low light mixes

in foreign lands

I have always loved the sound of Djivan Gasparyan's music. He plays the duduk, a double reed instrument related to the oboe. It's got a great melancholy, other-worldy feel to it. I took the "other-wordly" idea to make a mix of music that is vaguely foreign sounding, at least foreign to my American ears. The music is Middle Eastern, Asian, African, Eastern European and Indian. I go back to a familiar source for some of the sounds, the Shortwave Music blog of Myke Weiskopf. Whether it's the night call to prayer in Bulgaria or Qur’an recitation from BSKSA Saudi Arabia, Myke has great recordings that everyone should take the time to investigate. The times in the tracklist are rough.  Sometimes there are two or three tracks playing at once & not all are listed in the tracklist.  I also messed with a few tracks, adding stretched audio as a backing track or adding reverb. At various times haunting, beautiful, calming or hypnotic, the music in this mix will hopefully stir your imagination. T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Djivan Gasparyan - You have to come back to me
• 02:22 Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook - Night Song
• 06:20 Hildegard Westerkamp - Gently Penetrating
• 07:00 Night call to prayer in Draginovo, Bulgaria
• 09:20 Peter Nooten & Michael Brook - Suddenly II
• 10:25 Maya Beiser - I was there
• 15:00 harmonic fx
• 15:50 Gamelan Madu Sari - thinly roundly
• 18:15 Ayub Ogada - Kothbiro
• 22:00 Jon Hassell - Frontiera
• 22:30 Hildegard Westerkamp - Into the labyrinth
• 22:55 Geir Jenssen - Camp 2, world music on the radio
• 23:30 Gamelan Madu Sari - Dreams he is a ball of fire or a hummingbird
• 26:30 Peter Gabriel - Wall of Breath
• 28:15 Galata Mevlevi - Nay Taksim
• 29:40 Hildegard Westerkamp - Soundscape of cities, Delhi
• 30:10 Forrest Fang - Garuda
• 31:15 Jon Hassell - Tramonto
• 33:00 Qur’an recitation from BSKSA Saudi Arabia
• 34:20 Lamp of the Universe - Heru, part 1
• 36:55 U Srinivas & Michael Brook - Think
• 41:30 Anouar Brahem - L'oiseau
• 45:45 Djivan Gasparyan - dle vaman
• 49:30 Peter Gabriel - A sense of home
• 51:14 end

positively ambient

As most readers of this blog probably know, I cross-post these mixes over at Mixcloud.  Recently I got a request from listener, TikTaalik.  This is part of his post, "I was wondering if you could compile a mix that is optimistic throughout. The sort of ambience that I tend only to hear once or twice in a set. Can you get a solid hour of calm ambient music with a euphoric undertone?" At Low Light Mixes we give the people what they want, so here it is...Positively Ambient.  I'm not sure if all of the music qualifies as "optimistic" or "euphoric" but it is all calm & beautiful.  I start things off with Eno's "An Ending(ascent)" because I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.  Although it may work better as "an ending" than as a beginning, I wanted it up front so everyone that plays the mix is guaranteed to hear it. I hope the rest of the mix doesn't get too sweet or too pretty sounding.  I don't want it to dissolve into new age crapola.  I dug into the archives for some of the tunes like James Johnson's "Entering Twilight" from 2000, Jim Cole from 2002, Diatonis from 2003, Fox & Budd from 2003, Jeff Pearce from 1999 and Stephen Bacchus from 1998. The feel of this mix is definitely soothing, no dissonant chords to be found.  It works well as sleep music, meditation music, , etc.  Just good 'ole traditional ambient music. T R A C K L I S T :

• • 00:00 Brian Eno - An Ending(ascent)
  • 04:00 Arc of Doves - Reverie
  • 09:00 James Johnson - Entering Twilight
  • 14:45 Diatonis - Winding Road
  • 18:00 Hammock - Maybe they will sing for us tomorrow
  • 23:10 Stephen Bacchus - The Returning
  • 30:25 John Foxx & Harold Budd - A Delicate Romance
  • 36:45 Jim Cole - Light Shines in Your Heart
  • 43:10 Jeff Pearce - Daylight Slowly
  • 44:45 Hammock - Three Sisters
  • 48:50 d_rradio - Into the Morning
  • 54:05 Quosp - Quosp
  • 57:30 end

