Saturday, January 15, 2011

Mrs Jynx + Milieu + Fieldtriqp - Bermuda Triangle

Three longtime friends with a mutual appreciation for each others' work decided to postpone the inevitable no longer. Mrs Jynx cooked up some techno cupcakes, while Milieu took an imaginary trip down to the tropics and binged on cheese and Marmite. Fieldtriqp showed up fashionably late with a wine hangover and some sleeping pills. Three cheers from us! Blast it like it's 2005!

STREAM: HERE

PURCHASE: HERE

Coppice Halifax - Amber Castles

A precursory EP for the forthcoming double-cassette-album-opus Pawleys Island, featuring an alternate version of an album track and two exclusive tracks not included on the album. Imagine Boards Of Canada having a sedate dub techno party in Hawaii as the sun goes down and cool rain simultaneously beads down onto your baked forehead. Yeah, and even then, you're only halfway there.

STREAM: HERE

PURCHASE: HERE

Brian Grainger - Mountain's Green Majesties

Speaking of home, here you are. Back on terra firma, as they say. God's green earth. It's a beautiful, clear day with golden rays of sunshine, blue skies and birds singing off in the distance. The plip-plip of a small stream of water is heard nearby. Wind breezes through tree leaves at the base of a gigantic mountain, sounding tonal and almost musical, with melodies that make surprising amounts of sense despite their natural and seemingly incidental origin. Deep gravity-heavy warmth tugs you gently down, and you decide to take a nap under the trees. A plane goes by overhead, leaving a contrail of sound through your mind. With weather this nice, you might not leave this fantasy mountain until well after Winter has subsided.

STREAM: HERE

PURCHASE: HERE

TMA3 - Recursion

Lost, deep inside an infinite timestretched black desert, dotted with billions of fluorescent white pinholes. Drifting on impulse power through the spaces between space. Soundlessly ebbing through an endless fall toward structures so large they are no longer measured in distance, but time. Light years. As time itself crumbles and you are reduced to mere molecules and poured down into the cosmos like a waterfall, things slowly begin to take shape again. Recognizable congruence emerges from the Rorschach puddle of dimensionless matter everything has melted into. Eventual consciousness of temperature returns. Sensitivity to light, sound, although there is no sound. Only the vague anticipation of what your new form blindly awaits. As if by intuition, lines connect, tendons lock, muscles move. You dictate your surroundings into growths of desire, projected by thought. Reflections of you. Like a fog clearing over hundreds of years, you begin to move forward out of the blankness. Speed builds, momentum increases and then the faint, growing hum of an engine. You are in a ship, again. Did you simply never leave? No, that can't be right. You feel different, you feel new. You seem to know this, and out there on the horizon line, through the window of your vessel, you see something else you know: the pale blue dot you were born on. Welcome back home.

STREAM: HERE

PURCHASE: HERE

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year

Better late than never! Most of you reading probably already have this one, but it's not been posted here yet so here goes.

A new Milieu EP for the holidays, although you won't find any "traditional" holiday songs here...all 100% original Milieu. So basically you can probably safely enjoy this one year round. It's released as a "name your own price" sort of thing, so you can either buy me a cup of coffee or just download it for free and be on your merry way. Either way, head over to my Bandcamp page to pick it up!


P.S. You can still grab the last two years' holiday EPs for free too! MMC001 and MMC002!

P.P.S. - For the collectors among you, I've been asked by a few folks if I plan to make a hardcopy version of Icepak available: I will likely put a handful together once I'm set up in my new office soon, so watch the mailing list for the announcement!

Friends Of Mine

In addition to the pile of stuff I released at the end of last year, a few very awesome labels issued new releases of mine as well. Not to be overlooked, most of these are incredibly limited, special affairs and it was only sheer coincidence that all of them were issued in the same timeframe. Check it!

