Mellow U

Yuss, enjoy! It is a most definitely appropriate taster for what's to come on Friday!

Hello there WATMM, I am pleased to announce the first of two very special compilations of Milieu trax, assembled exclusively for release at the excellent Touched Music label. The two-volume Sunbather's Pharmacopeia is designed to appeal to both longtime listeners, first-timers and the casual consumer in between, and this first volume focuses on material from the earlier phase of the Milieu sound - the slow tempos, detuned synthesizers and bittersweet melodies. As of right now, the release has only been announced via the Touched social media outlets, and there isn't anything on Bandcamp just yet. HOWEVER, a good amount of promo is being done, and some of it is the cool and interactive kind, so read on! To start, multiple videos have been made for some of the tracks on this collection, the first by Mr. Touched himself (and can only currently be viewed via the Touched Facebook page) and the second by Broken Machine Films (the in-house videographers at Illuminated Paths) which is soon to come. There may yet be more videos, but don't quote me because I'm not the one in charge of that department. Secondly, there will be a three-hour online event on the Touched Mixlr feed, on Friday July 26th, which consists of a DJ set from the talented Steve Brown (Combinations In Electronic Sound), a DJ set from myself (moonlighting as DJ Brian Damage) and then a screening of the Touched album. The link to the Touched Mixlr is here, and this will happen at 2PM Eastern Daylight time (7PM in the UK and 8PM in much of the rest of Europe). I will be hanging out in the chatroom at Mixlr to answer questions and shoot the breeze, likely with a couple shots of whiskey in my hand. If anyone here has attended the listening parties I did on Twitch for Sun Cast or Shallow Earth, this will be somewhat like that. And speaking of that last bit - depending on how the Mixlr show goes, and whether or not anyone there missed out, was late coming in, or still wants to listen to music and chat, I'll be willing to have an afterparty on my Twitch channel, where I might even break out the synths and drum machines and jam a bit, or play tracks, or whatever! Bedtime is relative in Milieu Land. Finally, I've answered some studio-related questions in an interview segment for Synthspotting (Twitter & Facebook) and given them a few badly lit photographs of what the studio looks like right now. I don't know when they will post their Milieu feature, but I will try to update this thread when it happens. So there you go - some cool Milieu-related things to look forward to soon. And definitely, if you can, check the DJ set out on Mixlr - it's not your usual DJ affair of just spinning records, but rather, more like an old hip-hop mixtape that takes loops from dozens of different tracks and uses them as building blocks for brand new grooves. I have done one previous DJ mix in this style and you can download that here. There also may or may not be a bootleg cassette containing both of the Brian Damage DJ sets coming out after the Touched release... More info posted here as it comes!

Yeah, for sure, not a bum note, though I've been so enamored with the first album and the EPs/singles that I've not even heard Con Todo, besides when they play tracks from it live (I almost prefer their Boiler Room set to the studio recordings, and have discovered pretty much all of their live performances are top shelf). I used to get into new bands I found and liked in a really manic way, completist etc, but these days I'm much more interested in just soaking things up a little at a time, knowing full well that I'm missing out on other recordings, and thinking about how exciting it will be to discover new stuff when the time comes. This point is doubly important for artists and bands that aren't around anymore, where there's a finite amount of these gems and minerals and you don't want to find all of that at once.

Thank you Sean, thank you Rob. If you read this thread, sell us a tape!!!

I've been hooked on this trio since springtime. Haven't dipped my toe into the other remixes thing they did, might hold off on this too until I'm finished with all their EPs and stuff first.

Wow, I'm surprised this one went off so quietly. This album is legendary, and would absolutely appeal to fans of Casino Versus Japan (who used to be a roommate with Mr. Arrows), Odd Nosdam, My Bloody Valentine and even GAS. There's so much to this stuff, between the groove, the atmosphere, the samples, the guitars and the whole paranoid drug-deal-gone-bad vibe.

I love this title, and usually I'm pretty averse to the whole flipped-syllables thing. Gonna check out what it actually sounds like tonight.

Yes, the series was always conceived as a four-part thing, although these days I cannot recall why that was. I mentioned it in the chat during the Twitch listening party, but it's probably for the best that I haven't made any kind of real announcement.

Thank you! I too am fond of my subtropical excursions. Here's hoping I can tie up Ocean Lion in a nice humid bow this Summer, with OL IV. Hey, that's a pretty common mistake, actually. However, I always see it as a major compliment, because it outlines even more organically just how different the two projects are most of the time.

Cheers! I hope you enjoy what you find! I appreciate the sentiment - though, to be fair, I am in a very small club when it comes to the sheer amount of work I've generated. I can never tell if this is a positive or a negative, really...and people ask me about it a lot. All I can ever say is that it simply IS. Oh don't discount me there, just yet. Mr. Extralife can probably tell you, I have more than enough moments of arty-farty.

Thanks! The quick answer is, I can suggest other records that have been cut in a similar way. Obviously (or perhaps not?) my catalogue is filled with many different stylistic tangents and I am certain that the grand majority of people who like my work only in fact enjoy a percentage of it, and not every different thing I make. So, here's a short list of suggested follow-up listens if you enjoyed Shallow Earth: https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/sun-cast https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/academy-stripes https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/polypsilon-polytone-dual-disk-edition https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/reverb-microcoma-expanded https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/h-is-for-hologram https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/tidewater-petrol Hey thanks for picking that up! I love the way that turned out, top to bottom. Really feels like an alternate universe take on the material, almost like I didn't make it myself! Ha! I'm flattered that it's become an initiation rite! As per my reply above though, I am painfully aware of how hard to navigate my back catalogue is, and I've been working for a long time toward trying to build an interactive wiki-style website that functions as both a discography and a cross-referenced database of information. This would then allow someone to go plug in, say, Shallow Earth into a search there, and they would see the overlaps with my other albums in similar styles, noted reference points to other releases via samples/equipment used/the label that published it/the artwork/commonalities in track titles, etc. The further out I go, the more weblike and self-referential a lot of my music becomes...for better or for worse. So hopefully if I can get this whole project off the ground, it would alleviate a lot of the frustration with that amount of data. What I really need are people who are interested in moderating and submitting information on such a project...preferably people I can bribe into working in exchange for some free music too...but, never enough hours in the day!

That's OK! Absence....heart fonder....etc.

Don't fret! I think I am gonna try to do them a little more often, so long as I think the record merits that kind of a listening experience. Though you did miss me superimposing multicolored Busey faces over childhood drawings of monsters and psychedelic MS Paint clusterfux. :)

Thank you Ghosty - "lush as fuck" would be more than enough for me to pick the record up at a store if I saw it written on a sticker.

Thank you dudes! I'm super happy with how it turned out. And yes, please go tell your local congressman "Don't take Brian to court" - it's hard out here on the streets, with nothing but stale bread and samplers for starving artists like me.