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Ambient music mixes for a chaotic world
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Tuesday Nov 18, 2014
Tuesday Nov 18, 2014
I love the music of Loscil.
I have been listening to Loscil for ten years and I look forward to new releases more than ever. Loscil made it into my mix of favorite ambient artists and my mix of favorite ambient albums of all time. I consider Loscil music to be perfect ambient/electronic music.
Scott Morgan is the man behind Loscil & he has just released a new album - "Sea Island". I knew I was going to like it even before I heard it and I was right. This new recording is everything you'd expect from a Loscil album with some new twists. In addition to the familiar electronics, the tracks here also utilize vibraphone, voice, violin and piano.
You can stream the album here... SEA ISLAND STREAM.
You can buy it here... SEA ISLAND at KRANKY RECORDS.
The first track on the mix is from "Sea Island". I only included 3 Loscil tunes because posting on Mixcloud only allows 3 tracks from the same artist per mix. So to get around that, sort of, I included a bunch of Loscil remixes in addition to songs that just sounded like they fit.
I hope you like the mix & if you do, support Scott by buying a shitload of his music.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Loscil - Catalina 1943
- 06:20 Rezo Glonti - Sun of Tibati
- 11:00 Heathered Pearls - Beach Shelter(loscil grind remix)
- 14:15 Loscil - Zephyr & Zephyr with strings
- 18:50 Anjou - Readings
- 23:40 Fieldhead - I'm fond of maps
- 26:30 Benoit Pioulard - Florid(Loscil remix)
- 31:35 Marconi Union - Weightless #2
- 38:00 Deep Chord - Red Lantern part 3
- 40:55 Dakota Suite - Things We Lost(Loscil remix)
- 46:50 Ethernet - Into The Woods(Loscil remix)
- 52:05 Loscil - Endless Falls
- 59:08 end
Wednesday Sep 10, 2014
Wednesday Sep 10, 2014
Back in July I featured a guest mix from halftribe. It was an excellent mix & a nice break for me. Well, Ryan Bissett(halftribe) has kindly offered another mix and I jumped at the chance to post it.
This mix is absolutely pure ambient bliss. A beautiful collection perfect for any time of year or any time of day. I've been listening to it at work and have used it as sleep material as well. Give it a listen/download, I'm sure any ambient lover will enjoy this mix.
Also swing by Ryan's halftribe pages:
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00'00 Steiner - Happiness And The Longing For Repetition (Unfinished)
- 05'30 SandStars - Finally Night (Original mix)
- 12'07 Stabilo - Viridity
- 19'00 Brandon Hurtado - Merci Et Bonne Nuit
- 21'50 Massergy - Baptisia
- 27'48 Halftribe - Holy Ground
- 33'25 Rdei - Untitled
- 36'16 SandStars - Cold Voice (Original mix)
- 41'21 Masaya Ozaki - Alkaline Days
- 45'17 Halftribe - The Secret Garden
- 51'10 Gareth Dickson - Harmonics
Saturday Aug 02, 2014
Saturday Aug 02, 2014
You're driving,
and it's dark and it's raining,
and you're on the edge of the city
and you've been driving all night.
And you took a turn back there
but you're not sure it was the right turn.
But you took the turn anyway,
just kept going in that direction.
And somehow it looks sort of familiar,
so you just keep driving.
Hello. Excuse me.
Can you tell me where I am?
You've been on this road before.
You can read the signs.
You can feel your way.
You can do this in your sleep.
This is a mix I did for the good folks at Intergalactic.FM. Head over there for this and a ton of other mixes and radio shows.
Like most of my mixes there is a starting point or inspiration that gets the ball rolling. In this case it was the Laurie Anderson track "Lighting Out For The Territories" from her United States Live album. The cut is so atmospheric and moody. It immediately conjures up images of lonely highways, lonely songs and tires thumping on the pavement.
