Volca may have triggered a clap before, it could be triggering a hi-hat or a bass kick now. Patterns are legible but do not necessarily make rhythmic "sense", providing the perfect setup for a session that goes everywhere from granular drone synthesis to minimal techno workouts, and enough off-kilter electro to recall classix like Gescom's This/That and Skull Snap 12"s, as well as the early Pentax recordings by Reinhard Voigt at Profan. For the heads, the limited edition CD-R contains two additional trax, TR208 (which goes completely off the rails into so much granular motion sequencing madness that you might think you're listening to Richard Chartier) and TR209, which lands the bird gracefully with a funky hip-hop bounce built with samples from Bob Ross on The Joy Of Painting. Tom Rimshot will return...with the Blue Beat! released July 17, 2019 W/P by T.Rimshot. Recorded live Summer 2019 in Ohio using a Korg Volca Sample machine and a Zoom H1 digital recorder. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. This is Recycled Plastics number BC79, and 79th in the Bedroom Compost series. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Troth - Acorn Tone Peek (4:38) 02. Troth - Cetane Worktop (5:51) 03. Troth - Techno Raker Pete (5:54) 04. Troth - Kurona Perfecto (5:09) Troth arrives at Recycled Plastics with the first of two EPs, Combs Hydros. As you might guess from the sound of the tracks, Troth is none other than Brian Grainger of Milieu/Coppice Halifax. Already one for several monikers and projects, Troth is the representation of Brian's experiments with combining drum machines, a mixer and FX devices with acoustic instruments such as thumb piano, acoustic guitar, metal bowls, bells, recorder and harmonica, among other sampled objects and appliances. The result on Combs Hydros is a very playful melodic braindance effort, although the following EP continues to mutate the sound even further. That said, this EP could be seen as the most traditional Troth will ever sound, providing a point of origin for what will likely be a colorful and confusing ride. Issued on a limited edition of 50 copies in soft plastic cases with orange and red decals. released January 24, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Recorded at 114RKD and Botany Bay, 2010-2011. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Troth - Carn Keto (6:22) 02. Troth - Tack Trow (4:25) 03. Troth - Etch Krater (3:10) 04. Troth - Vatik Cerf (2:42) 05. Troth - Vent Screak (4:50) 06. Troth - Stik Arcx (3:22) The sophomore release as Troth at Recycled Plastics is Abmho Penthousing. As previously mentioned when Combs Hydros came out, Troth is a project centered around using acoustic instruments and acoustic room environments in tandem with analog tape and various types of electronic devices. TR1 was the most conventional sounding example, so it was released first. Now, TR2 begins to feel out more of the exploratory sounds Troth was meant for. The thumb pianos, plucked strings, bells and metal bowls are all still present, but the tracks themselves are far more organic and fractured things. Acoustic room reverbs and all manner of textural noise mingle around with drum machines gone spastic/plastic, while delays, flangers and modulators crumple up the melodies like trashed pieces of notebook paper. Abmho Penthousing is a playful EP that sits perfectly within the Recycled Plastics ethos. released November 25, 2012 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay, 2011-2012. This is Recycled Plastics number TR2. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Extra - Draw / Orb (53:54) The humming of summer lawns. Fluttering and strumming from another green world… exactly where “Draw / Orb” takes us – somewhere not quite on this planet, albeit reminiscent of. Sonics are flown in from a place somewhat alien to what we know. We are denizens of a new elsewhere – familiar, yet undiscovered. The birds are twittering, a breeze blows, but the ground is buzzing – there is an electricity in the atmosphere here too. It eventually becomes apparent that the sky is also an aviary for aviation, not just avifauna. Luscious grasses are overwhelmed by glistening chrome whilst the stratosphere seems to draw further away. Have we become subterraneans in this foreign land? Extra are Brian Grainger and Howard Stelzer, two stalwarts of ambient, experimental and abstract music. With more than four decades’ worth of experience in recording long-form, slow electronic music between them, their new collaborative venture is a true meeting of minds. GOTO is proud to release “Draw / Orb”, the first fruit of this union, taking us through a rich tapestry of field recordings, gentle acoustics and synthetic atmospheres. When you just can’t get enough – Extra. released March 31, 2023 Brian Grainger and Howard Stelzer are Extra. Composed/recorded at White Pillar (OH) and the Sun Room (MA), Summer 2022. Tapes, speakers, microphones, synthesizers, guitars, etc. Mastered by the Analog Botanist. Photography by Jamie Neale. