low light mixes

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Ambient music mixes for a chaotic world

Episodes

Sunday Jul 09, 2017

Floating Through Moonlight

Sunday Jul 09, 2017

My musical friend, Paul Asbury Seaman, has given us another gift in this beautiful collection. Paul picked out the tunes and the order & I stitched them together to form the mix. It was a joy to assemble.

Here's what Paul had to say about the mix:

"This is another bedtime, dreaming, unwinding, floating-away-on-an-interior-journey mix. The starting inspiration came from Michael DeMaria’s piece, “Moonlight” from his 2004 album The River. I was so struck by how precisely the music evoked the image of moonlight on water. I have always been drawn to rivers and from the early days of ambient/electronic music more than forty years ago, with the likes of Kitaro and Tangerine Dream, I have described this genre as “journey music”—Silk Road journeys, interstellar journeys and journeys down a moonlit river."

Thanks to Paul for another Stellar collection of tunes.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Byron Metcalf - As Clouds Dance(Inner Rhythm Meditations
07:40 Erik Wollo - Sepia(Blue Radiance)
10:45 Meg Bowles - Between, Shadows and Prayers(From the Dark Earth)
14:20 Michel Banabila - Sana's(Float)
18:55 Michel Banabila - Fragments of Memory(Float)
25:40 Michael DeMaria - Moonlight(The River)
35:20 Michael DeMaria - Moonlit Sea(In the Flow)
37:35 Erik Wollo - Revealed in Time(Ble Radiance)
41:30 Darshan Ambient - Tears to Rain(Songs From The Deep Field)
43:45 Meg Bowles - Undulant Sea(The Shimmering Land)
48:15 Erik Wollo - Blue Radiance(Blue Radiance)
52:13 end

Friday Jun 30, 2017

Juno Spacecraft - Mission to Jupiter

Friday Jun 30, 2017

I'm a space science dork. I have NASA t-shirts, a large print of the moon in my office, read sci-fi and I make space/science themed music mixes. Here are links to a few that I've done in the past:

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-god-particle.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2011/11/launch-of-curiosity.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/08/music-for-mars-landing-curiosity-edl.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2013/12/deep-sky-time-music-for-stargazing-2013.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2008/09/sea-of-stars.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-stars-my-destination.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2006/03/

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2017/01/sci-fi-soundtracks.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/08/music-for-perseid-meteor-shower.html

Yikes, that was more than I thought and I may have missed a few.

This new mix fits right in with my love of all things NASA and my love of electronic music. What sets this one apart is the sequencing of the tracks. The titles of the tracks take you on the Juno mission from start to finish. Going from "We Launch Tonight" to "Arrival" to "Ganymede" to "Cloud Shaping" to "The Last Message."

The Juno Spacecraft was launched in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in 2016. It's been taking amazing pics and gathering data while in orbit.

After completing over a years worth of orbits and close fly bys, Juno will plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere and burn up, sending data back for as long as possible.

This mix attempts to tell the story of Juno on it's mission to Jupiter and it's moons.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Saul Stokes - We Launch Tonight
01:20 Tycho - Ascension
05:20 Lunar Testing Lab - Inertia
06:30 Robert Scott Thompson - Trajectory
08:10 Tangerine Dream - Astral Voyager
14:00 Johann Johannsson - Arrival
16:15 Erstlaub - Jupiter
19:35 36 - Drift Orbit
23:45 Lights Out in Asia - All these worlds are yours
26:04 Lights Out in Asia - Except Europa
30:00 Lights Out in Asia - Attempt no landings there
36:00 Amon Tobin - Encounter On Io
38:08 Harold Budd & Clive Wright - Procession of Moons
39:40 Boc Scadet - Ganymede
42:10 Wally Jericho - Callisto 1.0
44:45 Sufjan Stevens, James McAlister, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly - Tides
45:30 Saul Stokes - Cloud Shaping
49:45 Lunar Testing Lab - Ocean of Storms
51:10 Unknown - The Great Red Spot
51:55 David Wenngren & Christopher Bissonnette - Burn Like a Meteor and Leave No Dust
53:36 Echolab - Secrets of Jupiter
54:15 John Murphy - The Last Message
55:47 end

Sunday May 21, 2017

Ocean Echoes

Sunday May 21, 2017

The Ocean is a mighty harmonist.

