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Milieu :: Beyond the Sea Lies the Stars (Infraction, CD)
Brian Granger’s work as Milieu has become aquatically ambient with his
latest work, Beyond the Sea Lies the Stars. Comprised of four
tracks (two of which clock in at nearly a half hour each), the record
is a long wash of guitar noise that has been peeled, washed, dried and
then soaked in sea water for a month to generate the vibrant tonality
of its echo. “The Singsong Waters of an Endless Sea” are elusively
rhythmic with their lengthy sine waves — rhythmic like the daily ebb
and flow of the tide — as if you have to suspend your sense of
seconds to hear the rolling peak of the minute-long wave. Man, this
is drift. I think I’m blinking once every minute and remembering to
breathe once every five; Delightfully lush and looping.
“Vibrant Shores, Horizons” rolls back and forth like a marble crossing
a smooth curve, echoes building upon one another to create a infinite
loop of guitar tones that sound like bagpipes, a choir of violins and
a keening electric guitar; while “Cosmos” swirls with cosmic dust and
solar winds, roiling endlessly through vast distances between stars as
signals ebb and flow. Almost too much of a good thing as I start to
lose my shape somewhere near the halfway mark, my brain loosening in
my head. And, finally, “Falling Slowly Through the Infinite” is a
looping ring of tones, an elastic soundtrack that stretches notes and
melodies until they are aural taffy. Beyond The Sea Lies The
Stars is as beatless as it gets, a much different vibe than some
of Granger’s other work. I kept trying to listen to this record while
doing other things and finally gave up, because it’s not that sort of
aural wallpaper. Beyond The Sea Lies The Stars is head-looping
music: breathe out and vanish. Out now on Infraction.
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Milieu :: Beyond the Stars Lies the Sea (Infraction, CDr)
Included as a part of a limited edition release of Beyond The Sea
Lies The Stars is Beyond the Stars Lies The Sea, a 3-part
invocation to the same sort of spaciousness that upwelled throughout
the full release. “Christening the Ships At Port” is filled with slow
ripples as melodies made from vaporous tones collide into quavering
interference patterns. Reminiscent of Labradford and Stars On The
Lid, Milieu’s tonal poetry is a series of gradual enunciations, words
and phrases drawn out across a prolonged breathe, an exhalation that
lasts a geological era. “Inside The Majestic Hand of God” is a
clarion-esque sonata, filled with the slumbering bloom of ringing
tones like a chorus of sleepy trumpets at dawn (or, rather, the
beginning of Time and Space). “The Zenith and The Gates” follows
“Inside The Majestic Hand of God” as if it is, indeed, the dawning of
man. A melodic phrase builds and builds, incrementally increasing its
presence like the slow creep of sunlight across a dark plain. Granger
has a great deal of patience — clearly evident in the time he takes
to realize a song — and the paired set of records for Infraction ask
that the listener set aside all other actions, duties or twitching
thought-flow and just become an aural Zen monk. Like the eternal OHM
that vanquishes ego and sets the mind free, “The Zenith and The Gates”
is a mantra chant of weightlessness and formlessness. Milieu is the
ambient ego destroyer. Out now on Infraction.
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Milieu :: Aurora Borealis (U-Cover, CDr)
Both Aurora Borealis and NightCurrents (part of
U-Cover’s CD-R limited series) are vastly different from the
Infraction records. Well, not so vast as to not be in the genre
ballpark; but where the ambience is full of drift and gentle immersion
on the prior records, these two are filled with beats, pushing their
limpid soundtracks into the casual downtempo category. The opener on
Aurora Borealis, “Lazy Days On Our Hillside” takes the slow
tones of Beyond the Sea Lies the Stars and makes it a background
motif for a scratchy vinyl recording of a hypnotic auto-suggestion
tape. As you relax upon a hillside of warm grass with fluffy clouds
overhead, the tones draw you further and further into an ambient
headspace. For those who need a little prodding to get into the right
mindset, “Lazy Days On Our Hillside” is all the help you need.
“Parasol” follows and the beats soon trickle after. Reminding me of
Ulrich Schnauss’ Far Away Trains Passing By, “Parasol” (and a
number of other tracks on the record) dapples beats like they’re
diaphanous bursts of air that buoy the spirit.
“Seventeen Twelve” is only forty-three seconds of tones and radio
signals. Oh, I wanted so much more. Grainger has a few other short
tracks that slip out of the mold and venture off into interesting
territory. “The Last Song We Found” echoes with round tones, but
there’s a hint of water bubbling underneath while “Universes Inside
You” fuzzs and groans with radio love, as if he’s experimenting with
using shortwave signals as his tonal foundation.
Of the longer tracks, “Statuettes” is airy guitar, plucked and
drenched in Oriental reverb. Sounding like the sounds you’d hear
wafting over a room full of Chinese statues, “Statuettes” veers wildly
from the Western Downtempo approach for something more eclectic.
“Trapezoid Sing,” while returning to the model that Grainger has set
up for himself, has a delightful evolution of tones as the persistent
melody that wafts through the track. The drums kick along, but it’s
this airy wave that really lifts me by the chin and takes me away.
“Laine” layers piano over a muffled field recording in a distant
wooden cabin, creating a melancholy elegy to the solitary life high in
the mountains. *Out now on U-Cover.
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Milieu :: NightCurrents (U-Cover, CDr)
It’s hard to say which of the two U-Cover records I prefer. They both
offer heaping servers of instrumental downtempo bliss.
NightCurrents has “Journey by Heliodrome,” which with its
soaring woodwind melodies and chunky rhythms is a delightfully
textured opening, as well as the 25-minute “Xanadu,” which takes us
back (or prefigures, depending on your direction through his oeuvre)
to the spatial ambience of the Infraction releases. Filled with
distant solar noises and crackling radio signals, “Xanadu” is a modern
drone poem auditorially reminiscent of the opium haze wherein
Coleridge wrote the famous poem of the same name. Feeling like I am
soaring over an indistinct and mist-covered landscape, I gradually
lose track of my body and become a wave of static and fog.
NightCurrents also has the industrial-tingued “Path To Tower,”
a tone poem that is marred by the groaning, lurching percussion that
has been dragged in, wreathed in chains. Leaking oil, the rhythm
scrapes itself across the floor. The rhythms of “Masken” veer toward
dark-hop territory, swaggering and stumbling with lead-footed reverb.
“She Is Hallway” rings with round tones for nearly a minute before the
staggering rhythm of “Masken” double-times its way into the room and
starts bumping into things.
A heavier and darker album than Aurora Borealis,
NightCurrents is a cohesive experiment with noisier rhythms and
textures. It would be hard to classify the four of these records as
having a Milieu “sound” as Grainger stretches himself in different
directions with each release. NightCurrents would be the
bridge between the instrumental bliss of Aurora Borealis and
Beyond the Sea Lies The Stars, though it is a path that is
tainted by guttering darkness. I’m hard pressed to settle on a
favorite. Milieu seems to be ready and willing to match my capricious
moods. And, judging by the amount of free material that is available
at his website, there might be a few more moods I can match up.
Excellent work. *Out now on U-Cover.
*[ed. note: NightCurrents and Aurora Borealis are sold
out at the label. There are still copies floating around at various online retailers or you can get handmade CD-R versions from Grainger himself at his label.]
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