Assembled by hand, one copy at a time, in the White Pillar Workshop. Four white recordable 5" compact discs, duplicated and printed via an Imation D20's robot arm, held snugly inside a clear plastic quad-disk case with two custom text stickers on the front and back.
Includes unlimited streaming of Microdot Transmissions [Diffusions I-IV]
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
During the course of the 2019 year, the third leg of the Workingman's Drone series was unfolding across twelve different sessions of deep listening and minimalist synthesis. Each session was devoted to exploring the voice of a singular machine, some of which were not even technically "synthesizers", but rather, drum machines with sound sculpting capabilities, hospital lab equipment repurposed as tone generators, anything that could be exploited into producing a tone.
It follows that once these pieces had been laid to tape, the temptation to manipulate and further process them was too great to resist, and so a few branches of expanded recording work grew from these sessions. The first were the Pharmlands recordings by Coppice Halifax - repurposing the WD material into sonic mulch over drum machines and bass, totally recontextualizing it as ambient and dub techno music. The second expedition manifested as these pieces, the Microdot Transmissions - a macro-lens reduction/expansion via generative processing.
The Microdot Diffusions are every one of the original Workingman's Drone sessions (#1-24) routed through a complex but incredibly distinct set of analog and digital effects equipment, multitrack tape overdubs and finally a topical layer of DAW processing, effectively rendering new ambient galaxies out of the overtones and distant echoes of the original sessions.
Despite all of those details, these four pieces live and breathe with their own unique physicalities, proof positive that anything I record is itself a part of a larger macroverse, and contains untold numbers of microverses as well - all vibrations, channeled through an unfathomable invisible body, on currents both electrical and elemental.
credits
released November 11, 2019
W/P by Brian Grainger. Remixed & regenerated at White Pillar Workshop, November 2019. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MTD001.
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 24 fans who also own “Microdot Transmissions [Diffusions I-IV]”
As always, I am in utter awe at the vastness of our musical universe, comprised of beautiful stars for our ever-listening ears. Let the gorgeous waves of this incredible album wash over you, perhaps taking you to another realm, out of space & time. One of the most pleasurable experiences I have had in a long while. Pip From The Forge
A longform drone piece from New Zealand sound sculptor Mo H. Zareel plays subtly with listeners' perceptions as its layers unfold. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 21, 2020