- William Wordsworth

This is pretty straight forward - a collection of tunes that will make you feel as if you are drifting along on ocean currents. Almost all of the ocean sounds in this mix are in the original pieces of music. I only added a bit of wave sounds around the 39 minute mark. Enjoy the float.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Alonefold - Wanderer & Stone(Wanderer & Stone 2014)
07:31 Riverrun - Conover Beacon(Romer Shoal 2016)
11:15 Keenya - Remember Smiles(Moment Invisible 2016)
14:35 Helios - Ebb/Flow(Rememberance 2016)
18:18 Igneous Flame - North Sea Siren(Ocean Sighs 2016)
22:05 Gareth Davis - Filament(Filament 2016)
30:40 Brian Eno - The Secret Place(Apollo 1983)
33:20 Urenga - Seafloor(Undercurrents 2015)
39:15 Billow Observatory - Plum(Plains/Patterns 2017)
44:20 Barry Lynn - Alpha Tauri(Taurus Tapes Vol. II 2017)
46:36 Dolphins Into The Future - Lone Voyager(On Sea-Faring Isolation 2009)
54:15 Riverrun - Dubos Point(Romer Shoal 2016)
77:00 end

Tuesday May 16, 2017

Vox Eterna - A Wordless Hymn to a Luminous World

Tuesday May 16, 2017

I'm not sure where this mix originated. It may have started with Johann Johannsson's Kangaru from the Arrival soundtrack, God knows I listened to that a ton over the last 6 months. Maybe it was Max Richter.

Whatever it was I found myself collecting vocal tunes. The kind of tracks that have vocals but many times no words or lyrics. If there are words it's usually unintelligible or a language like Latin. Once I gathered enough music then wa-lah here's an ethereal vocal mix.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Max Richter - Sketch for a Portrait #1(Morgan OST 2016)
01:06 Olafur Arnalds - Raddir(Island Songs 2016)
05:00 Ashera - Lullaby for Mother Earth(Ambient Selections 1997)
08:00 Tim Hecker - Utropics(An Imaginary Country 2009)
08:53 Jonsi & Alex - Boy 1904(Riceboy Sleeps 2009)
11:30 Jim Cole - Astral(Godspace 2002)
15:18 Jim Cole - The Way Beyond #10(The Way Beyond 2003)
17:30 Brian Eno - 2-1(Music for Airports 1978)
22:30 Melanie Pappenheim and Jocelyn Pook - Blow the Wind/Pie Jesu(Deluge 2009)
24:50 Max Richter - Path 5(Sleep 2016)
31:00 Johann Jphannsson - Odi Et Amo(Englaborn 2002)
33:50 Murcof & Vanessa Wagner - Farewell, O World, O Earth(Statea 2016)
41:00 Peter Gabriel - Dressing the Wound(Birdy 1985)
44:20 Alio Die & Amelia Cuni - Churning the Ocean(Apsaras 2001)
49:20 Johann Johannsson - Kangaru(Arrival 2016)
51:50 Jon Anderson - Bless This(Global Communication Remix)(The Deseo Remixes 1995)
57:44 Trio Mediaeval & Arve Henriksen - St. Birgitta Hymn(Rimur 2017)
61:48 Voces8 - Vasks: The Fruits Of Silence(Winter 2016)
66:30 end

Monday May 01, 2017

The Memory of Trains

Monday May 01, 2017

I wonder why the sound of trains is so evocative. Even for folks who have never been on a train there is something about the sound of a train on the tracks that stirs the imagination. This mix will hopefully have the same effect.

I was surprised to find that I've only done two previous train themed mixes. It sure seems like I've done more. Maybe it's the use of train sounds in filed recording mixes that has me confused. Anyway, here are the two previous mixes...

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2014/08/leaving-station.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/01/points-of-departure.html

This mix began with a recommendation from a follower on Mixcloud, Paul Asbury Seaman. I asked for any other train tunes he could suggest and he came through in a big way. He did all the hard work and mapped out the whole mix for me. I had a great time mixing it and discovering new music along the way.

