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Living In The Shadow Of A Recursive Bell Whose Chime Echoed The Dawn Of Consciousness

by Milieu

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $20 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 242 Milieu releases available on Bandcamp and save 90%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Across the Surface of the Water, Mural Hex, Divergent Paths [Volume Five], Focussed Light, Aeolian Yellow, Snow Maps, Snow Maps, Winter Displacement, and 234 more. , and , .

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      $247 USD or more (90% OFF)

     

  • Limited Edition 8xCD-R Box Set
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Packaged in a sturdy black VHS-style case with a hand-cut chipboard wraparound insert, 4x4" glossy photo cover panel and custom clear text decal work, containing eight in-house duplicated/printed white 5" recordable discs and eight 4x6" glossy photographic prints. Unlike the digital version, each disc's section of the larger work features discrete fades, to ease you in and out of the individual playback. For seamless eight-hour playback, the digital version is suggested.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Living In The Shadow Of A Recursive Bell Whose Chime Echoed The Dawn Of Consciousness via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Ultra-Limited Deluxe Edition 8xCD-R Box Set + Ashcan Art Assemblage + Home Installation DVD-R
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Contains the "standard" edition of the 8xCD-R box set as indicated in the previous version (including the eight glossy 4x6" photographic prints), augmented with one of eight hand-numbered/signed 5x8" Ashcan art assemblages on ultra-thick painter's matboard - a series of pieces bearing the name "Four Identical Bells." Also includes a special data DVD-R containing a high-resolution two-hour installation video (which uses a completely exclusive composite mix of the eight-hour work alongside treated/processed video feedback) and the twelve isolated source recordings (in 256 KBPS MP3 format) used to create the piece, allowing the listener to arrange and mix their own variations/combinations of the work. These isolated recordings total an additional 14+ hours of audio alone, and each can be enjoyed as a solo recording as well.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Living In The Shadow Of A Recursive Bell Whose Chime Echoed The Dawn Of Consciousness via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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about

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.

credits

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.

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about

Milieu Dayton, Ohio

Psychedelic electronic music, sun-warmed analog ambient and sci-fi braindance, for cats, aliens and epicureans alike.

I also release music as Coppice Halifax: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com

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