far from home

Picture yourself floating in space.  Whether you like to think of it as drifting alone, in a spacesuit, looking out at the stars all around.  Or instead imagine yourself as Bowie said "Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon."  Either way, the music in this mix should make you feel "far from home". I like to envision a small craft in the middle of nowhere, drifting...waiting.  Waiting for rescue?  Waiting for contact?  Waiting for main power to come back online?  Hopefully the music will generate a feeling of weightlessness, of drifting in the vast expanse of space, without being too dark or dissonant. I did not pick the tunes based on titles.  I just did a quick sampling of some of my ambient collection to come up with possible tracks.  But it's interesting how many of the song titles fit right in with the "outer space" theme. Titles like Meissa, Deep Sky Time, 1st Lite & Asteroid Dawn work perfectly for this motif. T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Lunar Testing Lab - Space Traffic Control
• 01:00 Brian Eno - Asteroid Dawn
• 04:40 A Produce - The Big Sleep
• 09:40 Harmonia - Weird Dream
• 11:10 Wouter Veldhuis - 1st Lite
• 18:30 Steve Roach - Deep sky Time
• 24:40 Austere - Lid
• 28:00 Mike Griffin & A Produce - Altara
• 31:45 Lunar Testing Lab - Paaliaq
• 33:05 Sonmi451 - Orange
• 38:45 Thomas Fehlman - in the wind
• 43:10 Spheruleus - Disintegrate
• 48:30 Fripp & Eno - Meissa
• 55:30 Sonmi451 - Blue
• 1:00:00 end

vox electronix

I was playing some Boards of Canada recently & came across the song "In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country." I love the use of the vocoder in that tune. Being a sci-fi geek & an electronic music dork, it makes sense that I would like songs with vocoders. So I set out to find enough vocoder tunes for a mix. The result is "Vox Electronix". The vocoder is is an analysis/synthesis system, developed in the 1930's, that dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. Because much info was lost in the encoding & decoding process, the voice ended up sounding "dehumanized" or robot-like. Eventually changes were made by people like Wendy Carlos & Robert Moog, that made the vocoder a musical device, used most prominently by artists like Kraftwerk. The vocoder is used in many of the tracks in this mix, but I'm not exactly sure which ones are vocoder & which ones are auto-tune and which ones are just clever vocal manipulation. So don't everyone go crazy saying "hey that's not a flippin' vocoder!" I was just going for a certain sound, a certain feel. It was cool discovering tunes I'd either never heard of or forgotten about. Thanks to Judd at the Hypnos forum for recommending the tune by Tonto's Expanding Head Band & for reminding me about the track from the U2/Eno collaboration, Passengers. Also thanks to False mirror on the Hypnos forum for the heads up on the Robert Rich song. That's one of those that I think is some form of auto-tune versus a vocoder. The mix opens with a cool bit of audio which was recorded at Bell Labs in 1936. This was a fun mix to put together, discovering new tunes & revisiting old favorites(O Superman). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Bell Labs 1936 - Voice of Power
• 00:23 Tonto's Expanding Head Band - Riversong
• 03:33 Brian Eno - And then so clear
• 08:15 Boards of Canada - In a beautiful place out in the country
• 12:30 Air - le soleil est pres de moi
• 16:30 Apples in Stereo - Vocoder ba ba
• 16:45 Bjork - Possible Maybe(Lucy mix)
• 19:30 Passengers - A different kind of blue
• 21:10 Robert Rich - Premonition of circular clouds
• 28:25 Laurie Anderson - O Superman
• 35:40 Ricardo Villalobos - Easy Lee
• 39:45 Trans Am - Futureworld
• 42:33 Air - Sexy Boy
• 47:30 Peter Baumann - This This Day
• 51:54 Apples in Stereo - Hello Lola
• 52:10 Black Moth Super Rainbow - Twins of Myself
• 55:15 Holger Czukay - Ode to Perfume
• 59:15 Brian Eno - Bottomliners
• 03:04 end

