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.