Recurrent Irrigation by Milieu
"Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born
and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land."
-W. Whitman, excerpt from 'Song of Myself' (1892)
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It is another new year. Paradoxically it never feels different enough to be new, but we must always carve our lines of measurement into the world around us, and time is no exception. Despite this arbitrary nature of counting everything, I nevertheless feel compelled to begin each year with a defined statement - something that exists in the Venn space between a meaningless resolution and a sincere sentiment - and in the spirit of this dual-purpose expression, I am content to offer you 'Recurrent Irrigation' as my best foot forward, as the saying goes.
On the technical side, 'Recurrent Irrigation' was originally broadcast on the evenings of November 14-15 in 2023, and was my first in-depth session work with the Moog Subharmonicon analog synthesizer. The two nights' patches explored Just intonation and 12-TET, with the aid of the usual tools in the R-EW Audioholistics modular system, and together they constitute the 21st Sleepbuilding release to be published here. (As usual, detailed patch notes are available in the 'track info' sections of this page.)
At the end of each year, I have made it an annual tradition to take some leave from my work, such as it is, starting on my wedding anniversary (12/16) and not returning until sometime in early January. This is less of a 'vacation' and more of a decompression, a bit of much-needed asceticism and radio silence during one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year. During this break, I spent a long time considering what would be my first published work of the new year, and although I knew it would be one of the fourteen unreleased Sleepbuilding broadcasts, I consulted the ever-illuminating I Ching to help me decide.
The I Ching sagely acknowledged my decision paralysis, and pointed out that I should not try to reach for any larger goals, and that it is just as good to work on smaller ones. It reinforced that even if I am returning to the studio for work in the new year, that I can continue to lay low and keep things simple. All of these notions led me back to the thematic details I'd been developing with 'Recurrent Irrigation' - a topical reference to the electrical current running through the many patch cables in my workflow, as well as a more pointed commentary on the branching paths and tributaries that continue to split off from the proverbial river of my creative work - how it is always the same and never the same, which I have written here several times before.
I found that somewhere beneath the surface of these sessions was the idea I wanted to carry into this new calendar year, following on the strength of twenty prior extended sessions, acknowledging the path behind me while also renewing my understanding of why I was doing it in the first place. If you repeat anything often enough, the definition can become lost in the oscillation, initiatives can become rote exercises, so it can be fruitful to open up the machinery and re-evaluate the way things work from time to time, even if only to put the gears back together exactly the way they were, content in your assurance that the system does not need changing.
Sleepbuilding releases will thus continue, free long-form ambient music created procedurally, the recorded output of a machine that both inspires my curiosity and echoes my will, drawing a line through this map and carrying a current of peace and placidity in somnolent tones. There will always be another hill for the river to bend around, another undreamt landscape, so for this forty-first circumnavigation, I will follow the sun.
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YouTube playlist of all Sleepbuilding broadcasts: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbcjgVJRSgeSHy00DZLB8zFFIJbIgcYjo
All prior Sleepbuilding releases to date (all FREE): https://campsite.bio/oscillog
For more generative ambient music delivered to your inbox automatically each month, please consider subscribing to my Vibratelepathos series: https://vibratelepathos.bandcamp.com
Tracklist
Credits
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, November 14, 2023 using the Moog Subharmonicon and the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling from 'Abstraction' by Frantisek Kupka (1931-1935). Text by Brian. Poem excerpt by Walt Whitman. This is Milieu Music number MMD095. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2024. All nights preserved.
License
All rights reserved.Tags
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