left in the desert

These are songs that conjure up images of wind blown landscapes, tumbleweeds, sunbleached rocks, dusty roads and heat waves rising off the ground. Of course most of the music in this mix has an ambient/atmospheric feel. I remember the first time I heard Daniel Lanois' use of slide guitar on "Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks", I hated it. I guess I thought of the slide guitar as too close to "country music" which I definitely hated. Well over the years I've come around on the slide guitar, I love it now. I'm still not a big country music fan, though I do have a ton of Johnny Cash recordings. I've come to appreciate the lonely, melancholy feel that can be expressed through twangy, dusty western music. Of course the ultimate in great ambient twang is Ry Cooder's "Paris, TX" soundtrack. That makes an appearance in this mix along with standbys like Lanois, Steve Roach & A Small Good Thing. I was happy to sneak in a piano tune, "Alice & twins" by Japancakes. It just sort of fit with the overall feel & then the slide guitar comes in to make it even more "dusty". Whether it's the twang of an acoustic guitar, the wail of a harmonica or the ethereal sound of a slide guitar, this mix will drop you off on an abandoned rail line in the middle of nowhere.

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Earth - left in the desert
• 00:45    George Winston - Farewell
• 01:50    Ry Cooder - nothing out there
• 03:00    Chas Smith - an hour out of desert center
• 03:50    Bill Frisell - lonely man
• 04:52    p.g. six - 6 for wire, strung harp with slide
• with Steve Roach buried underneath
• 06:15    A Small Good Thing - drowning light
• 09:00    Daniel Lanois - Asylum
• 11:30    Steve Roach & Roger King - rain & creosote
• 15:30    Six Organs of Admittance - oak path
• 18:50    Balmorhea - Palestrina
• 20:10    Steve Tibbetts - kili-ki drok
• 21:10    Balmorhea - on the weight of the night
• 25:00    Esmerine - There Were No Footprints In The Dust Behind Them
• 27:35    Badgerlore - goodnight, sweet rabbits
• 29:20    Chronomad - aksak
• 33:50    Ennio Morricone - man with a harmonica
• 34:10    Japancakes - Alice & twins
• 37:50    Steve Roach - new moon at forbidden mesa
• 38:20    Loren Mazzacane Connors - lullaby (the 1st)
• 40:10    July Skies - branch line summers fade
• 41:45    end

silent sorrow in empty boats

I have always loved a little known Genesis tune called "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats". The last song on the end of side three(vinyl), it's a 3 minute instrumental that is more ambient than old prog rock. I remember a thread at the Hypnos forum, a long time ago, that was asking for a list of the best ambient tracks by non-ambient artists. I can't find the list or the thread but I think I added artists like Radiohead, Daryl Hall, Peter Gabriel, etc. I think "Silent Sorrow" may be the best ambient track by a non-ambient artist. I'm working on a mellow prog rock mix that I'm sure will include this Genesis tune as well. Anyway, I've always wanted to use it in a mix so here it is. I used the track as the title for this mix but the music doesn't necessarily take on the sorrowful feel that the title suggests. I can personally attest to the fact that this mix works very for sleeping. Enjoy. T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Genesis - Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
• 02:45 Slow Dancing Society - and to the dust shall we return
• 08:45 Alio Die - In the Labyrinth Garden
• 15:00 Christopher Willits - Flowers into Stardust
• 19:45 Pulusha - Isolation, pt. 1
• 29:25 Christopher Hipgrave - Time & Distance
• 30:45 Tim Hecker - Incurably Optimistic
• 35:45 36 - Lightout
• 37:35 Deepchord presents Echospace - untitled #5
• 40:15 John Foxx & Harold Budd - Raindust
• 45:25 Celer - A Lifetime of Wasted Breaths
• 49:45 Gareth Hardwick - 5 points
• 59:36 Genesis - reprise of Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
• 1:00:46 end