I had a hard time deciding between cuts that have a lonely country, twangy feel and songs that are more pulsating, driving electronic in nature. In the end I ended up with a little bit of everything. The two tracks with vocals definitely have a lonely, plaintive quality. That same feel is also present in the Daniel Lanois tunes and the instrumental from The Antlers(whose new album is fantastic by the way).
The tracks from Prins Thomas and Brian Reitzell are of the more electronic driving type. Both have an old kraut rock feel to them that I love. A totally different feel is found in pieces by Terminal Sound System and Talvihorros, sort of weird Twins Peaks vibe. Which makes sense because the Talvihorros track is actually the Twin Peaks theme. Most of the rest of the tunes just sort of felt right for a theme of night driving.
Laurie Anderson makes 4 or 5 appearances in the mix. All are variations of the opening track. Usually with other rhythms or road sounds added in.
Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Laurie Anderson - Lighting Out for the Territories
- 02:20 Sparklehorse - Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
- 07:00 London Grammar - Wicked Game(cover)
- 10:30 Laurie Anderson - New Jersey Turnpike
- 11:53 Brian Reitzell - Auto Music 2
- 18:20 Calexico - Hair Like Spanish Moss
- 22:05 Cowboy Junkies - 200 More Miles
- 27:25 Bexar Bexar - n.r.o.t.
- 30:30 Watter - Rustic Fog
- 35:25 Daniel Lanois - New Smoke
- 37:30 The Antlers - Jupiter
- 42:00 Terminal Sound System - Duchamp Falls
- 46:10 Hidden Orchestra - Strange
- 52:30 Prins Thomas - Kavaler
- 57:45 Cliff Martinez - Driving to the Bonaparte
- 58:40 Daniel Lanois - Bell Toll
- 59:55 Talvihorros - Twin Peaks Theme
- 1:03:20 end
Sunday Jul 20, 2014
Sunday Jul 20, 2014
This is one of those mixes where the title pretty much says it all...Summer Sleeps. I found that if I keep titles fairly straight forward and clear that plays on Mixcloud go up a bit.
I listen to music every night when I go to bed. And lately I was getting bored with old sleep mixes so of course the solution is to make a new one. There's not much else to say about this mix, just lay back and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00'00 Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree - From the Fish House
- 06'00 Manual - Last Light
- 10'50 Moon Eye Lids - My Only Moon...
- 18'30 Sonmi451 - Ruis
- 25'20 Budd and Eno - Against the Sky
- 29'00 James Johnson - Entering Twilight
- 37'50 Steinbruchel - Home
- 44'15 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Powers of None
- 48'22 Ruben Garcia - Rainy Day
- 52'20 Tom Heasley - Ground Zero
- 1'00'50 St. Kilda - You Are In Every Dream
- 1'03'53 Tonepoet - So Gently We go
- 1'11'20 Tiny Isles - With Thanks Petal
- 1'15'00 Alio Die and Saffron Wood - The Sleep of Seeds
- 1'18'10 33bowls - Morning
- 1'24'10 James Johnson and Stephen Phillips - Lost at Dunn's Lake
- 1'40'44 end
Sunday Jul 06, 2014
Sunday Jul 06, 2014
The timing on this could be better. I've been very busy lately and haven't been able to do a mix. So it's the perfect time for a guest mix.
This mix comes to us from Ryan Bissett who produces ambient music as Halftribe. What I love about guest mixes is that I'm usually unfamiliar with many of the tracks. And this mix does exactly that. Only two artists were known to me before I heard this mix. Thanks to Ryan for introducing me to even more new music that I'll never have enough time to listen to. LOL!
Halftribe music is one of the discoveries in this mix. Any ambient music fan will appreciate the music of Halftribe. Here are some useful links to Ryan's music...
Thanks for the mix!