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Extra - Hard/Rainbow (35:59) Howard Stelzer and Brian Grainger are Extra. 'Hard/Rainbow,' Extra's second album, was made manifest in the Summer of '22. The band's debut release was 'Draw/Orb' issued at Finlay Shakespeare's GOTO imprint in England, and by the time it was published in March of '23, a flurry of several different Extra albums already surrounded it. With all of those albums currently awaiting publication at various different labels around the globe, the band felt it pertinent to establish a Bandcamp page for themselves, to provide a platform for self-released music and limited physical editions. With the release of 'Hard/Rainbow' the Extra imprint has arrived, with this and all subsequent self-released works being distributed by the non-label 'and so on.' 'Hard/Rainbow' is the band's sophomore effort, and follows directly the path initiated by 'Draw/Orb' into ever stranger landscapes of surrealist assemblage and synthesized pointillism, a recording made in the long traditions of headphone music and deep listening. Please enjoy, and so on. released August 4, 2023 W/P by Extra. Recorded in Massachusetts and Ohio, 2022-2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Copy, design and print manufacture by ABM&D. This is and so on number &SO1. © + (P) and so on 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Extra - Spiral/Athletics (50:20) Howard Stelzer and Brian Grainger are Extra. 'Spiral/Athletics,' Extra's third album, was made manifest in 2022-2023. It continues to tangentially expand on the band's previous published work, with a colorful and dense array of textural cassette sound, field recordings, drone music and modular synthesis - headphones are suggested. It is available here for digital purchase, and available exclusively from Love Earth Music as a physical factory-pressed CD edition with a gatefold, with wonderful design and layout work by Joe Bastardo. www.loveearthmusic.com The band's debut release was 'Draw/Orb' issued at Finlay Shakespeare's GOTO imprint in England, as a digital-only release: gotorecords.bandcamp.com/album/draw-orb 'Hard/Rainbow' is the band's second album, available exclusively from Extra's vanity label 'and so on' as a digital release and a limited edition CD-R - textslashtext.bandcamp.com/album/hard-rainbow-2 Please enjoy, and so on. released September 1, 2023 W/P by Extra. Recorded in Massachusetts and Ohio, 2022-2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Copy by ABM&D. Design by Joe Bastardo. Physical pressing by Love Earth Music. This is and so on number &SO2. Extra would like to thank Steve Davis and Joe Bastardo for their gracious support of the band. © + (P) and so on 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Telekomm - Input Void (1:07:29) W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, October 2018, using various samplers including the Akai S2800, Boss RC-20 and Korg ES-1 in conjunction with the North American dial tone for pre-cellular telephones. Mastered by The Analog Botanist, 2022. released January 5, 2023 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. NYZ - M40P::M46tORG_blym_zero (42:13) 02. LSZ - Autofugue Via Four Operators & Multitrack Tape (25:55) For the occasion of Juneteenth, now well on its way to becoming rightfully declared a national holiday in the US, David Burraston and Brian Grainger unite for their third charity split, the accessibly-titled FM40P::M46tORG_blym_zero / Autofugue Via Four Operators & Multitrack Tape. The split collects two surrealistic ambient pieces primarily created using the Yamaha TX81Z four-operator FM synthesizer, with the first being taken from the same session that yielded NYZ's FM40P album from earlier in the year, and the second being Brian's second-ever publicly issued recording under his recently unveiled Limestone Ziggurat moniker. It is the sincere hope of the two sound recordists that this music exists as a balm of comfort for escaping from a world that is far too miserable for far too many people. Bandcamp themselves are donating 100% of their revenue shares on Juneteenth to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and we're backing this effort by donating all money generated from this split to the same organization. released June 18, 2021 #1 W/P by David Burraston. Generated on 1-3 Jan 2021 at Noyzelab using Yamaha V50, Yamaha TX81Z and MANIAC. #2 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, January 2021, using Yamaha TX81Z, Alesis Quadraverb, Vesta Fire MR-10B, Peavey FX2 and the R-EW Audioholistics generative system & modular processing path. #1 mastered by Noyzelab / #2 mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. Noyzelab and the Noyzelab logo appear courtesy of Noyzelab. © + (P) Noyzelab & Psoma Psi Phi 2021 / All lights observed. This is Psoma Psi Phi number ØΨΦXXXIX. