Remedial Botany by Coppice Halifax

Remedial Botany collects two EPs from 2015, now celebrating their tenth anniversaries, alongside four other like-minded tracks from between 2015 and 2017. The two EPs were originally issued as Nepenthesol and Ambusilicate, and offered two very different transfigurations of audio-matter from the Urceolatmospherion album (which will itself see a reissue within the year separate from these tracks).

Nepenthesol (tracks 1-4 in this set) focused on more textural atmospherics that surrounded incessant dance rhythms from a Roland TR-505 drum machine, while Ambusilicate (tracks 9-12) did the inverse - distilling out the sweeter and more melodious passages from Urceolatmospherion and re-casting them across dubby rhythm work on a Yamaha RY-20 drum machine. The two EPs were always meant to be together, but up to now they lacked a bridge between them, and this is where the selection of the four new tracks came into play.

"RX1121L (Pioneer Dub)" is the first to form this gradient passage at the end of Nepenthesol, with (you guessed it) a focus on the Yamaha RX11 and RX21L drum machines, punching out a 12-minute groove over a wash of Halifaxian atmospherics that are so vague that I do not even remember what they were to begin with. This track quietly appeared on the 2017 entry in Cold Fiction's Futur[e]cho compilation series, and fits perfectly here despite arriving two years after Nepenthesol.

The next two tracks are "Radioeye 20" and "Radioeye 22," both orphans, with the first included on the 2017 compilation album Data Network Volume 2 in Ukraine, and the second appearing only as a bonus on 2018's Cmx XII collection. Both tracks were 2017 studies of live and weird techno using the Yamaha RY-20 drum machine, and sit nicely alongside everything else here.

Finally, the new closing track on the first half of this set is an alternative mix of "Phern" from Nepenthesol, which made use of a bassline overdubbed with the Behringer MS-1 remake of the Roland SH-101 analog monosynth. This earlier take was omitted from Nepenthesol because of this bassline, as a sort of "purist" approach to using only tape looped atmospheres and a single drum machine became the focus for the two EPs.

Altogether, Remedial Botany is an interesting look back to a decade past, especially following reissue sets for Travelogue Botany and Winter Botany. It offers yet another perspective on the many different areas that I was working in at the time, while a clear preference for live hardware jamming was brought more and more to the forefront of releases. The tracks included here are fun, if not entirely groundbreaking in any noteworthy kind of way - they are bedroom techno made only for the sake of curiosity and the enjoyment of doing so. Pleasantly diverting, you might say.

Tracklist

1.	U.C.O.A.	7:45

2.	Rooms	8:08

3.	Phern	8:35

4.	I Melt	9:00

5.	RX1121L (Pioneer Dub)	12:09

6.	Radioeye 20	5:56

7.	Radioeye 22	5:52

8.	Phern (Phase Phore)	5:34

9.	Sopor	10:26

10.	Ohm	12:12

11.	Ice Urn	15:10

12.	Teal	11:10

Credits

released August 1, 2025

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at Botany Bay (SC) in 2015 (1-4, 8-12) and White Pillar Workshop (OH) in 2017 (5-7). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Cover photograph taken by Brian in Cleveland, OH, 2015. 2xCD-R photographs taken by Rudolf Kremers (Omni Systems, Eufloria) with analog film in England. This is Milieu Music number AD80, issue #80 in the Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2025. All nights preserved.

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