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00'00 Halftribe - Excursion 40
- 06'48 Pines - Dowsing Rod
- 09'06 Letna - Koritnik
- 13'22 Ex Confusion - Two Things
- 15'19 Lost Trail - A Stained August For The Jetcrash
- 18'36 Moshimoss - Homeland
- 21'30 Letna - Mokra Gora
- 24'50 Halftribe ft OJWoods - Sleep Song
- 29'10 Sandstars - Separation Anxiety (original mix)
- 32'15 Izzard - Airways
- 35'15 Caught In The Wake Forever - Meditation In Exile #2
- 37'15 Linear Bells - L'Oisseau
- 48'36 Ben Woods - No Word From Above,
- 50'00 Easychord - With Your Feet On The Dash
- 53'20 Tone Color - Drone, 55'09 Milkky Wayy - Drone Me
- 57'52 Zudi - Thank You Mr Karoshi
Saturday Apr 26, 2014
Saturday Apr 26, 2014
I've already done a "Favorite Ambient Albums" mix and a "Favorite Ambient Artists" mix so it makes sense that there would eventually be a "Favorite Ambient Tracks" mix. And here it is.
Ambient music is definitely not a song based genre. I like to remember works as a whole or an artist's work as a whole. There are artists that I absolutely love but can't name more than a handful of specific tunes. So it sort of goes against form to make a list of fav ambient tracks. That being said, when I sat down to make a list there were a few cuts that I immediately knew I wanted in the mix, like Structures From Silence.
This is a looong mix, clocking in at 2 hours and 9 minutes. I wanted to let some of the longer tracks breathe, even if I couldn't play the entire 28 minutes of Structures.
Here's a few thoughts on the tunes that made the cut...
The first track in the mix is a beautiful watery tune, Submarine Poetry, from krill.minima. I used this one as the first cut in my first "sea" mix and every time I play that mix I marvel at how perfect this tune is.
Next up is Lantern Marsh by Brian Eno. I could have filled this entire mix with Eno favorites but I had to try and limit myself somehow. I love On Land and this cut pretty much sums up that wonderful album for me.
Track number three is Lear by Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis and Pauline Oliveros. I'm curious as to how widely known the album Deep Listening is. This is not classic Eno or Roach ambient. The recording took place inside a huge cistern which is responsible for its tremendous reverb. The unusual instruments of accordion, trombone, didgeridoo and voice use the acoustics of the cistern to create long sustained drones. The effect is hypnotic & beautiful.
The fourth cut is the previously mentioned Steve Roach track, Structures From Silence. A lot of ambient music doesn't really have a recognizable melody but this song is about as close as you'll get. I've been listening to this one for a loooooong time and never seem to tire of it.
Next is Peter Gabriel's The Nest That Sailed The Sky from the Ovo album. The album is pretty hit and miss but this tune is gorgeous.
Another Eno tune drops next and its Drift from the Apollo album. There several cuts on this album that could make a lot of great ambient lists but I just like this song because it reminds me of the scenes it was used with in the film For All Mankind. If you haven't seen the film do so asap!
The next cut has been a sleep time favorite for years. It's A Smooth Surface by A Produce. I love all the space between notes. It doesn't really change much over the course of a long track, but that's what I love about it.
I have a special place in my ambient heart for the eighth track, Silence Speaks In Shadows, because it was recorded not far from where I live here in Wisconsin. Paul Vnuk Jr. recorded environmental sounds near his studio in Cudahy. Those sounds included thunderstorms, street noise, trains and even a police siren wailing in the night. Combine those field recordings with some droney synths & you've got a great night time atmospheric piece.
The Most Beautiful Blue by Eluder is the next cut. This is a track that I didn't realize how much I liked it until I realized that it kept showing up in mixes & playlists. Similar to Submarine Poetry, it has that great ocean/sea feel to it that I love.
This next cut, Diamond Cove, is from a favorite artist of mine, Kyle Bobby Dunn. It's from his album Bring Me The Head Of Kyle Bobby Dunn. Just like Eno I could pick a bunch of KBD songs to put in this kind of mix but I settled on this one because I like its simplicity.