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Limestone Ziggurat - A Cold Finger Traced Across an Empty Glass (55:04) Source material: Sinewaves Image: Joachim Patinir / Reprocessed by ABM&D released December 4, 2021 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Limestone Ziggurat - Litho (7.83-Z¹) (32:01) 02. Limestone Ziggurat - Litho (7.83-Z²) (42:45) 03. Limestone Ziggurat - Litho (7.83-Z³) (11:57) released December 6, 2021 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2021. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design and layout by ABM&D. Prose by Brian. This is Milieu Music number LITHO-Z. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2021. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Limestone Ziggurat - Aeolian Metals (57:29) Aeolian Metals was the first Machine Tribe release from Limestone Ziggurat, a long-form ambient project from Brian Grainger (Milieu, Coppice Halifax, et. al.). Nearly an hour's worth of soothing, contemplative drone preserved on C60. released July 30, 2022 all material by Limestone Ziggurat ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Limestone Ziggurat - The Iron Shipwreck Consumed by Martian Quicksand (55:36) released August 27, 2022 all material by limestone ziggurat ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. Limestone Ziggurat - Cross (1:05:44) Following an extended silence after a string of releases in 2022, it’s a delight to announce Limestone Ziggurat’s return to Machine Tribe. Cross, the latest installment from ambient master Brian Grainger (Milieu, Coppice Halifax, et. al.), paints another longform sonic painting in grey and black, full of hollow spaces and slowly evolving drones. The entire piece is covered in a subtle dust of static, grinding slowly down before disappearing, only to gradually reappear again, like a fading sinus rhythm… released May 27, 2023 ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 ![]() 01. LSZ - The Blistering Swamp (15:41) 02. LSZ - Slate Receptive (15:59) 03. LSZ - Overlaid and Abandoned (25:52) 'Adamantinarx' consists of three very early sessions drafted during the initial year of gestation for what would solidify into LSZ. These recordings are raw and prototypical, stolen away from their damnation in the infernal archives at the Pillar. They are made into an offering here, to aid your passage on one of the darkest nights of the year. released October 31, 2023 W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded 2021-2022 at White Pillar Workshop, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D, using visual sampling of 'Resistance' by Frantisek Kupka. This is Milieu Music number GG-23/304. © + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved. ![]() ----------------------- foobar2000 1.2.5 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1 Для того, чтобы скачать .torrent Вам необходимо зарегистрироваться |
DMMANIAC |
06.04.2019 Обновление!
Brian Grainger
2019 Metal Edict (Web, Psøma Psi Phi, ØΨΦX) 2019 Sections Of A Large Beast's Skeleton Protrude From The Leafy Floor Of The Ravine (Web, Milieu Music, WD25) 2019 We Find Truth In The Bliss Of Sleep (Web, Milieu Music, WD27) Collaborations 2018 Peter Wright & Brian Grainger - Peint Arbre (Web, Psøma Psi Phi, ØΨΦVII) 2019 Duenn & Brian Grainger - Presence (Version IIB) (Web, Opal Tapes, NONUMBER002) Coppice Halifax 2018 Filtered Artifacts (Web, Milieu Music, ABX76) 2018 Etchings in Rust (Web, Milieu Music, ABX77) 2019 Winterthaw (Web, Milieu Music, ABX92) 2019 111 (Web, Milieu Music, ABX93) 2019 Filtered Artifacts II (Web, Milieu Music, ABX94) 2019 Mensogema (Web, Milieu Music, EARTH 38) 2019 Disradii (Web, Milieu Music, EARTH 39) Milieu 2015 Sun White Sun (Expanded Reissue) (Web, Milieu Music, AD3) 2016 Bent Appleleaves (Web, Milieu Music, AD21B) 2016 Live At Birch Park (Web, Milieu Music, AD28B) 2016 Metraliminaloxone (Web, Milieu Music, MML107) 2017 Aboir [Accumulation States] (Web, Milieu Music, MML121) 2018 Bismuth Cosmolog (Web, Recycled Plastics, COSM01) 2018 Bismuth Cosmolog 2 (Web, Recycled Plastics, COSM02) 2018 Muzak For Electronic Wind & Filtered Bell (Web, Milieu Music, MMD046) 2018 Saturday Night Lazer (Web, Milieu Music, HW004) 2018 Seventeen Eighteen Argentine (Web, Milieu Music, HW005) 2018 Coolbreeze Refreshment Time (Web, Milieu Music, HW007) 2018 Frozen Rain Patchwork (Web, Milieu Music, HW008) 2018 Houseworks [Phases I-VIII] (Web, Milieu Music, HWB01) 2018 Summer Evaporated (Web, Psøma Psi Phi, ØΨΦVI.II) 2019 Daughter (Web, Illuminated Paths, IP-364) 2019 Lenticular Carpet Surfboard (Web, Recycled Plastics, RP10) |
beat77 |
Спасибо! Проект Milieu - отличный BoC Sound.
