River Daughter by Milieu

"Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
falling on fallow, on field and forest,
on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
downwelling waters all-washing, wider
than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
than countrysides, calming, recalling:
return to us, teaching our troubled
souls in your ceaseless descent
to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea."

-Ursula K Le Guin, "To the Rain" (2018)

---

"River Daughter" is the thirty-sixth Sleepbuilding release - originally broadcast live on 13th August, 2023 - and it consists of fourteen-plus hours of procedural music made with my R-EW Audioholistics modular system. It explores the inharmonic strings voice in Mutable Instruments' Rings, a Karplus-Strong digital synthesizer, which plays a constantly changing melodic sequence in the Marwa scale, prevalent in Hindustani classical music, and functionally utilized to convey longing during the sunset hours.

The monthly Sleepbuilding releases remain free, and tend to act more as utility sound-matter than music in any traditional sense, and I feel that "River Daughter" diverges slightly in its emotive quality, which never quite resolves the tangles of curious and dimly-lit melodicism that it continuously unspools. It reminds me a little of Eno's "Neroli" crossed with some of the FM synthesizer pieces of Jochem Paap's ambient FAX albums, and I think this sort of music is perfect for the warmer windy nights we're beginning to have here in the valley, with Springtime fully underway.

---

ALL 35 SLEEPBUILDING RELEASES ARE FREE HERE: https://campsite.bio/oscillog

FOR MORE MUSIC IN THIS VEIN PLEASE CHECK OUT MY VIBRATELEPATHOS MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION: https://vibratelepathos.bandcamp.com

Tracklist

1.	River Daughter (Part 1)	239:52

2.	River Daughter (Part 2 / Section 1)	116:05

3.	River Daughter (Part 2 / Section 2)	138:43

4.	River Daughter (Part 2 / Section 3)	197:02

5.	River Daughter (Part 3)	11:13

6.	River Daughter (Part 4 / Section 1)	115:29

7.	River Daughter (Part 4 / Section 2)	116:49

8.	River Daughter (Part 4 / Section 3)	180:00

Credits

released April 24, 2025

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded and broadcast live in OBS and GoldWave on 13th August 2023 from the White Pillar Workshop, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Text by Brian. Poem by Ursula K. Le Guin. Design by ABM&D using visual sampling of "La Cathedrale" by Frantisek Kupka (1920). This is Milieu Music number MMD122. Sound recordings (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2025. All nights preserved.

License