The KBD song segues nicely into the Olancha Farewell by Harold Budd. I didn't know how much I loved this track until I recently heard for the first time in years. Normally when I think of Harold Budd I think of piano but this track is just too beautiful to keep out of this mix. It's similar in feel to the KBD song that precedes it and to Rhubarb by Aphex Twin. Olancha Farewell is from the album Lovely Thunder.
The Marsen Jules song, Oeillet Sauvage, is similar in feel to the A Produce track from earlier in the mix. It has lots of space in between notes, which I love.
The third Eno song in the mix shows up next. It's 1/1 from Music for Airports. I remember buying this on vinyl the day it was released back in 1978. I had come to Eno through David Bowie so I knew of some of his quieter stuff on Low and Before and After Science. But I was unprepared for the deliberate repetition and slowness of Music for Airports. It blew me away. This album has remained a favorite to this day.
After Eno we move on to Mark Rownd - Painting Twilight. I hesitated to put this track in because the album as a whole treads very close to new age territory. But I sort of fell for this album back when it was released in 1998 and it has stayed with me. Especially the title track, Painting Twilight. Its got that ebb and flow, breathing quality that I go for.
Next up is the classic Aphex Twin cut, Rhubarb from Selected Ambient Works, Vol.II. I read somewhere once that this cut should be the theme song form the monolith in 2001:A Space Odyssey.
The next cut is even more Eno music, this time in the form of the Budd/Eno tune, An Echo Of Night from The Pearl. A great atmospheric tune that would fit well on Eno's On Land.
One of my favorite ambient albums of the last ten years is Butterfly by Disturbed Earth. First released on Atmoworks in 2012, it was originally recorded in 1977 using a Fripp-style two reel to reel set up. I love ambient guitar in general and this one just hits the sweet spot of ambient guitar, ebb and flow, and classic sound and fell.
I'm not sure how many folks would put this next track on their best of all time lists. If I were hearing this cut, The Path Not Taken by Thom Brennan, for the first time today I'm sure if I would like it as much as I do. I know that part of my love for this track is wrapped in the time I discovered it back in the mid 90s when tribal ambient was a big deal. I've pretty much stepped away from the tribal stuff now, but this track still gets me every time.
We reach the end of this epic mix with Fripp & Eno - Evening Star, the title track from Evening Star. I know, more Eno. But I couldn't resist this one. Beautiful cut, perfect end for a favorite mix.
Wow! That's easily the most I've ever written for a mix post. Hope that didn't bore you to death. I wasn't planning on a track by track essay but I started talking about a few and it just took off. Anyway I hope you enjoy this mix I much as I did.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 krill.minima - Submarine Poetry
- 07:25 Brian Eno - Lantern Marsh
- 11:50 Stuart Dempster & Panaiotis & Pauline Oliveros - Lear
- 20:15 Steve Roach - Structures from Silence
- 28:40 Peter Gabriel - The Nest That Sailed The Sky
- 33:00 Brian Eno - Drift
- 35:25 A Produce - A Smooth Surface(deep meditation version)
- 46:15 Paul Vnuk - Silence Speaks in Shadows
- 53:30 Eluder - The Most Beautiful Blue
- 58:15 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Diamond Cove
- 01:01:20 Harold Budd - Olancha Farewell
- 03:20 Marsen Jules - Oeillet Sauvage
- 09:00 Brian Eno - Music for Airports 1/1
- 19:00 Mark Rownd - Painting Twilight
- 24:30 Aphex Twin - Rhubarb
- 31:00 Budd & Eno - An Echo of Night
- 33:05 Disturbed Earth - Butterfly
- 45:30 Thom Brennan - The Path Not Taken
- 02:01:30 Fripp & Eno - Evening Star
- 02:08:54 end
Sunday Mar 09, 2014
Sunday Mar 09, 2014
One of the benefits of making & posting mixes for all these years is getting to know some like-minded folks from around the world. One of those is my good friend, Jason O'Gorman, from the city of Cork in Ireland.