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DMMANIAC |
12.05.2017 Обновление!
ДОбавлено 19 релизов Milieu. Отдельная благодарность beat77 ![]() 2005 Mint Slape Session (Web, Milieu Music, MML001)
2005 Three Tone Quintet (Web, Milieu Music, MMDR007) 2006 Bent Appletrees (Web, Decisive Sound, dsound05) 2006 Dialer (Web, Milieu Music, MMDR011) 2006 Milieu + ENV(itre) - The Tandem Series 5 (Web, Boltfish Recordings, BOLT032) 2007 A Dusty Box Of Old Memories (Web, Rope Swing Cities, RSC020) 2007 Echo Spectrum (Milieu Music, MML004) 2007 Remodelled (Web, Boltfish Recordings, BOLT039) 2007 Sophiesongs (Web, Milieu Music, MMDR002) 2008 Calico Fountain Melange (Web, Milieu Music, MML027) 2008 Cropduster (Milieu Music, MML013) 2008 Jacket Holograph (Web, Milieu Music, MML018) 2008 Paperbacks (Web, Milieu Music, MML028) 2009 Brittle Paper Cathedrals (Web, Milieu Music, MMD005) 2009 Dialogue Five (Web, Milieu Music, MML057) 2009 Translucent Forestation (Web, Milieu Music, MML065) 2011 Detuned Summer Yearbook - Singles & Remixes, 2005-2010 (Web, Milieu Music, MML076) 2017 Sandgate (Web, Milieu Music, MML118) 2017 Soda Can Acid (Web, Milieu Music, MML119) |
DMMANIAC |
15.12.2018 Глобальное обновление и изменение в раздаче!
В раздачу целиком включены релизы Coppice Halifax (98 релизов) из соседней раздачи. Также добавлено 55 релизов. Для тех кто качал обе раздачи - в корневой папке создайте папку Coppice Halifax и переместите туда все релизы. |
DMMANIAC |
27.12.2018 Обновление!
Добавлено два релиза Coppice Halifax 2018-11-16 Electric Fields (Web, Milieu Music, ABX88) 2018-12-12 Green Shade (Web, Milieu Music, MMC011B) Скачайте торрент-файл заново. |
DMMANIAC |
04.01.2019 Обновление!
Добавлено 6 релизов Coppice Halifax 2018-11-16 Riverblue (Web, Milieu Music, ABX90A) 2018-11-21 Solus 3 (Web, Milieu Music, MML131) 2018-11-21 333/SOL (Web, Milieu Music, MML132) 2018-11-21 Tetrachromatisol (Web, Milieu Music, ABX90) 2018-12-12 Green Shape III (Web, Milieu Music, MMC011A) 2018-12-12 GS-3A3X (Web, Milieu Music, MMC011C) Скачайте торрент-файл заново. |
sfman |
Я ищу
Songs We Found In The Sand [Expanded & Remastered] Colortone [Expanded Reissue] Pillowtone Poems Sun White Sun [Expanded Reissue] |
DMMANIAC |
sfman, у меня нет таких релизов, как и великого множества других.. обновлю скоро может..
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DMMANIAC |
06.04.2019 Обновление!
