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Workingman's Drone [Year Five]

by Brian Grainger

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1.
[WD49] Five Held Tones for the Foundation Stone 55:55
2.
[WD50] Five Held Tones for Etemenanki 55:55
3.
[WD51] Five Held Tones for the Bering Land Bridge 55:55
4.
[WD52] Five Held Tones for Monks Mound 55:55
5.
[WD53] Five Held Tones for the Nekoma Pyramid 55:55
6.
[WD54] Five Held Tones for the Sikhote-Alin Meteorite 55:55
7.
[WD55] Five Held Tones for the Runit Dome 55:55
8.
[WD56] Five Held Tones for Rama Setu 55:55
9.
[WD57] Five Held Tones for the Barringer Crater 55:55
10.
[WD58] Five Held Tones for the Roanoke Colony 55:55
11.
[WD59] Five Held Tones for the Draupner Wave 55:55
12.
[WD60] Five Held Tones for Elugelab 55:55

about

Each month in 2022, the Workingman's Drone series issued a fifty-five minute and fifty-five second long recording illustrating a moment held in the air, a view of a precipice frozen in four dimensions. It continues the linear but forever mutable path of the previous four years of the series, focusing in this iteration on five distinct oscillators tuned, mixed and panned by ear, and left to be still, or drift apart, or coalesce back into the same harmony, or become a new harmony, for an hour.

Analog machines can be directed, as any instrument can, but unlike many other instruments, they can hide their movements in glacially slow gradations, and when these changes happen within runtime is decided only by each oscillator itself, manifesting like a ripple in the still water that is almost imperceptible.

The resultant sound that emanates from these five oscillators is often gently pulsing or wavering, pulling ever so slightly out of focus before returning to placid clarity. Each chord has been formed out of the ether using a location or an event as a kind of imagistic writing prompt, although how the chordal shape itself relates to these prompts is a matter of apparent synaesthesia that even I am not able to fully understand.

These sessions have been predominantly defined by the usage of my expanding R-EW Audioholistics modular system throughout the 2022 year, although some sessions were instead informed by non-modular hardware with multiple-oscillator capabilities, such as the Korg opsix (a digital six-operator FM synthesizer) and Behringer's reiteration of the "Blue Marvin" ARP 2600 monophonic analog synthesizer. Regardless of the tools used to arrive at a predetermined conclusion - five held tones, of any sound provenance, in any arrangement so long as it remains unchanged for the duration of the piece - the methodology and axioms involved in the process remain the same.

Over the last three years, I have written and recorded a prolific amount of material that supports my interests in exploring drone music in a more ascetic fashion than many other musicians seem willing to, with much of the music put forth under the definition of "drone" instead being some form of ambient music or another. To my ears, drone music must remain as compositionally static and unchanged as possible - a task much easier described than executed, given the aforementioned nature of analog oscillators and their associated designs.

These twelve sessions perhaps only imply stillness, as nothing in the observable universe can ever remain completely still, although the act of sculpting such focused minimalistic work remains invigorating to me, not only for the meditative benefits of immersing oneself in a vibrational isolation tank, but for the philosophical considerations that inevitably come to light in the empty spaces left open, where the music no longer has anything else to say.

credits

released August 3, 2023

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, January-December 2022 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system in conjunction with various outboard devices. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Copy, design and manufacture by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WDY5. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved.

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Brian Grainger Dayton, Ohio

Drone music, warm atmosphere and textural ephemera for the working man.

I also release music as Milieu milieumusic.bandcamp.com and Coppice Halifax coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com

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