Milieu - Shallow Earth

https://recycledplastics.bandcamp.com/album/shallow-earth

According to Brian:

"Shallow Earth is Sun Cast's drunken party-animal sibling, eyes watery with too many bong hits, beaming smiles at every stranger he sees, "Pretty Vacant" and blissfully ignorant of a tomorrow morning that will never ever arrive. Slurred words, blurry edges, not keeping track of time, pushing that bass way too hard and riding the pitch wheel wobble. At the end of the night, he passes out in the grass after spray-painting the lyrics to Electric Six's "Synthesizer" on the side of your parents' house. Shallow Earth is deliberately topical, feel-good electronic music, a palate/palette cleanser, ready for Springtime and sunshine, or CRT displays, video games and cassette decks for when the rain decides to fall. Somewhere within it, are the through-lines that have continued to be the voice of Milieu recordings for years - tropical climes, technicolor melody overload, bent New Wave flangers, greasy Freescha-overdosing funk and some kind of implied past life fantasy, that seeps out of the speakers like a drug. "

First single here: 

https://milieumusic.bandcamp.com/album/amber-petrolr

Sign me up.

AMAZING

like!!!

Oh holy shit.

This is fantastic!

Twitch listening party Friday, everyone's invited! Will post here/FB/Bandcamp/Twitter with the exact time and a link tomorrow.

This record is a lot of fun, can't wait to share it.

  On 5/15/2019 at 9:20 AM, Mellow U said:

Twitch listening party Friday, everyone's invited! Will post here/FB/Bandcamp/Twitter with the exact time and a link tomorrow.

This record is a lot of fun, can't wait to share it.

Yess if I can make it I’ll be there. The Sun Cast listening party was an outstanding time.

  Quote

You are invited to a listening party for the new Milieu album, Shallow Earth! 

 

On Friday, May 17th, at 7:30 PM (EST), drop by Twitch to hear Shallow Earth in full, before everyone else does! I'll also be playing b-sides and outtakes from the sessions, and posting ridiculous shit in the chat window. I will be answering questions and drinking a bit of whiskey, perhaps not even in that order! 

 

http://www.twitch.tv/analogbotany 

 

To make it even more fun, I'll be celebrating my 36th birthday! This is definitely how I'd like to spend it, playing music I made for people who enjoy it, and embarrassing myself in a chatroom. Come hang out! 

 

If you needed any further convincing, everyone who attends this digital party will be gifted an exclusive, non-album and non b-side Milieu track in luscious 320 KBPS MP3 format. All you need to do is PM me on Twitch with a valid email address. 

 

If you're the Facebook posting type, there is an event page for the listening party here: https://www.facebook.com/events/337607213609927/ 

 

All the best from a chilly Daytonian basement,

Your pal Brian

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Well, that was super fun! Thanks to everyone who joined me on Twitch for the listening party.

The album is officially released, and fully streamable on Bandcamp now. Go check it! 

First listen = really enjoying the top-tier Milieu melodies filtered through the kaleidoscopic 80s vibes. Lovely tunes.

(will be on repeat this summer)

Oh that's smart. I hear you Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Robert Palmer. Most boss sampling of the year.

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.

This album is lush as fuck, one of the most summery sounding releases I've heard in a while, warm shimmery vibes. Great stuff!

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.

Really grunking frumped that I missed the Twitch stream, but I’m storked to shove this in my various earholes.  

  On 5/28/2019 at 10:19 PM, Lada Laika said:

I missed the Twitch stream

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. :) 

  On 5/29/2019 at 4:22 AM, Mellow U said:

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.

 

Damn I guess I missed out too.

  On 5/29/2019 at 4:36 AM, Extralife said:

Damn I guess I missed out too.

That's OK! 

Absence....heart fonder....etc.

This album is so good. 

Only thing now is - how the heck am I to work through your 9810248098 album back catalogue?

Yes, it’s the bomb.

Also digging my Illuminated Paths Dance mix tape of this that arrived a couple days ago. 

  On 6/2/2019 at 8:58 PM, StephenG said:

This album is so good. 

 

Only thing now is - how the heck am I to work through your 9810248098 album back catalogue?

Getting into Milieu and then realizing his back catalog is one of the most intimidating monoliths in the world is a time-honored tradition. Welcome to the family. 

  On 6/3/2019 at 10:10 PM, Lada Laika said:

Getting into Milieu and then realizing his back catalog is one of the most intimidating monoliths in the world is a time-honored tradition. Welcome to the family. 

  On 6/2/2019 at 8:58 PM, StephenG said:

This album is so good. 

 

Only thing now is - how the heck am I to work through your 9810248098 album back catalogue?

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

  On 6/2/2019 at 9:02 PM, Extralife said:

Also digging my Illuminated Paths Dance mix tape of this that arrived a couple days ago. 

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! 

  On 6/3/2019 at 10:10 PM, Lada Laika said:

Getting into Milieu and then realizing his back catalog is one of the most intimidating monoliths in the world is a time-honored tradition. Welcome to the family.

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! 

Awesome - thank you so much for taking the time to put that list together for me. I'm going to start digging in hopefully this weekend.

The fact that you’re even willing to put forth the effort to build a wiki/reference/guide to your material shows more dedication to your craft than most. There are a couple artists I could name offhand that seem to be content to be willfully obtuse... it’s refreshing to see someone be so open about their process. If I ever had the time or database knowledge to spare I’d happily contribute.