Brian Grainger
2019 Metal Edict (Web, Psøma Psi Phi, ØΨΦX) 2019 Sections Of A Large Beast's Skeleton Protrude From The Leafy Floor Of The Ravine (Web, Milieu Music, WD25) 2019 We Find Truth In The Bliss Of Sleep (Web, Milieu Music, WD27) Collaborations 2018 Peter Wright & Brian Grainger - Peint Arbre (Web, Psøma Psi Phi, ØΨΦVII) 2019 Duenn & Brian Grainger - Presence (Version IIB) (Web, Opal Tapes, NONUMBER002) Coppice Halifax 2018 Filtered Artifacts (Web, Milieu Music, ABX76) 2018 Etchings in Rust (Web, Milieu Music, ABX77) 2019 Winterthaw (Web, Milieu Music, ABX92) 2019 111 (Web, Milieu Music, ABX93) 2019 Filtered Artifacts II (Web, Milieu Music, ABX94) 2019 Mensogema (Web, Milieu Music, EARTH 38) 2019 Disradii (Web, Milieu Music, EARTH 39) Milieu 2015 Sun White Sun (Expanded Reissue) (Web, Milieu Music, AD3) 2016 Bent Appleleaves (Web, Milieu Music, AD21B) 2016 Live At Birch Park (Web, Milieu Music, AD28B) 2016 Metraliminaloxone (Web, Milieu Music, MML107) 2017 Aboir [Accumulation States] (Web, Milieu Music, MML121) 2018 Bismuth Cosmolog (Web, Recycled Plastics, COSM01) 2018 Bismuth Cosmolog 2 (Web, Recycled Plastics, COSM02) 2018 Muzak For Electronic Wind & Filtered Bell (Web, Milieu Music, MMD046) 2018 Saturday Night Lazer (Web, Milieu Music, HW004) 2018 Seventeen Eighteen Argentine (Web, Milieu Music, HW005) 2018 Coolbreeze Refreshment Time (Web, Milieu Music, HW007) 2018 Frozen Rain Patchwork (Web, Milieu Music, HW008) 2018 Houseworks [Phases I-VIII] (Web, Milieu Music, HWB01) 2018 Summer Evaporated (Web, Psøma Psi Phi, ØΨΦVI.II) 2019 Daughter (Web, Illuminated Paths, IP-364) 2019 Lenticular Carpet Surfboard (Web, Recycled Plastics, RP10) |
Survivor |
Большое спасибо, много лет собираю альбомы Milieu, есть несколько ранних только в мп3 но вижу что были позже переизданы, отлично ^_^
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Survivor |
Вышел на бэндкэмпе Swaying Palms в расширенной версии, 33 трека
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DMMANIAC |
Survivor, на бендкемпе каждый день у него что то выходит
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qila |
что-то нет раздающих ((((
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DMMANIAC |
22.10.2019 Обновление!
Добавлены: Brian Grainger 2008 Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto - Brian Grainger & Shinobu Nemoto (Milieu Music, MML047) 2017 Gardensoil (Web, Milieu Music, MML123) 2018 An Empty Sea (Web, Milieu Music, MML126) 2019 Winterspheres (Web, Milieu Music, AD39) Coppice Halifax 2016-05-31 Alkemiisto (Web, Milieu Music, [RIPETIS 2]) 2018-11-19 Alkemiisto III (Web, Milieu Music, [RIPETIS 7]) 2019-02-22 Vaporous Post (Web, Milieu Music, ASH0003) 2019-05-31 Linio (Web, DEEP EARTH, [EARTH 41]) 2019-09-28 Slow Earth Ritual (Web, Milieu Music, ABX100) Milieu 2019 Sunbather's Pharmacopeia Volume 1 (Web, Touched - Music For Macmillan Cancer Support, TMMM01) Скачайте торрент-файл заново. |
cyberunknown |
Встаньте, пожалуйста, на раздачу. Два месяца уже не могу докачать один из релизов.
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amok_san |
Большое спасибо!
У вас есть Coppice Halifax - Pharmlands [Complete Sessions] ? |
DMMANIAC |
amok_san, нет
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Survivor |
Обновления не планируются? Вышли такие интересные вещи как statuettes part two и расширенное переиздание stray trains...
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DMMANIAC |
Survivor, кое что есть для обновления, насчет этих релизов - не уверен, я их сам не покупаю
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DMMANIAC |
29.09.2020 Обновление!
