Lake Circle by MILIEU

IP-1075

MILIEU 'LAKE CIRCLE'

'Lake Circle is the first Milieu release of the 2026 year, consisting of a runtime length that totals nearly twenty-four hours of sound. "Sound" is perhaps a preferable descriptor to the word "music" here, as the recordings are functionally a vessel for sustained warm tones, with large frames of chordal and melodic development which progress so glacially that their change is difficult to discern. Lake Circle is a reshaping of vibration into something resembling fabric, using the modern capacities of both digital audio file formats and the ubiquity of high-speed internet access to contribute something more absolute than an LP or a CD's runtime limits would ever allow.

In this way, Lake Circle is very much meant to offer a method of personal disconnection from the terminally online world - a reset button, offered for free to anyone and everyone, especially meant for the doom-scrolling people with a phone in their pocket, who sometimes need to be shown an exit from the suffering, lest the internet pull them deeper into it like some abysmal riptide. This statement includes myself as well, being someone who all too easily falls into the maw of news cycles, ever-mounting dread and the unshakeable feeling that today could always be the last day. It is because of this aspect of my life, and ours, that I have felt compelled to produce work like Lake Circle, feeling a deep need to provide a counterweight of sensory information designed with empathy and self-care specifically in mind.

For my Constant Listeners, this album will be no surprise at all, as I have already produced over forty such things in a series of albums that I've called Sleepbuilding. I began that series of work on the day of the last midterm elections in 2022, when my need to extract myself from the world around me reached a critical mass. All of those releases remain completely free, and all of them occupy similarly large frames of time with various shades of modular synthesis that are designed for calm, quiet and stillness, or at the very least, arranged and presented in a way that allows listeners to paint their momentary surroundings with the sound, not getting in their way if they must drive or work, and often (I am told) helping to facilitate their own creative expressions when they write, paint, design or program. These recordings are lengthy enough to cover most plane flights, or offer an ad-free and uninterrupted sleeping soundtrack throughout the night.

For new listeners, I hope that Lake Circle meets you where and when you already are, and I hope that its minimalistic form yields to whatever your needs for it might be. 2026 has already shown all of us that the world is no closer to peace than it was in 2025, and so we must make our own peace, with that world and with ourselves. I will continue to create things that enrich and support rather than subtract and divide, until perhaps one day we can laugh as we look back over these absurdly long recordings, and content ourselves with the knowledge that we survived, that love and kindness and happiness persisted, and that today is a better day.

N.B. This release is "name-your-price" here at Bandcamp, giving listeners the option to pay whatever they like to obtain the music, even nothing at all. If you do choose to pay for this release, know that any money Lake Circle makes will be put into subsequent label operations at Illuminated Paths, which will also include future music from one of my other projects, Limestone Ziggurat. IP and myself thank you for your ears, your time and your support.'
;) -B.G.

https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com
http://www.milieu-music.com
https://briangrainger.bandcamp.com/album/eight-held-tones-for-the-northwall-firn

other MILIEU through IP...
https://illuminatedpaths.bandcamp.com/album/daughter
https://illuminatedpaths.bandcamp.com/album/shallow-earth-party-mix-ip-cassette-exclusive
https://illuminatedpaths.bandcamp.com/album/a-dusty-box-of-old-memories-expanded-remastered

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