Milieu - Retraced Paths (2020)

Retraced Paths is a double-album collection of beatless Milieu recordings, dating between 2016-2020, which includes three previously unreleased pieces from my archives. "In A Vale Of Soft Green" and "Dithent" are both more current recordings, drafted for Lee Norris' Neotantra label in the UK, while "Panic, Across Fields" was a pre-Daughter session track given to Luxury Sky District's 4/20/'96 compilation on double-cassette. "Quomb" was a generative piece created on the Korg Minilogue polyphonic analog synthesizer for Dusk Transmission at Moody Drones - previously digital-only and presented here on physical format for the first time. "Meristem" and "Peranimand" were both, like "Panic", pre-Daughter session recordings that were realized just before the full grasp of what Daughter's process should be became clear, and neither have been issued anywhere prior to this. "Thandminexas" is another one from the vault, recorded in the anguish-filled August of 2019, at the same time as Four Passages For Faun, Tin Bell and Lyre. It was considered for release as "Passage Six" but this was abandoned in favor of Passage Five feeling more resolved and final at that moment in time, so it appears here as a massive second disc addition that both reflects the other six pieces on the first side, and contrasts against them with deeper realms of drone and sustained-tone bliss.

Altogether, these seven recordings feel unified in many ways, not just because they originated from the same studio and sometimes, the same equipment, but in some deeper, unspoken way that can't really be quantified without simply listening. It is my hope that assembling them here creates something that is more substantial than the different parts themselves, and reaches across the time(s) and space(s) between us to offer some comfort and warmth as the Winter of a long, hard year approaches.