Добавлено: Brian Grainger 2016 Sun Dazed (Web, Milieu Music, MMLP16) Coppice Halifax 2012-06-20 Cmx III (Web, Milieu Music, MML086) 2013-08-18 Cmx IV (Web, Milieu Music, MML092) 2013-10-13 Cmx V (Web, Milieu Music, MML093) 2015-10-07 Cmx VIII (Web, Milieu Music, MML105) 2016-03-08 Provaĵo (Web, Milieu Music, MMLP14) 2016-03-09 Cmx IX (Web, Milieu Music, MML108) 2016-12-12 Cmx X [Remix Appendix] (Web, Milieu Music, MML115) 2017-01-10 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0001] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF1) 2017-02-04 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0002] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF2) 2017-03-04 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0003] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF3) 2017-04-06 Cmx XI (Web, Milieu Music, MML120) 2017-04-10 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0004] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF4) 2017-05-17 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0005] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF5) 2017-06-13 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0006] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF6) 2017-07-07 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0007] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF7) 2017-08-08 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0008] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF8) 2017-09-11 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0009] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF9) 2017-10-20 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0010] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF10) 2017-11-21 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0011] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF11) 2017-12-12 Blue Vale Snowdream (Web, Milieu Music, MMC007) 2017-12-13 Green Shape II (Web, Milieu Music, MMC008) 2017-12-24 Valley Filter [Issue No. 0012] (Web, Milieu Music, MMVF12) 2018-01-23 Phyllex 4 [Greenspace] (Web, Milieu Music, ABX75D) 2018-01-23 Phyllex 5 [Greensmoke] (Web, Milieu Music, ABX75E) 2018-01-24 Phyllex 1 [Greenpaint] (Web, Milieu Music, ABX75A) 2018-01-24 Phyllex 2 [Greenfilter] (Web, Milieu Music, ABX75B) 2018-01-24 Phyllex 3 [Greencarpet] (Web, Milieu Music, ABX75C) 2018-03-27 Violet Cultivars: Remixes for Orson Throb (Recycled Plastics, BC64B) 2018-05-17 Cmx XII (Web, Milieu Music, MML125) 2018-11-16 Cyan Evaporant (Web, Milieu Music, ABX89) 2019-01-26 Rekursia (Web, Milieu Music, EARTH 37) 2019-09-30 Forest Satellite & Coppice Halifax - Blue Lion (Web, Moody Drones, MD14) 2019-12-11 Forgesita (Web, Milieu Music, EARTH 48) 2019-12-20 Auburn Botany (Web, Milieu Music, MMLP25) 2020-01-30 Winterhearth Monolith (Web, Milieu Music, ABX96) Milieu 2010 Île du Levant (Web, Milieu Music, none) 2017 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0001] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS001) 2017 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0002] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS002) 2017 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0003] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS003) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0004] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS004) 2018 Androphotic Nurse Mask (Web, Milieu Music, HW001) 2018 Sine Wand Honeydowsing (Web, Milieu Music, HW002) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0005] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS005) 2018 Bloody Knuckles Betaphase (Web, Milieu Music, HW003) 2018 Living In The Shadow Of A Recursive Bell Whose Chime Echoed The Dawn Of Consciousness (Web, Milieu Music, COMMISSION 5) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0006] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS006) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0007] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS007) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0008] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS008) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0009] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS009) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0010] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS010) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0011] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS011) 