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Ambient music mixes for a chaotic world
Episodes
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
Friday Dec 06, 2013
Friday Dec 06, 2013
I know this is not the best time of year for sitting out side and stargazing. At least not here in Wisconsin. But I haven't done a stargazing mix in a long time so i thought I'd throw this out there.
The piece that got me started on this mix isn't an actual song. It's NASA's Voyager spacecraft recording the sound of interstellar space. Voyager's plasma wave instrument detected the vibrations of dense interstellar plasma, or ionized gas, from October to November 2012 and April to May 2013. You can find the recording here... Voyager.
I couldn't resist using that sound as a launch pad for this mix. The rest is pretty straight forward ambient/space music. For some strange reason I felt compelled to make this mix nearly 2 hours long. If you want to lay outside for two hours & gaze at the night sky in the middle of December, better bring some scotch & an electric blanket. ;)
Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 NASA Voyager recording of interstellar space
- 00:40 Loscil - Second Narrows Specta Ciera Version
- 03:30 Ishq - Globular Cluster
- 07:30 Harmony & Decay - Hypnotic Sequence
- 12:40 Eluder - The Event Horizon
- 14:50 Marsen Jules - A Room Full of History
- 19:15 Marconi Union - Always Numb
- 23:40 Porzellan - Floating Reception
- 24:30 Sonmi451 - Omicron Ceti
- 29:30 Loscil - ss1.2 unit circle
- 32:50 Wouter Veldhuis - Blue Forest I
- 36:00 Variant - Thru the Cosmos(ison + spica)
- 43:33 Brian Eno - Surf Birds
- 46:10 Mark Rownd - Place of Grace
- 52:20 Kissy Suzuki - rubbish & Beauties part 1
- 56:30 Altus - Floating Free
- 1:00:40 Diatonis - Whiring Above Our Heads
- 1:04:15 A Produce - Inner Sanctum
- 1:12:00 Aglaia - Dust Across the Border
- 1:15:30 Christopher Short - Unknown Constellation #2
- 1:22:30 Fripp & Eno - Meissa
- 1:29:10 Ithaca Trio - Catching Monkeys
- 1:34:00 Steve Roach - Deep Sky Time
- 1:41:10 Sylken - Sleepless
- 1:50:10 Deepchord - Driftwood
- 1:51:10 Vidna Obmana - Night Blooming
- 1:57:49 end
Friday Oct 25, 2013
Friday Oct 25, 2013
About a year ago I did a mix of my favorite ambient artists of all time. I have been meaning to do a mix of my favorite ambient albums of all time ever since. And now here it is.
I did not go back and look at my favorite artist list. I sorted through my ambient collection and came up with my fav albums. Then I compared the two lists and not surprisingly they are almost identical. Basically I substituted Scott Solter for Alio Die when I made the fav album list. At least I didn't repeat any tunes from one mix to the next.
Choosing a favorite album from some of these artists was difficult. Steve Roach has some many recordings that it was tough to know where to start but I kept coming back to the one that gets the most play and that is "The Dream Circle." I wonder how many other folks like this album as much as I do. I'm not e really sure why I like it more than his other releases, it definitely sounds similar to a lot of his other output. I guess over the years it's become like a comfy sweatshirt.
Stars of the Lid & Eno were both hard to choose a favorite as well. With SOTL I ended up going with the album that I first discovered them with. In choosing "On Land" from Eno I really could have just flipped a coin to choose between it and "Music for Airports," "Apollo" and "Music for Films."
The one favorite that probably doesn't make a lot of lists is "One River" by Scott Solter. Using mostly processed guitars this album ebbs & flows beautifully from one tracks to the next. I was happy to see that it's available on Bandcamp, although it's one long track instead of separate tracks like the original. You can find it HERE.
Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Scott Solter - Cypress Road from One River
- 04:38 Stars of the Lid - Dust Breeding from Avec Laudenum
- 11:45 Maps & Diagrams - Honeycomb Archipelago from Get Lost
- 14:45 Brian Eno - Unfamiliar Wind(leeks hills) from On Land
- 19:25 Loscil - Lucy Dub from First Narrows
- 25:25 Sonmi451 - Orange from Spectrum
- 31:00 Steve Roach - The Dream Circle from The Dream Circle
- 40:45 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Empty Gazing from A Young Person's Guide to
- 46:35 Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Against the Sky from The Pearl
- 50:00 William Basinski - 1.2 from The Disintegration Loops
- 1:01:00 end
Sunday Sep 08, 2013
Sunday Sep 08, 2013
found a cool clip on YouTube from the Beatles Abbey Road album. It is the 16 minute medley that closes the album but it's only the vocals. It's fascinating to listen to familiar vocals in a new way. Here's a link to the YouTube clip... Abbey Road vocals.
