Assembled by hand, one copy at a time, in the White Pillar Workshop. Two white 5" recordable discs, duplicated and printed via an Imation D20, held securely inside a dual-disc CPP sleeve with a flap and a soft cloth membrane between them, with hand-cut white paperstock inserts bearing the WDY2 tree stamp in black ink on the front cover and the WDY5 Voynich sticker on the back cover. This set contains a 10th anniversary reissue of the original 2012 Train Line Triads album as disc one, and the brand new Train Line Triads [Revisited] album as disc two.
Includes unlimited streaming of Train Line Triads [Revisited]
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Ten years ago, in April of 2012, my wife and I welcomed our daughter into the world, and her arrival also meant the departure of much of my energy for several months. Having the vocation I've chosen meant that, despite my being drained to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, I still set aside time to go to work, and almost immediately, it was evident that my recording process would never be the same again. Train Line Triads was the first published release I completed after I became a father, and as such, it has held a special regard in my memories. After my daughter officially entered her first year of double digits this year, it came to mind that I ought to revisit the album, and so the recordings you see before you are the result of just such a process.
Train Line Triads functioned primarily on a very classically inspired electronic music premise - sampling field recordings of trains passing by our home, very early in the morning, when the world was still otherwise asleep, and building very layered collage works out of the material - and the sessions were further informed by a notable amount of sleep deprivation, which in my experience has always brought into focus certain frequencies, textures and contours in whatever music I'm working on. Temperature sensitivities are heightened considerably, and the speed of my thoughts becomes illustrated in the sloth-like pacing of my arrangements. There's something very synaesthetic that happens in that state, and I've never really known a better way to describe it, but Triads was recorded entirely within that mode.
So, revisiting it now, ten years later, in a different state, with a different studio filled with different tools, arguably as a different person, was a careful bit of work to approach - hence my not issuing this release until the last possible moment of the 2022 year. I knew that I did not wish to remaster or alter the original album in any way, it deserves its place as the document that it is, so instead I decided to transfigure the recordings themselves and reapply many of the same processes and ideas that I was employing a decade ago, but with my current workflow and methodology guiding my hand. This meant that I distilled down the original pieces into new tonal constructs, by way of granular resampling, fixed filter banks and Fast-Fourier Transforms, and then decorated those sounds with three different field recordings (from April, the week of my 39th birthday in May, and July of this year), working with many different numerical inputs on modulators, delay rates and any other manner of automated processing that reflected the anniversary being observed.
I haven't really made an album like this in a very long time, and this did not really become evident to me until I was nearly finished with the work I set out to do. It feels faithful to the original Train Line Triads, but also distinctly Daytonian, perhaps offering an alternative possibility of what Train Line Triads may have been if it were conceived now, and not then. In the spirit of celebrating the 10th anniversary, I've also decided to offer a very limited edition of 2xCD-R sets, containing both the original Train Line Triads album and this Revisited album, back to back. Whether or not these two are further augmented by a third volume in 2032 remains to be seen, but for now (and now is all we ever really have) this accumulation of the past, reshaped forever into the present moment, is offered to you in the hopes that you find something profound within its pages just as I have.
credits
released December 2, 2022
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, 2022. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number MML179. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved.
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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 10 fans who also own “Train Line Triads [Revisited]”
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