2018 Sunwarmed Sides [Issue No. 0012] (Web, Milieu Music, MMSS012) 2019 Swaying Palms [Expanded & Remastered] (Web, Milieu Music, AD42) 2019 Germs 86 (Web, Milieu Music, MML137) 2019 Daughter [The Complete Sessions] (Web, Milieu Music, AD44) 2019 Four Passages For Faun, Tin Bell & Lyre (Web, Milieu Music, MMD048) 2019 The Synthesist's Alphorn Retreat (Web, Milieu Music, MML139) 2019 Transposition Gradients In Cyan & Burnt Orange (Web, Milieu Music, MMD050) 2019 Shallow Earth [Party Mix] (Web, Milieu Music, MMDL09) 2019 Anthemoessa (Web, Milieu Music, MML140) 2019 Passage Five (Web, Milieu Music, MML141) 2019 Ambisthmus (Web, Milieu Music, MMD051) 2019 Phosphene Weather [10th Anniversary Expanded Reissue] (Web, Milieu Music, AD50) 2020 The Traveler's Offworld Retreat (Web, Milieu Music, MML145) 2020 Housewares (Web, Recycled Plastics, RP14) 2020 Burnt Atlas I (Web, Milieu Music, AVB1) 2020 Burnt Atlas II (Web, Milieu Music, AVB2) 2020 Amethyst Extracts (Web, Milieu Music, PATHOS 1) 2020 Reflective Surface Cleaner (Web, Milieu Music, AVB3) 2020 Flawless Amethyst (Web, Milieu Music, AVB4) 2020 Greenest Grass Whitest Clouds (Web, Milieu Music, AVB5) 2020 Greenest Grass Whitest Clouds II (Web, Milieu Music, AVB6) 2020 Greenest Grass Whitest Clouds III (Web, Milieu Music, AVB7) 2020 Sinewaves In Soft Focus (Web, Milieu Music, MML146) 2020 Empty Space In Red, Yellow & Blue (Web, Milieu Music, AVB8) 2020 Inverse Grey I (Web, Milieu Music, PATHOS 2) 2020 Empty Space II (Web, Milieu Music, AVB9) 2020 Inverse Grey II (Web, Milieu Music, PATHOS 3) 2020 Empty Space III (Web, Milieu Music, AVB10) 2020 Second Coat (Web, Milieu Music, AVB11) 2020 Second Coat II (Web, Milieu Music, AVB12) 2020 Mother Of Cosmos (Web, Milieu Music, PATHOS 4) Bike 2010 October Orange (Web, Boiler Room Sound, BRS#03) 2010 Leafman Effect (Web, Milieu Music, MML074) 2011 Flanger (Web, Milieu Music, MML077) 2011 Rector (Web, Milieu Music, MML078) 2011 Mono / Rot (Cicada Shell Tapes, 空蝉003) 2017 Phi-Lips (Web, Milieu Music, MML116) 2017 Lure (Web, Milieu Music, MML117) 2017 Ambike (Web, Milieu Music, MMD038) 2018 Vliss (Web, Recycled Plastics, BC67) 2018 Occlipse (Web, Recycled Plastics, BC73) AQV 2019 Blue Machine (Web, Recycled Plastics, BC77) VCV 2011 VCV & Shinobu Nemoto - Jovian Clouds (Web, Install, INSTLP02) Vhom 2008 Borley Rectory (Web, Milieu Music, MML044) Flax Harmonade 2015 Flax Harmonade (Web, Recycled Plastics, BC40) TMA3 2014 Autogenesis / Singularity / Recursion (Web, Milieu Music, AD13) Tom Rimshot 2016 Tom Rimshot Plays The QY70 (Web, Recycled Plastics, BC54) 2019 Tom Rimshot Plays The Sample (Web, Recycled Plastics, BC79) Troth 2012 Combs Hydros (Web, Recycled Plastics, TR1) 2012 Abmho Penthousing (Web, Recycled Plastics, TR2) Scant Orbit 2005 Conversations (Web, Metanoia Media, META006) Pink Space 2009 Pink Space & Facebiscuit - Frootkake & Smegnogg (Web, Milieu Music, MMC002) Скачайте торрент-файл заново. Благодарность и Уважение: alexkozlov2012 ![]() |
alexkozlov2012 |
вот это, я понимаю, обновление !
спасибо ! |
DMMANIAC |
alexkozlov2012, Тебе спасибо за релизы
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HASYAMASIA |
DMMANIAC,
Низкий поклон Вам обоим !!) СПАСИБО !!!! |
Survivor |
Если надо есть:
Statuettes, Part Two Stray Trains [Expanding & Remastered] |
newteammel |
ОДНАКО!!! ПРОДУКТИВНО.... КАКИЕ У НЕГО ЛУЧШИЕ РАБОТЫ НА ВАШ СКРОМНЫЙ ВЗГЛЯД... НА ЧТО СТОИТ ОБРАТИТЬ ВНИМАНИЕ ИЗ ВСЕГО ELECTRONNOGO МНОГООБРАЗИЯ BRIAN'А GRAINGER'А? ПРОСВЕТИТЕ ПОЖАЛУСТА...
СПАСИБО DMMANIAC ЗА ВАШУ НЕ МЕНЕЕ ПРОДУКТИВНУЮ РАБОТУ.... |
DMMANIAC |
newteammel, я не советчик, большинство его работ меня не трогают, более близкие мне работы - под именем Milieu
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DMMANIAC |
24.01.2024 Огромное обновление раздачи!
Добавлено 232 релиза, подробно писать не буду - смотрите сами ![]() |
alexkozlov2012 |
24.01.2024 Огромное обновление раздачи!
Добавлено 232 релиза, подробно писать не буду - смотрите сами ![]() спасибо! |
Быстрый ответ |
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Вы должны войти в систему, прежде чем совершить данное действие. |