Here's what Paul had to say about the mix...

"Berlin School synth/electronica can be pretty kinetic and thus an obvious source for a train mix, but I was going for a more melancholy sound, the wistful feeling evoked by the sound of Far Away Trains Passing By (the title of the Ulrich Schnauss album represented here). My working title for this mix was "Locomotive Lullaby."

While I was on the subject, I made a list of classic train songs (the sung kind) and came up with more than sixty--about three CDs worth! Here's a great article to start your playlist with: http://harpers.org/blog/2014/06/the-twenty-three-best-train-songs-ever-written-maybe/ Or contact Low Light Mixes for a copy of mine. Thanks, new friend Dave, for putting this together."

Thanks Paul, for all work on this excellent mix! I still have more tracks to use so the next train mix will be more jazzy.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Erik Wollo - Church Mountain(Different Spaces 2017)
04:04 Johan Agebjörn - Sleepless On The Kostomuksha-Petrozavodsk Night Train(We Never Came to the White Sea 2017)
10:20 Between Interval - On Track(Legacy 2017)
13:10 David Parsons - The Himgiri(Yatra 1990)
18:40 Ulrich Schnauss - Nothing Happens in June(Far Away Trains Passing By...2001)
24:25 Ascendant - Ephemeris(Source Transmission 2014)
31:30 Mark Ward - Universal(Universal 2017)
40:15 Hollan Holmes - Enduro(The Spirits of Starlight 2014)
46:25 Erik Wollo - Rundreise(Different Spaces 2017)
51:05 Al Gromer Khan - Stamboul Train(Turya 2006)
62:15 end

Saturday Apr 22, 2017

Pale Blue Dot - Earth Day 2017

Saturday Apr 22, 2017

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."

- Carl Sagan

I have always loved Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" essay. It's even better hearing his voice reading it. In the Cosmos reboot from a couple of years ago, when they played a clip of Carl I actually cried. Yes, I am a huge dork. So needless to say, Sagan reading about the pale blue dot gets me every time.

There are a ton of videos on youtube combining his quotes with music & images. Some are quite good, some use horrible cheesy music or hokey stock photos. I thought, heck I'm a video editor, I'll make my own video. But then I realized how sometimes the images can detract from the prose.

So I decided to combine Sagan's Pale Blue Dot with one of my all-time favorite pieces of music - Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight." The next step was to use that mashup to lead off a mix dedicated to Earth Day 2017 & the coinciding March for Science. If you look at the track titles the theme is obvious.

I eventually did make a video to go with the mashup. But it's just one image. It's a pic taken by the Cassini spacecraft from just beyond Saturn. It's Pale Blue Dot 2.0 if you will. The video is just one long slow pull from earth out to the full image.

Take a look here...

Enjoy the mix, Earth Day and remember - Science not Silence.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Carl Sagan & Max Richter - Pale Blue Dot & On the Nature of Daylight
05:05 Jim Cole & Spectral Voices - Hear Earth
08:00 Steve Roach - On This Planet
15:20 Map & Diagrams - Particles of Earth
18:10 A Small Good Thing - Scorched Earth
23:15 Adam Pacione - Warming Trend
25:27 Shuttle358 - Melt
30:10 Jeff Greinke - Changing Skies
32:50 Brian Eno - Climate Study
35:30 J. Ralph - The Glaciers Are Telling
37:20 Michael Brook - Earth Alone
39:20 Mathias Grassow - Planetary Consciousness
43:45 Lav & Purl - Earthship
49:50 Robert Scott Thompson - Pale Blue Dot
65:00 end

Sunday Apr 16, 2017

Guitarissimo

Sunday Apr 16, 2017

I love moody guitar music with a bit of dust and twang. In an earlier mix, Mysterioso, I included a cut by Dead Combo. Their music was new to me. I was interested to learn from a listener that they are from Portugal and have achieved cult status there.

That listener directed me to a mix he'd done with a Dead Combo track. I love the mix, you find it here... https://www.mixcloud.com/jorgempaulino/here-it-begins/ His other mixes are excellent as well.

