Year Five of the Workingman's Drone series surfaces, immediately following a fourth year, offering twelve more monthly iterations of sustained-tone drone recordings for the 2022 calendar year.
Unlike Years Three and Four, which focused on studying the voice of a single device or sound source each month, Year Five represents an amalgamation of the first two years of Workingman's (which utilized a wide array of combined sound sources, albeit in representations that moved beyond sustained-tone drone music, and simply conveyed ambient music) and Years Three and Four, which maintained a stricter approach to the drone format, never developing the tonality beyond a decided initial arrangement that was designed to remain in a state of recurrent (and operatively endless) oscillation.
In this way, Year Five embraces five different oscillators or sound sources for every session, each of them held continuously for exactly fifty-five minutes and fifty-five seconds. This approach allows for a wide range of sounds to be utilized, while still remaining adherent to the ethos that drone music should exist in a moment of stasis, as much as possible.
Apart from the numerical connections and relationships present within these sessions, listeners will note a series of specific locations or events referenced in the titles. These places and moments are only a focal point of fascination, through which I am able to reactively shape the timbral and textural characteristics of each session - essentially a 'writing prompt' for the creative act to start somewhere, as it always must. These titles are not dedications or statements of any kind, simply a sonic weltlandschaft to exist as a backdrop for the central subject matter - five tuned voices - in order to convey more profound perceptions of depth and wider ranges of visualization in the mind's eye.
To begin, the 1004 pulse wave oscillator and the Buchla 258t (osc 2) were routed into a Behringer 1006 Filtamp module. The Buchla 245t, designed as a five-step sequencer, was repurposed into a pulse wave generator by tuning all five steps accordingly, and running the unit's internal clock almost as fast as it was able to go, producing a stable oscillator, which was routed into a 2HP lowpass filter. The first oscillator in the Buchla 258t was routed into a Doepfer A-121 bandpass filter. Finally, for the most complex waveform in the patch, the AS3340 VCO was multed and sent dry into the first input of a Behringer 1005 Modamp ring modulator, while a second iteration of the AS3340 was sent into a Beepboop Kontact gain circuit, then into a 2HP time-domain pitch shifter where it was retuned and sent into the second input of the Modamp. The Modamp's two inharmonic control voltage outputs were then used to as pitch input for the AS3340 and the 2HP pitch shifter, respectively, where the final sum signal of the Modamp was sent into a Disting Mk4 running the stereo tape delay mode. The Disting's output was equalized via the parametric equalizer within the Behringer 305 mixer, and added to the final mix.
N.B. - Workingman's continues to yield rich crops of synthesized sound, and I am pleased to report that it will immediately continue with Year Six in January 2023, transforming accordingly into a series of Six Held Tones. A cumulative box set collecting all twelve sessions from Year Five will no doubt manifest sometime in 2023, although no date has yet been decided for this as of now. My deepest gratitude to everyone who has continued to listen and support the Workingman's Drone series - it remains one of my favorite concepts to return to, and has grown into something truly representative of my ever-growing and changing systems and tools. See you on the other side.
credits
released December 15, 2022
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, December 14th 2022 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WD60, #60 in the Workingman's Drone series, dedicated to Daphne Oram, Olivier Messiaen and Wassily Kandinsky. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All lights observed.
My DEEP EARTH series, comprised of darkroom improvisations recorded without computers, live on analog and digital equipment. Time pulses out of focus. Brian Grainger
Slowly unfurling ambient music, wafting from foggy guitars, orchestral tape loops and a humming vintage organ. Pollock shooting off fireworks for phosphene weather. Brian Grainger
A six-hour ambient tapestry, with subtle dub techno undercurrents. Created for the exact length of time my newborn daughter was finally sleeping through the night at the time. Brian Grainger
supported by 4 fans who also own “Five Held Tones for Elugelab”
Haunting and beguiling, "Mellotron Works" features four new tracks from Music for Sleep recorded in isolation, music that captures the essence of life in 2020, the fear, the distance, and the hope. An impressive work for an uncertain time... rikm