Jason did a guest mix for me way back in 2008. Wow, typing that just made me realize that Low Light Mixes has been around for a long time - 8 years this month, an eternity in internet years.
Anyway, back to Jason. You can find his 2008 mix called Satellite here... Satellite. I really like that mix and have always wanted Jason to do another. And now, 6 years later, we have "Across the Water." Jason describes it this way - "There's a lot of contrast in this mix due to the theme, but it still flows. The mix is a 'journey' across an ambient ocean, to dark and beautiful places."
When I listen to my own mixes I always hear every transition which at times can distract from the music. But with Jason's mix I get lost in the flow as one tunes blends into the next. I love not knowing what's coming next. Jason's mix does is wonderful at transporting you from one place to another. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have. And hopefully Jason won't another 6 years to produce another gem.
Cheers
T R A C K L I S T:
- 00:00 King Creosote & John Hopkins: First watch
- 02:10 Mountains: Sand
- 05:20 Stephan Mathieu: Promenade
- 08:30 Ólafur Arnalds: Carry me anew
- 10:07 Ólafur Arnalds: We (too) shall rest
- 11:10 Apparat: K&F Thema (pizzicato)
- 13:45 Lustmord: Babel
- 17:45 Eluvium: Warm
- 22:00 Mer-A: Aeolis Mons
- 28:30 Mowgli: Canaan
- 29:20 Ólafur Arnalds: Sudden throw
- 32:35 White Moth Black Butterfly:Reluctance
- 33:40 The Fun Years: Re: We're again buried under
- 35:45 Goldmund: Downward to darkness on extend
- 38:30 Mulm: Mørke
- 41:50 Lustmord: Chorazin
- 46:10 Murcof: Oort 1
- 48:40 Bvdub & Loscil: Hespiredes
- 53:00 Mer-A: Quasi Stellar
- 56:10 Apparat: 44 (noise version)
- 57:55 Apparat: 44
- 60:55 Lustmord: Goetia
- 63:30 Mountains: Circular C
- 69:00 Jasper TX & Anduin: Walking in snow
Sunday Feb 02, 2014
Sunday Feb 02, 2014
stirring up the dust
ghosts from the past whisper in
grooves of forever
There's a first for this blog - vinyl haiku. I was looking for ways to describe this mix and as I collected expressive words, the list started to take on it's own poetic quality. So I thought, what the heck, I'll just formalize it into an actual haiku. It was fun, I haven't written any sort of silly haiku in years.
Anyway, the haiku fits this mix because the music is all dusty and scratchy. It all has a old vinyl feel to it. It some cases it has that feel because the music really is old, like early 1900s old. Two of the tracks are actually old Edison cylinder recordings. I searched through old recordings at archive.org for music that would blend well with the other ambient & neo-classical tracks in this mix.
I've done two previous mixes in this style - Sustain & Decay and Revenants of the Past. A lot of ambient music makes use of noise, distortion, scratches, glitches, hiss & pops so the actual old recordings fit in nicely. There are six old recordings that appear in the final mix. Most of the ambient cuts are of fairly recent vintage.
I like the title for this mix because the word "score" takes on a double meaning as in a musical soundtrack as well as trench, channel or groove in a vinyl record or cylinder.
