Milieu - Transposition Gradients In Cyan & Burnt Orange (2019)

Transposition Gradients is a recollection of melodic composition, initially written and recorded in 2013-2014, revisited five years later in a foggy, half-remembered vision, meditated upon as a balm for an overstressed mind. The original components were arranged and released at Recycled Plastics as two volumes of an album called Polypsilon. At the time, Polypsilon was to be Milieu's formal entry into the bedroom acid sound, though I distinctly recall there being some very pretty melodies and chord changes, so I'd always known that sooner or later, I'd dig out the session recordings and put my hands back into the clay.

The material presented here could be considered an analog to other records like it - Inland By Night, Ambell Suns, albums that reconstituted melodic passages from other albums and painted new ambient vistas from them. However, it also bears some resemblance to releases like Improvisations For Hylian Piano & Woodwinds and Statuettes, in the way the voices of synthesizers are brought a bit more to the forefront than on other beatless Milieu recordings. It's interesting to me, to consider these parallel-reality kinds of takes, a "What if?" version of a piece of music - in this case, what if Polypsilon was intended to be an ambient record?

Transposition Gradients is such a ponderance, a possible past, a reflection seen through ripples of water, on the bank of a pond, distantly grasped through years of eroding memory, finally allowed to exhale in a deep sigh of relief as I reach the grassy backyard in Deerfield, with the apple tree and the sunny leaves and the musty garage. I can almost smell it, and that small boy is still there now, wistfully sitting on the water's edge, tossing the occasional stone and watching the sun slowly drip down beneath the horizon line, extinguished like a torch in the dark idyll.