alternating.bit
Sometimes I overlook CH releases simply because of the frequency of output being overwhelming and some releases just pass on by. As I sampled this expanded edition of these releases I was blown away not only by the remixes but the original content as well. Amazing stuff - and I'm so glad to have a hard copy option.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$44.44USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Assembled by hand, one copy at a time, in the White Pillar Workshop! Four recordable compact discs, duplicated and printed via an Imation D20, held securely inside four white cardstock jackets with custom sticker labels on the front and back. These four discs have all been given a brand new design to link the set together, and are being offered in a non-boxed set format in order to keep costs low and shipping reasonable. At present moment, only 6x sets exist, but I will expand this pressing if demand is substantial enough.
Includes unlimited streaming of Leaf Cloak [Tenth Anniversary Compleat]
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
It was 2013, and my sweltering Botany Bay loft studio was two years running, with the previous year an exhausting blur of time as I became a father for the first time. A lot of things were in a continual sense of freefall, with occasional tugs of forward motion, and having completed what I set out to do within the electronic dub/ambient techno template with the Analog Botany series and 'Pawleys Island,' there was a tangible desire to reapproach that sound and palette from within this newer and more developed studio.
By comparison, my 10x10 room at Rolling Knoll was more a guest bedroom I'd taken root in and filled with a disorganized array of hardware, instruments and label operation materials - Botany Bay represented the first time I'd moved into a space with the word "studio" in my mind as we worked out how many rooms were needed, and what they might be for. While it would still be a couple years before I'd amassed enough esoteric hardware to begin the Deep Earth series, Botany Bay was a distinctly different creative world to work inside, having already given me the Verdant Acre series the previous year, as well as a host of other textured deep techno excursions like 'Reflector,' 'Coastal Reveries,' my 'Dilate/Erode' split with Submersion and the hallucinogenic 'Narcotic Months.'
'Leaf Cloak' was in many ways the summation of all of those recordings, informed by late nights running on fumes, at times staying up working until dawn, finding the Analog Botany sound beneath a tangle of tape crust, white noise haze and the usual crumbling overdriven compressor. If 'Pawleys Island' was Coppice Halifax combing the seaside and driving alone through rural backroads, 'Leaf Cloak' is a paean to a humid green backyard behind a studio, a totemic symbol of a new life and new paths being continually explored, having left the beach and the backroads behind for good.
So, collected here are all of the original recordings made for 'Leaf Cloak' and its orbiting moons** - the burnt out rehash of 'Chemist Cloak' and the almost industrial dub 'Night Soil' - as well as three alternate mixes plucked from the 'Sleeping Under Furs' versions-collection, and the 'Blue Cloak' revisitation album drafted earlier this year for this occasion. You will hear a distinct palette of sounds, all coalescing in a gradient that shifts between moments that are either more naturalistic and overgrown, or more machine directed and dubbed. All of it is bathed in the warm noise of my Columbia home, the inescapable permanent Summer of the subtropics, which is all very far away from me as I write this now, a decade later.
For my part in this reissue in 2023, I wanted to approach the material with a careful and conservative hand, since I've always enjoyed the mixing and the texture present on these albums, and wanted to preserve those things, while also going down the usual checklist of equalization fixes, standard cleanup work from the vantage point of a decade of doing this. It is for this reason that 'Leaf Cloak' is not being reissued as having been remastered, but rather, 'optimized' would be a good way to put it.
However, both 'Chemist Cloak' and 'Night Soil' have benefited from a more involved mastering pass, being wild and unruly recordings made at a chaotic time in my life, when work was perhaps going out the door with a bit less scrutiny than as was my usual. 'Chemist Cloak' is the most noticeable in this regard, and it is worth noting that I could only clean these recordings up so well due to the Great Drive Crash of 2015 wiping my master session files from existence. Your mileage may vary here.
In any case, I am beyond happy to have all of these recordings unified and arranged in such an organized fashion, and I hope that this collection makes it easier to discover these recordings for newcomers who weren't with me yet in '13. Here's to another ten years of 'Leaf Cloak' in your stereo systems and headphones.
**For the trainspotters and completionists, I will note here that I have omitted all of the remixes produced by other musicians, out of respect for both their work and these original pieces. Those recordings (the 'Ash Cloak' album, as well as some stray mixes on 'Night Soil') are all still available digitally in their original forms, should you wish to investigate them, but for sake of a coherent whole, they do not appear here.
credits
released December 1, 2023
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay in Columbia, South Carolina, 2012-2013 (#1-6, 10-27). Recorded at White Pillar in Dayton, Ohio, 2023 (#7-9). Mastered by The Analog Botanist, with optimization and reissue arrangement completed at White Pillar, Autumn 2023. Text and photography by Brian. Design by ABM&D. This is Arboreal Digest reissue number AD65. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All nights preserved.
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