Milieu - Stray Trains [Expanded & Remastered] (2020)

Stray Trains comes from a somewhat foggy time in my creative sprawl, when I was newly married, living in a tiny room in the back of my inlaws' country house, sleeping all day and making tracks all night on two absolutely awful desktop computers in a small corner next to a closet. During this time, in the Summer of 2005, we moved into the place where my Rolling Knoll studio would take root, and the rest of what became Stray Trains was recorded there. Going back to material from this era is difficult for me because I was learning new things and exploring new ideas constantly, which resulted in a lot of music being recorded but very little of it being recorded with fidelity in mind. As such, Stray Trains is home to many moments of clicks, pops, digital distortion and mixing decisions that I'd stop myself from doing less than a year later, but you learn by making mistakes, not by hitting the bullseye the first time you use a bow and arrow, so Stray Trains is forgivable in this light.

I've done my best with the tools I have now, to clean up and somewhat clarify the music itself, fifteen years later. It almost doesn't even feel like I'm listening to my own music at this point, while other very specific parts recall vivid memories of staying up super late, sampling drum breaks on Prince and Kraftwerk albums, watching Michel Gondry videos and posting ridiculous shit on the long-gone Experimedia, Earstroke and Metanoia Media forums. The music reflects the time, a playful but also bittersweet atmosphere with elements of what I hoped would show Milieu in a more "dance music" mode at that point. Milieu had already recorded things like Slow Lid Close but not yet finished Night Currents, so Stray Trains illustrates aspects of both of those things quite well.

Another point to mention, is that Stray Trains was made specifically with Luke Hazard and his Earstroke Records label in mind. Luke has always been a part of the Milieu orbit, a brilliantly creative mind that has influenced much more than credits or copy might imply - he was the handshake between myself and Jeremy Bible, linking us up to release Gunkajima and Slow Lid Close...he did original design work for Slow Lid, and other Milieu releases like Simple Stations Repeat and Three Tone Quintet...when my ambient albums like the Milieu self-titled and Beyond The Sea/Stars manifested, Luke did beautiful paintings for all three. He provided Polaroid photography for Of The Apple, A Warm Wooden Hollow and several other releases at Second Sun and Install, and here on Stray Trains, he appeared in a collaborative musical role for the first time ever. The track "Drain" was made using melodic elements Luke had sent me as file transfers, and "120 Free" was created in a similar fashion with single-chord samples of an organ Luke played and a couple drum breaks he'd sent over. I am mostly certain that we'd discussed a lot of plans for a full album collaboration, and for one reason or another, it just didn't manifest (or did it?), but Stray Trains still stands as an affirmation of the work we did together.

Regarding the expansions included here, all tracks except "120 Free" have been previously released before now, in various places. Two alternate versions appeared on Remodelled at Boltfish, outtakes cropped up on different volumes of the Bent Appletrees series across years. The reason these pieces were included here is not because they were all from a singular traced session, but rather, they all resemble each other in several ways, and were recorded within the span of about a year, with the earliest being "Summer Islands" cut in late 2004 and the latest being "Biketrail 2" in Autumn of 2005. After going back through early demos and master disk backups to assemble this reissue, it became clear to me that Stray Trains was much more the pursuit of an idea or a feeling rather than a strict attempt at specific songs, as many tracks that ended up released under other names later on were tagged in some way to be included on Stray Trains - things like "My Friend The Dawn" on Our Blue Rainbow (which, coincidentally, Luke remixed) and even "Sway Leaf" on the In Hills Made Of Clouds EP (also released at Earstroke with the first-ever Milieu stickers!). The cuts included here all feel very much in unison with the time and place and horrible desktop computer workflow they were made with, so it is my hope that the mastering I've done has helped to unify them that much more.

Altogether, this reissue sits well alongside other similar collections like Foxhill Pastels or Sun Bleached Piano, where these blurry recollections of sporadic creative seasons have a pretty bow placed upon them, offering them up for modern consideration and nostalgic listening. Hopefully, these old tracks are not without purpose or joy in the current age, and find their way into car stereos and headphone walks for many sunny days yet to come.