MILIEU / THE LONELINESS OF EMPTY ROADS
Second Sun / SSRCD014
CD-R / 100 copies
(A deep bluesy drone guitar album for SSR. If you've followed the SSR output in the past, you know exactly what to expect. Minimal, sad, slow, soft. Simple and effective.)

MILIEU / OUR BLUE RAINBOW [EXPANDED REISSUE]
I, Absentee / IA033
2xCD-R / 100 copies
(The long awaited reissue of my 2006 album Our Blue Rainbow, remastered from the original session tapes, and repackaged with new artwork designed by David Tagg, who issued this release the first time back when EED was still around. In addition to the remastered album, this edition comes with a second bonus disc, containing an unreleased 18-track album from the 2006-era. Priced like a single CD! Don't miss out!)

BRIAN GRAINGER / SILVER HORNS HEARD OVER GREEN HILLS
Secret Station Records / SS-33
2xCD-R / 100 copies
(A mammoth double-album of deep drones, backed with colorful field recordings from a trip back to my old stomping grounds, Loris, SC, in March of the 2010 year, with a guest appearance by David Tagg. For fans of albums like Porous Variations or the TMA3 series - don't sleep on this! Super-limited edition packaged in a silver tin box with full-color inserts and stickers, priced like a single CD!)

BIKE / OCTOBER ORANGE
Cassette / 25 copies
SOLD OUT!
(This was the debut release by one of my new monikers, Bike. It sold out super fast but be on the lookout for it to be reissued digitally somewhere down the line!)

BRIAN GRAINGER / DIAMOND TEARS ON SLATE
CD-R / 100 copies
SOLD OUT! (Though it may still be available at distributors. Look around!)
(My first release with the superb Dead Pilot label in the UK, following an appearance on their "Drone Poets" compilation. If you picked up Drone Poets and heard my contribution to that, then you know what to expect with this. Also worth noting that DTOS is the "sister" release of White Kingdoms, so if you enjoyed that, you'd likely enjoy this!)


New Releases

Wow, I have seriously spaced on updating this blog since August! If you're on my mailing list or follow me on Facebook than you are probably still up to date, and you also probably know just how insane September-December was. Either way, for all involved and uninformed - here is a list of everything that I've released at Milieu Music since the last update:

MMD014 / BRIAN GRAINGER / ZYUAXOHTVIMIVTHOXAUYS

(A long, conceptual drone piece, complete with extensive liner notes and a graph)

MMTT1 / TURQUOISE TURTLES & MILIEU
(Dense ambient split between myself and Cole Montgomery)
SOLD OUT!

MML074 / BIKE / LEAFMAN EFFECT
(Second release from the new Bike moniker! Loud breakbeats and drones!)

TMA3.1 / TMA3 / AUTOGENESIS
(First album from a new three-album concept project. LONG drones!)

TMA3.2 / TMA3 / SINGULARITY
(The second of three TMA3 albums)

TMA3.3 / TMA3 / RECURSION
(The final TMA3 album)
BUY CD-R (SOON - Look for this in a few weeks)

BRIAN GRAINGER / WORKINGMAN'S DRONE SERIES
(This monthly series is now complete! Here are the links for #9-12. Also, boxset forthcoming!)

WD9 / IN RUST

WD10 / SMOKE FARM

WD11 / DUAL VESSELS [APPROACHING CLIFFS]

WD12 / MOUNTAIN'S GREEN MAJESTIES
BUY 3" CD-R (SOON - Look for this in a few weeks)

The reason that TMA3.3 and WD12 are digital only items right now is because I am currently in the throes of moving from one house to another, and while my office/studio remains in relative limbo, I'm simply postponing the hardcopy release of these two titles until the new office has been set up. Thanks to everyone for their patience!

Also, look forward to a Workingman's Drone box set in the very near future! The boxes will be available empty (if you've collected all 12 EPs individually) or filled, and both versions come with a bonus 13th EP! Stay tuned!