The vocals for "The Sun King" caught my attention and I thought they'd make a nice start to a new Sunday morning mix. I couldn't resist messing with the track a little bit so I slowed it down and mixed part of that slowed down track under the normal one I like the way the sowed track fills the space between vocals. Then I brought the slow track up full to finish off The Sun King. It's really kind of amazing how beautiful the track still sounds even when slowed way down.
As I was adding tracks to the mix I stumbled upon the Sun Kil Moon song "Sunshine in Chicago" and it hit me that the mix should revolve around the sun. So every song on the tracklist has "sun" in the title.
I love using a keyword to narrow a musical search because it always turns up cuts I had completely forgotten about. In this case I was very excited to have dug up "Eternity's Sunrise" from the "Children of Men" score. I'm pretty happy with how this "sunny" mix turned out.
Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 The Beatles - The Sun King(vocals only)
- 01:51 Lights Out Asia - Birds Sing Sun-Rising Hymns
- 04:55 Jon Hopkins - Sun Harmonics
- 12:10 Phosphorescent - Sun, Arise
- 15:05 Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Painted Sun in Abstract
- 18:00 Boards of Canada - Turquoise Hexagon Sun
- 23:00 Popol Vuh - Morning Sun
- 26:17 Alexi Murdoch - Towards the Sun
- 30:25 Ben Howard - Under the Same Sun
- 32:45 M. Ostermeier - Sunlight on My Desk
- 35:15 Underworld - capa meets the sun
- 37:00 Max Richter - Sunlight
- 42:28 Jon Hopkins - The Wider Sun
- 44:48 John Tavener - Eternity's Sunrise
- 47:10 Vir Unis - Infinite Sun
- 50:20 David Sylvian - Sunlight seen through towering trees
- 52:55 The Seven Fields Of Aphelion - Sunburst Chemicals
- 55:33 Sun Kil Moon - Sunshine in Chicago
- 57:55 The Beatles - The Sun King
- 1:00:20 end
Sunday Jul 28, 2013
Sunday Jul 28, 2013
Sometime around 2001 I discovered the album Tides by Arovane. I'm not sure if it qualifies as "post-digital" or "blip hop" or "micro" music but it was through that album that I began a brief love affair with the style of music known as "glitch."
I have always loved electronic & ambient music but at the end of the 1990s I had lost interest in berlin style electronics and mostly listened to straight ambient. But with the emergence of glitch, and it's use of complicated beats, noise and samples, I found a new rhythmic electronic music to dive into.
The biggest purveyor of glitch music back then was the Mille Plateaux label. With their Click & Cuts series they introduced me to a whole new range of sound in music. There is definitely a lot of music from that time period that, while interesting, could become annoying as well. I'm not a fan of loud and aggressive glitch. I definitely am more in tune with the sort of stuff put out by 12k.
Over time I grew tired of much of the glitch scene and the never ending little pops & clicks & wee little sounds intruding on the music. Although I still enjoy much of 12k music.
Recently I was organizing some of my collection & revisited some old glitch material. I found that I am still very fond of some of it. I started collecting tracks for this mix and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
So this mix is a little step back in time to the early 2000s. A small glitch in the passing of time to when glitch ruled, for me anyway.
Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Arovane - Tides (2000)
- 04:45 Carpet Musics - Phone Lines (2001)
- 08:24 Clickits - No Clickedy (2003)
- 11:35 Xela - Impulsive Behavior (2002)
- 15:30 offthesky - Down the Stream (2005)
- 20:50 Shuttle358 - I'm Not Afraid (2003)
- 25:05 Twerk - From Brown to Green (2003)
- 29:55 Jan Jelinek - Facelift (2003)
- 34:55 Bexar Bexar - Kt (2002)
- 38:30 Christopher Willits - The Seaweed Machine (2003)
- 40:45 Christian Kleine - Several (2002)
- 47:15 Arovane - Ambelio (1999)
- 52:20 Shuttle358 - Calty (2000)
- 57:11 end
Sunday Jun 23, 2013
Sunday Jun 23, 2013
Sunday Jun 16, 2013
Sunday Jun 16, 2013
