Milieu - Aurora Borealis (U-Cover, 2005)

1 Lazy Days On Our Hillside (4:23)
2 Parasol (6:57)
3 Seventeen Twelve (0:43)
4 Rooms Within Rooms (4:34)
5 Blue Bath (6:59)
6 Inline Track (3:47)
7 Statuettes (6:37)
8 Trapezoid Sing (5:19)
9 The Last Song We Found (1:25)
10 Slow Lid Close (7:31)
11 Laine (5:26)
12 Narthex (7:13)
13 Numbers Drop (4:17)
14 Universes Inside You (1:23)
15 Autumn Fog Lifts (3:56)
16 Hidden Paths (7:53)

Un album de Brian Grainger, sous son alias de Milieu, tout plein de rythmes. Hypnotique...

Well, not so vast as to not be in the genre ballpark; but where the ambience is full of drift and gentle immersion on the prior records, these two are filled with beats, pushing their limpid soundtracks into the casual downtempo category. The opener on Aurora Borealis, "Lazy Days On Our Hillside" takes the slow tones of Beyond the Sea Lies the Stars and makes it a background motif for a scratchy vinyl recording of a hypnotic auto-suggestion tape. As you relax upon a hillside of warm grass with fluffy clouds overhead, the tones draw you further and further into an ambient headspace. For those who need a little prodding to get into the right mindset, "Lazy Days On Our Hillside" is all the help you need. "Parasol" follows and the beats soon trickle after. Reminding me of Ulrich Schnauss' Far Away Trains Passing By, "Parasol" (and a number of other tracks on the record) dapples beats like they're diaphanous bursts of air that buoy the spirit.

"Seventeen Twelve" is only forty-three seconds of tones and radio signals. Oh, I wanted so much more. Grainger has a few other short tracks that slip out of the mold and venture off into interesting territory. "The Last Song We Found" echoes with round tones, but there's a hint of water bubbling underneath while "Universes Inside You" fuzzs and groans with radio love, as if he's experimenting with using shortwave signals as his tonal foundation.

Of the longer tracks, "Statuettes" is airy guitar, plucked and drenched in Oriental reverb. Sounding like the sounds you'd hear wafting over a room full of Chinese statues, "Statuettes" veers wildly from the Western Downtempo approach for something more eclectic. "Trapezoid Sing," while returning to the model that Grainger has set up for himself, has a delightful evolution of tones as the persistent melody that wafts through the track. The drums kick along, but it's this airy wave that really lifts me by the chin and takes me away. "Laine" layers piano over a muffled field recording in a distant wooden cabin, creating a melancholy elegy to the solitary life high in the mountains.
Igloo Magazine

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