Watermark by Milieu

'Watermark' is the first session of several focusing on sinewaves that are the result of self-oscillation in filters and phasers. These voices, being sound-shaping utilities rather than true synthesizer voices, behave differently than other "proper" voices, namely in the way they track pitch accurately from a sequencer. This means they are largely unreliable as tuned voices, but modular synthesis rewards curiosity, and in this way, self-oscillating filters can turn something as simple and predictable as a major pentatonic scale into something more exotic that still somehow manages to "make sense" melodically with itself.

This first session explores the "voice" of Stairs, a stereo "Moog-style" ladder filter built by After Later Audio, which includes dedicated outputs for no less than two different slopes of low-pass, a band-pass and a high-pass, along with individual modulation control of both filters and a bias control, which essentially starves the module in the amplifier path in order to elicit unique timbral behaviors from an otherwise standard filter type. Here, you will hear Stairs playing two different major pentatonic scales, sequenced by Ornament & Crime in Quantermain mode, with two of the low-pass outputs becoming a woven pad sound through a four-head tape delay system, and the remaining outputs being processed pointillistically through a Buchla Quad Lo Pass Gate, receiving timing information from a Gate Phaser program in Allen Synthesis' EuroPi module, developed with the compositional approach of Steve Reich in mind.

Altogether, this session resembles a previous Milieu recording a little bit - "Utaru Greenshine Caravan" - mostly due to the pointillism of very small pockets of melodic sound that build a halftone landscape around the listener, but the pad chords beneath these events pass by like a lazy river, recalling instead things like "Recurrent Irrigation" and "Leaden Monarch" - both notably sourced from Moog machines.

Tracklist

1.	Watermark	70:37

Credits

released March 25, 2025

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop on 22nd March 2025 using the Stairs stereo ladder filter by After Later Audio in conjunction with the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D. Photograph taken on the road, 27th July 2021. This is Milieu Music number AVB106, 106th in the Vibratelepathos catalog. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2025. All nights preserved.

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