Echogee Afternoon by Milieu

Originating during the frenzied months of session work for 2023's "Watch the Head" album, the piece of procedurally arranged ambient music that would become the end of that album arrived in a longer duration than the closing slot could afford. A modest 5-minute edit was made for that purpose, and the full arrangement of "Echogee" was set aside with an eventual separate release later on. 2024 came and went, and with both the 20th anniversary celebrations for Milieu (which included the expansive triple-disc "Butcher Block Andromeda II" retrospective and the 200+ page "Knows No Bounds" paperback book) and the continuous session work for Coppice Halifax's "Mountain Interval," the planned expansion of "Echogee" didn't fully materialize until now, in the cold and wet Spring season of a pretty miserable 2025 year.

As many people who know me would tell you, I am often discussing how little I am interested in rushing or pushing things along with unnatural schedules in my creative work. Things happen only if and when they are meant to happen, and so "Echogee" has arrived at a moment that I didn't think it would, but it feels more considered and practical now, to have something so pretty and introspective be released during a truly nightmarish moment in American history. Ornate and comforting modes of escapism are not just useful during times of great stress and strain, but essential, and so it feels good to have something like "Echogee" in my archives just waiting to become a beam of warm sunlight in a dim and cold era.

There is not much else to write or say about "Echogee," that the sound of the recordings cannot more efficiently convey. It is ambient music as I have made in the past, nothing entirely new or groundbreaking, but not so much a genre exercise as it was/is an attempt to revisit a very "classical" ambient compositional framework, as the inimitable Eno laid out decades ago. "Echogee" consists of several different synthesizer voices, each held to a minimum of contributions - sometimes two chords or a two-or-three note melodic motif, but usually just one note - and these parts are all allowed to come and go in their own time, independent of each other, but compositionally arranged to be mindful of overlapping with one another in any combination. This sort of procedural music making has never failed to interest and fascinate me, and learning to write music like this has led me toward so many other tools and approaches, from tape assemblages and live looping improvisations with guitar and organ, to modular music and all manner of unorthodox methods of sequencing and modulating.

And yet, despite all of these varied systems and methods of working, my music has not entirely changed, and this is probably a positive thing, since you are most likely reading this passage as someone who has been here with me before, perhaps returning in the hopes of finding another warm wooden hollow, another blue rainbow arcing over this green valley. "Echogee" proves that despite the path winding through different seasons and landscapes, we always manage to find each other again, never quite remembering or forgetting how it happened before. I'm happy to still be here with you, trying to find a way, and I hope you'll relax a while, and just listen to the wind blowing through the leaves with me.

Tracklist

1.	Echogee Afternoon	48:27

2.	Echogee Reflected in the River Mural	8:43

3.	Echogee in the Time Forest	8:43

4.	Echogee Names the Wind	5:17

5.	Echogee Between the Raindrops	5:18

6.	Echogee and the Lavender Day	30:32

7.	Echogee, Suspended in Air	28:36

8.	Echogee in the Blue Dream	2:04

Credits

released May 17, 2025

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, September 2023 to April 2025. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Illustration by Greg Lawhun. Package design and manufacture by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MMD121. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2025. All nights preserved.

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