After hearing that mix I just knew I had to create a guitar based mix that was a bit spaghetti western and dusty, moody, twangy with a little Latin feel. The result is this new mix - Guitarissimo. I stole that title from an album by Roxy Music guitarist, Phil Manzanera, who also has a track in the mix. I tried not to steal too much from the "Here It Begins" mix but I just had to use the Yo La Tengo song from that mix in this one too.

I really like how this turned out and I hope to do a follow up sometime.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Dead Combo - Aquele Beijo Eterno
01:50 Ry Cooder - Paris, TX
04:15 Daniel Lanois - Satie
08:14 Yo La Tengo - Green Arrow
13:18 Ocelote Rojo - Untitled #1
15:55 Phil Manzanera - Criollo
20:42 Calexico - The news about William
23:10 TSU! - The Sun Club
26:10 David Sylvian - Silver Moon Over Sleeping Steeples
27:55 Matt Borghi - Truth and Being
32:20 The MDH Band - Bathtub
33:15 Eraldo Bernocchi and Prakash Sontakke - From Star to Star
38:15 Dead Combo - Quando a alma nao e pequena
40:50 Brian Eno - Weightless
45:00 Cyber Zen Sound Engine - No East, No West
50:30 Danial Lanois - Plains of Abraham
52:43 William Ryan Fritch - Siri Song
54:38 Peals - Blue Elvis
59:03 Calexico - Amor Adolescente
59:40 Dead Combo - Ana
61:55 TSU! - Dadebe
63:50 One Mile North - Parents Arrive
69:22 end

Sunday Apr 09, 2017

Sunday Morning Music vol. 14 - Early Bird

Sunday Apr 09, 2017

I haven't done a Sunday morning mix in quite a while so volume 14 solves that problem.

This follows the usual Sunday morning mix template of a few vocal tunes, some ambient tunes and a bit of jazz. I was happy to finally use Shenandoah in a mix. More than a year ago I was at a local high school spring concert and fell in love with the concert band version of this tune. I know it may sound out of place in a Low Light mix but I think it's beauty fits well with the Sunday morning series.

In addition to Shenandoah there is new music from Hite, Grails, The Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society, Clocolan and fairly new music from Radiohead & Olafur Arnalds. And a nice old classic from Max Roach & Clifford Brown.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Olafur Arnalds - Particles
03:48 Grails - Rebecca
07:10 Sarah Neufeld & Colin Stetson - And still they move
09:56 Frank Ticheli - Shenandoah
16:20 Dan Romer & Benh Zeitlin - Once there was a hushpuppy
22:48 Fripp & Eno - Evening Star(The Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society interpretation)
28:57 Clocolan - Obsolete Advancement
34:25 Orchestre National de Jazz - Révolution
43:20 Clifford Brown & Max Roach - Delilah
51:02 The Still - The Early Bird
58:42 Hite - Old Crow
62:15 Radiohead - True Love Waits
66:52 end

Saturday Apr 01, 2017

Off_Worlder

Saturday Apr 01, 2017

One of my favorite things about making these mixes for ten years is the people I've come in contact with. I stay in touch with folks from Ireland, The Netherlands, Canada, Brazil or just down the road in Chicago.

This mix comes from one these online friends, Josh Furey. He did a previous guest mix for Low Light Mixes called Cartridge, which you can find here...

Cartridge - an 8-bit Adventure He recently reached out about a new mix & I of course jumped at the chance to showcase another of his mixes.

I'll let Josh tell you about it...

As a relative newcomer to ambient music in 2012, I was immensely lucky to stumble across Low Light Mixes. It can be pretty overwhelming when you start to explore a new genre of music and over the years Low Light Mixes has supplied me with a wildly diverse mix of ambient music to enjoy while also serving as an amazing resource for the genre music that now dominates any playlist I put together.

If you are a frequent listener to Low Light you will recognize a lot of the artists I chose for this mix and hopefully there are some new names for you to check out as well. Off Worlder is my way of saying thank you to Dave for introducing me to so many amazing artists over the years and keeping Low Light going for over 10 years.

I hope you enjoy.

