Porous Variations [Expanded & Remastered]

by Brian Grainger

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Limited Edition 4xCD-R Expanded Reissue Set
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Assembled by hand, one copy at a time, in the White Pillar Workshop! Four white 5" recordable discs, printed and duplicated by an Imation D20, held snugly inside a clear plastic quad-disk case with a hand-cut wraparound insert made of 100% recycled cardboard, bearing a 4x4" cover sticker (printed by David Tagg) and a white text sticker on the back.

Includes unlimited streaming of Porous Variations [Expanded & Remastered] via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	3000 Menhirs 03:04
	2.	The Analog Botanist 25:48
	3.	Golden Morning Vapors 14:48
	4.	Soft Water Alchemy 20:34
	5.	North White Pond 14:24
	6.	Sequoian 10:21
	7.	Fragrant Powder Bed 19:55
	8.	Ether Wall 46:24
	9.	2CB Fantasy 02:25
	10.	Antediluvian 01:16:48
	11.	Sequoian [Coppice Halifax Transfiguration] 01:07:09

about

Recorded in 2008, POROUS VARIATIONS represented a graduated approach to drone music that was informed by almost two years of working on similar improvisations and instrument-applications with David Tagg at Second Sun Recordings and INSTALL. It marked a fork in the path in many ways, the first of what would eventually be numerous recording sessions focused on sustained tones, bright timbres, bass subharmonics and rich chordal structures that resonated in an almost electrical sense. The feel and pacing of POROUS VARIATIONS is still today, twelve years later, representative of my deep interests in sustained-tone recordings, meditative harmonics and drone music that is both a raga-like meditation and a physical experience of vibration and shimmering electricities.

At the time, POROUS VARIATIONS was notable for the excessive length of some pieces, and the third-disc centerpiece "Antediluvian" was the then-longest single piece of music I'd ever recorded. The music was equally inspired by Eastern music for sitar and vocals, sub-tectonic chords on early Sunn O))) recordings and the guitar experimentalism of the New Zealand underground, as well as concurrent influences from David Tagg, Ophibre and Acre. In line with these approaches, the music was recorded live, each piece in a single improvised take, using only a Westone Concorde I electric guitar, a Lowrey "Magic Genie" organ, a slew of FX devices and multitrack cassette tape. By the time the more extended pieces manifested, I was modifying my own physical presence in the sessions by deliberately depriving myself of sleep for up to a full week at a time, which resulted in much more vivid and intense psychedelic experiences as I navigated my way through the sound by vibration alone, senses heightened and overly aware of changes in temperature and low frequencies alike.

It was in such a state that I conceived of the titles for the album, which representatively illustrated phosphene-like images that seemed to bloom in my mind, as the soundwaves buzzed warmly out of the studio amps. The title of the album itself seems to indicate a duality, the sensation of being composed of a material that is both itself and absorbed elements of its surroundings, a blending of will and the absence of it. Mirroring this notion, POROUS VARIATIONS was issued with two different sets of track titles, each set printed on half of the 3xCD-R pressing run. Canonically, these pieces favor the titles presented here, but in the interest of representing POROUS VARIATIONS accurately, the labeling on this reissue will reflect both track title sets.

Interestingly, it was during these sessions that I arrived at "The Analog Botanist", which as many will know, went on to be utilized as my written credit for mastering and production roles, as well as the namesake of the first dub techno recordings by Coppice Halifax. In this original sense, "The Analog Botanist" referred less to fidelity and format, and more specifically to one who could be a gardener or cultivator of things that existed symmetrically and symbiotically, a maintenance person for liminal spaces and intimate relationships, an agent of balance and a refutation of the self as the center of the universe. Today, it feels appropriate to me that such a term would have originated on something that was a personal and inward exploration issued under my birthname.

For the occasion of reissuing this album, I've taken great care in remastering it here in the White Pillar Workshop, during a year that could be described as Hell on Earth, at best, and I don't mind admitting that my own work's escapist offerings have been more necessary and vital than ever for my own mental health in 2020. This already large triptych has been augmented by the presence of a fourth disc, containing an expansive Coppice Halifax transfiguration of "Sequoian" from side two, which seeks to connect the forestial source material with the oceanic fantasism of the Halifaxian world. The album has also been given a photographic cover image, for the first time, where the original edition only ever used monochromatic pattern designs. This new photograph slightly recalls an extremely slow-motion video for "Sequoian" that was published in 2008: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Yf6gx7aho

**NOTE: The CH remix has also been given a solo digital release, with more extensive notes written about the mix and a different variant on the cover photograph, so that listeners who are only interested in the new material do not need to buy this reissue set to obtain it: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com/album/sea-leveler

credits

released December 4, 2020

W/P by Brian Grainger, except #11: Written by Brian Grainger / Remixed and produced by Coppice Halifax. #1-10 recorded at Rolling Knoll, 2008. #11 recorded at White Pillar, Autumn 2020. Remastered by The Analog Botanist at White Pillar, Autumn 2020. Text and photography by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AD33, issue #33 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. milieu-music.com analogbotany.com

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about

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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