Forest Idyl by Milieu

The third and final part of the Transient Logics triptych, a privately commissioned work written and recorded for visual artist/designer David Hamlin that emerged as a Coppice Halifax album, a five-disc Milieu album (both bearing the same name) and this four-disc album. Forest Idyl consists of ten ambient compositions in what is now thought of as the "old style" of ambient Milieu recordings - swooning synthesizer chords, pedal bass underpinning and cloudy clusters of lead melodies weaving in and out above that landscape.

There isn't much more to say about Forest Idyl that the recordings themselves cannot. It was a developmental phase between ideas that ended up leading to what became the final Transient Logics album, but where Logics is a more psychedelic experience that travels through all seasons and temperatures, Forest Idyl is rooted firmly in its own Autumnal shades, nostalgic for sunny childhood days spent relaxing in the green grass at Brookgreen Gardens. I don't think I ever spent more time anywhere else besides the Horry County Memorial Library as a kid, and both of those places almost entirely informed my understanding of the artistic world. That I am only now referencing Brookgreen so overtly in one of my albums feels a little surprising, considering this. I clearly owe Anna Huntington quite a lot for Milieu existing at all.

So I'm pleased to issue this Autumnal trip through ambient blues, bearing the notable catalog number of 114 and now synergistically published on the fourth day of the eleventh month, where it feels that it is meant to exist. Special thanks are again due to David Hamlin, who only ever asked me to make him one album, and not ten, but that he asked at all is the entire reason these recordings found their way into the world to begin with. When I turned in all of this music at the conclusion of the commission, David was struck particularly by the title "An Arrow Tracing an Arch" and its resemblance to a piece of art he'd made prior, which he then offered to me for the album cover. It's a beautiful piece of visual work that I think connects to a lot of the ideas at play in the music, and again feels just a little bit like predestination in some way, or maybe the sense that we've been here before and have simply forgotten.

Tracklist

1.	Forest Idyl	8:23

2.	Forest Idyl at Dusk	19:45

3.	An Arrow Tracing an Arch	9:58

4.	Bluegreen Gardens	27:17

5.	A Doe in Bronze I	5:33

6.	A Doe in Bronze II	4:30

7.	A Doe in Bronze III	10:51

8.	Limestone Column I	35:08

9.	Limestone Column II	38:11

10.	Limestone Column III	68:45

Credits

released November 4, 2024

W/P by Brian Grainger. Privately commissioned by David Hamlin in 2022. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, from 2022-2023. Mastered by The Analog Botanist.Visual: "Arch" (Hamlin, 2023, relief print). Layout, design and manufacture by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music Distributed 114. Sound recordings (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2024. All nights preserved.

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