The Grove of Lustral Waters

by Milieu

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David Prescott This is a must-have! Please read the description of how it was made. The piece is like 70 minutes of staring at the night sky...

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The Grove of Lustral Waters 01:10:50

about

The Grove of Lustral Waters was a piece of music that happened almost entirely by accident, and like many such instances in my varied catalog, it becomes progressively more difficult to define or even explain how music this evocative can simply pour out of emotionless machines that I myself interact with at a minimum. After tuning several oscillators in two different Buchla modules (258t and 281t, for the heads who are curious), I set about testing their stability by sending them simple melodic sequences of between 2-5 notes (exploring the first 128 integers in Van Eck's sequence: oeis.org/A181391 ) and recording the result for posterity.

What then emerged from my modular system stopped my hands moving, and immediately transported me away from this cluttered desk and into some humid vista, surrounded by green trees, perhaps cypress, kissed by an orange sun, peering down into the clear water at the edge of a calm stream. Only later did I realize I was thinking subconsciously of 'The Summer's Day' from Böcklin, a symbolist painting from 1881, which seemed to perfectly illustrate the sounds and temperatures I was experiencing. I am lucky to be able to reproduce this beautiful painting for the cover of Lustral Waters, thanks to the forgiving nature of the public domain, and as I sit here now, typing this missive that says precious little that the music and painting cannot themselves reveal far more elegantly, I cannot imagine the painting and the music as separate things anymore.

Another, much longer version of The Grove of Lustral Waters exists, but I am saving that for another day (or night). Today, this recording is more than enough to accurately convey my joy at the Spring season returning, and my creative impulse's raw refutation of the misery and suffering coating the world like a poisonous oil. I hope, wherever and whenever you are able to find this message, it brings you a moment of pleasant displacement just the same. Perhaps then, on that perfect sunny day, frozen in time now just as it was in 1881, if it ever truly existed at all, we can find each other there, not recognizing who we are, but content in the present moment, grateful to be a part of it.

credits

released May 6, 2022

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, April 2022, using Buchla 258t and 281t in tandem with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D using a painting by Arnold Böcklin, 1881. Text by Brian. This is Milieu Music Distributed 68. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved.

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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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