Enjoy the pops & hisses.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 1956 RCA Victor Vinyl Records Educational Documentary
- 00:30 Arturo Toscanini - Romeo & Juliet Overture(Pt-1)1946
- 01:25 The Caretaker - Mental Caverns Without Sunshine
- 01:45 e and i - known things
- 03:50 Maps & Diagrams - Longitudinal Vibration
- 07:20 Billow Observatory - Helsinki Radio
- 08:50 Tim Hecker - Sketch 6
- 10:00 e and i - tiniest smile
- 11:11 Philip Jeck - chime again
- 14:05 Edison Bohemian Orchestra Lacinquantaine Cylinder Recording
- 15:15 Ten and Tracer - By Twirling the Quicksphere
- 18:00 Tape Loop Orchestra - The Word On My Lips Is Your Name
- 19:50 Philip Jeck - Wipe
- 23:15 Benoît Pioulard - Pidgin
- 24:25 Mozart 'Gavotte in G' from 'Idomeneo' (1912)
- 25:25 The Humble Bee - The Collecting Plate
- 26:25 Part Timer - Undead part 1
- 30:15 The Caretaker - Mental Caverns Without Sunshine
- 31:00 Semiramide Overture 1912
- 35:05 Maya Beiser - Time Loops
- 37:25 From The Mouth of The Sun - Color Loss
- 42:42 The Caretaker - A Last Glimpse Of The Land
- 45:15 Tape Loop Orchestra - The Word On My Lips Is Your Name
- 51:25 Albert Spalding - Thais(violin) Edison blue amberol cylinder
- 52:30 The Humble Bee - Fin
- 54:07 end
Friday Jan 17, 2014
Friday Jan 17, 2014
This mix is a rare treat. It's a guest mix from Chris Fraley. I know Chris through correspondence and postings at the Hypnos Forum.
I've been a member of the
forum for a long time and I really enjoy the community there. In this
time of social networks and twitter it's nice to see that a classic
forum still survives and thrives, mainly because of a shared love of
ambient music. Activity there ebbs and flows but there's always
interesting topics and people hanging out.
As I said, I know Chris
through the forum and as the two of us have similar tastes, I offered
him the opportunity to do a mix for the blog. He was hesitant at first
because he'd never done something like this before. But he decided to
give it a shot and I'm very glad he did.
Chris said he "ended up making a mix based on some of the recent (2012 or later) neo-classical
music that embodies the spirit of ambient and experimental acoustics." The result is perfect.
I hope this is just the first of more guest mixes we may see from Chris.
Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T:
- 00:00 Field Rotation - The Repetition of History
- 05:15 Ekca Liena and Spheruleus - Scrambling Radiosonde
- 09:11 From the Mouth of the Sun - Sitting in a Roofless Room
- 12:00 Orla Wren - Five Acre Ladder (Reprise)
- 15:20 Antonymes - Misshapen Beauty [ii]
- 20:40 The Seaman and the Tattered Sail - Her Whispers
- 26:15 Christoph Berg - Coda
- 30:14 end
Saturday Dec 14, 2013
Saturday Dec 14, 2013
I love dubby ambient. I think this is my third dub mix this year. I'm sure I'll grow tired of this style of music but for now I'm soaking it in. It was snowing while I made this mix & the music just seemed to fit the winter mood. Hence the name "A Winter's Dub."
Many of the tracks in this mix came from Bandcamp. As a matter of fact, all the links in the tracklist are to Bandcamp pages. I love Bandcamp. So easy & convenient. And great for discovering new music. I bought a bunch of stuff this year by following other folks & sampling we they buy.
Here is my Bandcamp collection for anyone that's interested.
Enjoy the dub!
T R A C K L I S T
- 00:00 The Sight Below - Further Away
- 05:20 Optical Frameworks - Flicker Platform, Luses
- 09:40 Adam Michalak - Immersed in Dreams
- 16:35 Axs - Frozen Signpost
- 24:30 Blamstrain - Tundra I
- 32:50 VidasM - Mire
- 37:20 Sen - Soul Rain
- 41:40 Vectrex - Silent
- 46:50 krill.minima - Surface from the Groundless Oceans
- 53:40 Seaman & The Tattered Sail - Matter & Light
- 1:00:50 Seas - Arctic
- 1:11:50 Optical Frameworks - One Semitone
- 1:18:00 Marco Madia - Music for Plants
- 1:20:25 Blamstrain - Sunday Dub 6pm
- 1:25:20 The Nautilus Project - The Enchanting Forest
- 1:41:20 end