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Swaying Palms [Expanded & Remastered]

by Milieu

supported by
Elvendandelion
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Elvendandelion Very tropical and unique, has sounds of black moth, casino
Andrew J
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Andrew J Classic Milieu upbeat downtempo Favorite track: Zeal Palace.
Andrew Broughton
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Andrew Broughton The best Milieu release IMHO. With this expanded version you get 33 sun blissed warm versions of paradise. The basslines are some of the best by Mr G. A quality release Favorite track: Coastline.
Jona Woo
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Jona Woo Swaying Palms was the first milieu album that I owned, and seeing it get the expanded and remastered treatment is quite the big deal for me. Let me get straight to the point, this album gets you a one way ticket into a summer filled with sad and rad visions. Get your sunglasses ready and find yourself a palm tree to lean on to look as cool as humanly possible, while you listen to this album of course. Favorite track: Azurine Droned.
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  • Limited Edition 2xCD-R Expanded Reissue
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Assembled by hand, one copy at a time, in the White Pillar Workshop. Two white 5" recordable discs, duplicated and printed via an Imation D20, held inside a 100% recycled cardboard dual-digipack jacket, with two 4x5" glossy photographic print inserts underneath the discs, a 3x3" matte cover sticker printed in Atlanta GA by David Tagg and custom text sticker work on the back cover and inner gatefold.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Swaying Palms [Expanded & Remastered] via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • Special 10th Anniversary Edition 3xCD-R Expanded Reissue Set
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    An extra-special and ultra-limited Anniversary Edition of the Swaying Palms reissue, including the standard 2xCD-R remastered set, and also Palms Plus, a third disc containing ten more tracks (55:57) from the Swaying Palms sessions: The first take of the track "Swaying Palms", the Yearbook Version of Autumn Fog Lifts and eight commissioned remixes that were produced alongside the album. Palms Plus is available only in this configuration, and does not come with a digital download. Palms Plus is packaged in a die-cut paperboard jacket with a 4x5" glossy photographic print insert and custom text sticker work on the back cover, and ships inside a clear plastic cast polypropylene sleeve with a flap, to keep your sonic artifact dust and moisture free. This Anniversary Edition set also comes optionally signed by the artist. Strictly limited to 20 copies!

    Includes unlimited streaming of Swaying Palms [Expanded & Remastered] via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
Sadleaves 04:29
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Night Divers 05:39
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Soft Island 05:03
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Coastline 04:55
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Blue Drugs 04:13
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Zeal Palace 03:48
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Sad Summer 05:31
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Neon Ambler 04:22
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Lazy Shade 04:24
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Missive 06:46
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Waverider 05:30
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Bluish Loop 01:00
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CRPTA Bus 05:26
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Smokey Beard 02:22
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Purple Palms 04:33
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Echo Beach 03:30
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Hazy Shade 03:33
33.

about

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.

credits

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.

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 / Brian C / 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

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: malfokusita.bandcamp.com

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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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