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 - Exerpt from Blade Runner
00:19 - Vegyn - Unknown (https://soundcloud.com/Vegyn)
03:19 - Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein- In Pursuit (https://survive.bandcamp.com/)
0:4:30 - 36 - Shadow Play (http://3six.net/album/shadow-play)
08:23 - Goldmund - Turncoat (https://goldmund.bandcamp.com/track/turncoat)
11:29 - Suplington - Love (https://soundcloud.com/suplington)
15:27 - Julie London - Bouquet Of Blues (https://www.discogs.com/Julie-London-bout-The-Blues/release/1378929)
16:14 - Burial - Forgive (https://burial.bandcamp.com/track/forgive)
17:48 - Mark Pritchard - ? (https://markpritchard.bandcamp.com/)
22:15 - In Aeternam Vale - Drones (https://dement3d.bandcamp.com/track/drones)
24:17 - Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow - Ava (https://www.discogs.com/Ben-Salisbury-And-Geoff-Barrow-Ex_Machina-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack/release/7007937)
26:35 - Vangelis - Spiral (https://www.discogs.com/Vangelis-Spiral/release/1493684)
27:11 - Biosphere - Sphere Of No-Form https://biosphere.bandcamp.com/track/sphere-of-no-form)
29:29 - Thore Pfeiffer - Good Life (https://kompakt.bandcamp.com/album/pop-ambient-2017)
34:53 - Aphex Twin - Stone In Focus (https://boomkat.com/products/selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-limited-triple-vinyl-reissue)
36:55 - Corey Allen + Marcus Fischer - Two/Twenty-Two/Eighty-Two(https://twotwentytwo.bandcamp.com/album/two-twenty-two)
39:27 - Murcof - Una (https://murcofmusic.bandcamp.com/album/martes-utop-a)
41:02 - Offthesky & Pleq - A Thousand Fields https://infraction.bandcamp.com/album/a-thousand-fields)
43:02 - 2814 - 新しい日の誕生 (https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/--18)
44:10 - Marsen Jules - Through Blood and Fire (https://marsenjules.bandcamp.com/track/through-blood-and-fire)
46:40 - The Beautiful Schizophonic - Prayers (https://dynamophone.bandcamp.com/album/belkiss)
48:22 - Nils Frahm - Says(https://nilsfrahm.bandcamp.com/album/spaces)
51:57 - Synkro - Overture (https://synkro.bandcamp.com/track/overture)

Saturday Mar 25, 2017

City Centre Offices - Impact & Inspiration

Saturday Mar 25, 2017

This week marks the final transmission of the wonderful record label, City Centre Offices. Their style of electronic music was new to me at the time and I devoured their releases with a rapacious glee. I think I have somewhere between 40 - 50 CCO recordings.

City Centre Offices has been silent for a number of years and I hate to admit that I'd sort of forgotten about them. But now this week brings one final release, Boy Robot - Final Transmission. So with the end of CCO officially here, I thought I'd collect a few favorites in a new mix. There is so much great music that came from CCO that I could have done mixes that were hours long but I kept this one to the standard 1 hour.

Rather than go on and on rhapsodically about what a marvelous label City Centre Offices is, I'll direct you to this excellent article over at A Strangely Isolated Place - http://www.astrangelyisolatedplace.com/blog/2017/3/14/city-centre-offices-interview-the-final-transmission

Great stories, insight and music in that ASIP reminiscence. The good folks at ASIP also put together a terrific Spotify playlist of CCO music.

I hope you enjoy this little stroll down memory lane as much as I did.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T:

0:00 Arovane - A Secret
04:00 Casino versus Japan - Late for School
09:45 Herrmann & Kleine - Transalpin
15:40 Ulrich Schnauss - Between Us & Them
22:00 Xela - Softness of Senses
26:06 Christian Kleine - Guitar Interrupt
29:48 Dub Tractor - 50Hz Guitar
35:17 Opiate - Open
37:26 Boy Robot - Glamorizing Corporate Lifestyle
40:40 Bitstream - Stream One
44:40 Styrofoam - Cashier Escape Song
50:33 Dictaphone - Dictaphone II
53:24 Swod - Intro
54:14 Marsen Jules - Chanson Du Soir
58:42 Ulrich Schnauss - Gone Forever
66:23 END