Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$9.99USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Professionally duplicated by Atomic Disc, with lush artwork by Hiroshige in a full-color two-panel "mini LP" style jacket. Wrapped snug inside a clear plastic resealable sleeve, shipping safely to your mailbox in a cushioned bubblemailer.
Includes unlimited streaming of Shades of Night in Green Minor
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Happy Green Saturday, to all who celebrate. Having wandered into a weird Springtime, I am happy to offer you a pipe of four Halifaxian cultivars, some of which have been plucked from the workshop archives of over a decade past. Despite this, Shades of Night picks up directly where the CH dub of Milieu's "Mural Hex" left off, and this path will continue forward later in the Summer on the Transient Logics album.
"Ceremonial" is the oldest, and opens the starry-eyed affair with far too much sub-bass, subtly microtonal synth lines and percussion shaped from fireworks on an old Akai 12-bit sampler. It was recorded almost immediately following the sessions for Leaf Cloak in 2013-2014, close enough at the time that I felt a bit regretful over not having been able to include it on that album. It cured on the shelves for years, initially being passed around to other dub techno labels, who all inevitably turned it down, likely because it isn't really dub or techno, but some liminal gradient between the two.
"In Green" meanders in with a slower tempo and a softer approach, most resembling Dusk Versions and the precedent Analog Botany series with its sinewave bassline, cratedigger percussions and more 12-bit sampler chords. Halfway through, modernity arrives with a Poly 800 bassline and a firmer house beat, which is slowly surrounded by SEM chords and leads and even more FM synths.
"Unison" is or was the problem child of the group, with a cozy but inoffensively boring original mix that I decided would be better served as foundational mortar for something more developed and exciting, with copious layering of new parts. So little of the original mix remains intact here that I could publish the track as a totally separate entry here, but I enjoy this fresh take so much more. It offers a melodic and colorful "side two" counterpoint to "Ceremonial," with a more complex polymetric structure that allows danceable and hypnotic arrangements to do their work.
"Surrendered" is the longest cut on offer, gently pulling us out into the dark waves from an empty beach. With its Galaxy Maker swoons of synthetic strings and motorik bassline, it brings me back to many different times and places through the years, many of them wistful and sweetly melancholic. By the end, the disco has sunk beneath the glistening surface of the sea, leaving only a disembodied cluster of melodies to float further out. A theme emerges, retreats, dissipates in an echo. I wave goodbye, but this is only goodbye for a while. My vessel will return later on, sunburnt and saltwater baptized, with unimagined secrets and perfumes in tow.
credits
released April 20, 2024
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay and White Pillar, various dates 2014-2024. Mastered March 13th 2024 by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design and layout by ABM&D, after Hiroshige (1857). This is Milieu Music number ABX83. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2024. All nights preserved.
A spacious 2.5 hour soundtrack for Eufloria, an ambient strategy game currently available on Steam, Nintendo Switch and the Playstation Network. Coppice Halifax
A triple-album "beginner's guide" with 50 tracks selected from the first 10 years of Milieu releases. As apt a starting point as you're likely to find. Coppice Halifax
supported by 22 fans who also own “Shades of Night in Green Minor”
As always, I am in utter awe at the vastness of our musical universe, comprised of beautiful stars for our ever-listening ears. Let the gorgeous waves of this incredible album wash over you, perhaps taking you to another realm, out of space & time. One of the most pleasurable experiences I have had in a long while. Pip From The Forge