footsteps

One of my favorites albums this year isThe Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra . What first got my attention was Isabella Rossellini reciting the words of the late author Laura Huxley, widow of Aldous Huxley, on the first track - LookListenFeel. I've always had a thing for Isabella Rossellini so I gave the track a listen...and loved it. I've been playing this album a lot and I wanted to feature it in a mix but the music wouldn't fit with my normal ambient mixes so I decided to a beat mix. As with many mixes, this one took twists & turns I hadn't quite expected. It started off sort of psychedelic then quickly veered into something sort of funky, sort of jazzy. I love the detour it took to Dorothy Ashby. I discovered her 1968 album Afro-Harping at NPR music. I had already finished the mix when I heard the song "Soul Vibrations" and just knew I had to use it. It fits in very nicely. Somehow U2 & Dave Brubeck get squeezed in here as well. It finishes off where it began with The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra. I really enjoyed making this mix & even though it's a bit different for normal low light fare, I hope you enjoy it too. T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra - LookListenFeel
• 03:30 DJ Cam - Gantsa Shit
• 07:15 Polyoctopus - One Less Thing
• 10:20 Dorothy Ashby - Soul Vibrations
• 13:25 Conelrad - Charger Paris Mirage
• 16:55 U2 - Numb(gimme some more dignity remix)
• 19:35 The New Mastersounds - Drop It Down(b remix)
• 22:51 Dorothy Ashby - Afro-Harping
• 25:25 Chronomad - Dore Hindi
• 29:00 Terminal Sound System - Duchamp Falls
• 32:40 Dave Brubeck - Take Five
• 37:40 Hidden Orchestra - Footsteps
• 40"00 Halma - Hektopascal
• 42:35 Eliot Lipp - Real Tragic
• 46:00 The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra - A Beautiful Walk in the Country
• 48:10 end

A to Z ambient - n thru z

Here is vol. 2 in the A to Z ambient mix.  This one will take you from N thru Z.  Enjoy.
T R A C K L I S T I N G : -----N to Z-----

• 00:00 Nelson Foltz & Tom Lynn - Still Life Vol. 3
• 05:00 O Yuki Conjugate - track 6 from Euphoria of Disobedience
• 08:30 Pan American - Lights of Little Towns
• 15:30 Quosp - Beechwood
• 21:50 Robin Guthrie - Harold Budd - a minute, a day, no more
• 26:45 Solyaris - Night's Waltzloop
• 29:30 Tom Heasley - Western Sky
• 36:15 Ulf Lohman - untitled #11
• 40:10 Vir Unis & Christopher Short - On the Threshold of Eternity
• 43:40 Williams Basinski - Disintegration Loops 2.1
• 48:00 Xela - Her Eyes Sparkled and She Walked Away
• 53:30 Yagya - Snowflake 10
• 57:00 Zero Ohms - Unafraid of the Impending Silence
• 00:00 end

ambient A to Z

I usually try to have some sort of theme for each mix.  But lately my creativity has dried up.  I wanted to do a new mix but had no new ideas.  I was staring at my computer monitor with it's big folder full of ambient music, all of it in alphabetical order.  Then it hit me, I'll just do a nice, simple A to Z mix of a variety of ambient tunes. It was fun because I ended up using some tracks & artists that I've never put in a mix before, such as Eberhard Schoener, Christopher Short, Nelson Foltz & Tom Lynn, Quosp, Ulf Lohman.  Of course I also worked in old standbys like Basinski, Goldmund, Loscil, and Yagya. I had to split the mix into two separate tracks to keep it from being 2 hours long.  So part 1 is A thru M & part 2 is N thru Z. If any readers/listeners have ideas for mixes please let me know.  A few ideas in the early stages are and ambient vocal mix &/or slow/quiet vocal tunes, alien landscapes, slow beats, sleep tunes, progressive rock vol. 2.  Anyway any ideas would be appreciated.  In the meantime, enjoy A to Z. T R A C K L I S T I N G :
------A to Z------

• 00:00 A Produce - I Woke Up Dreaming
• 06:20 Bass Communion - Ghosts on Magnetic Tape II
• 09:50 Christopher Short - Twilight
• 12:30 David Sylvian - The Beekeepers Apprentice
• 16:15 Eberhard Schoener - Meditation part 1
• 22:10 Fabio Orsi - Lost Love
• 23:15 Goldmund - 25 thousand miles away
• 26:40 Hakobune - Melting Reminiscence
• 30:15 Irezumi - Endurance III
• 37:50 Jeff Greinke - Rolling Black Clouds
• 41:00 Loscil - Rorschach
• 48:00 Marconi Union - Debris
• 51:15 Manual - Last Light
• 57:04 end

a vibration of strings

I ran into the track "The Last Message" by John Murphy on a mix at A Strangely Isolated Place, and it got me thingking about doing another classical-ish mix. The Murphy track is in there, along with new tunes(Maya Beiser, Max Richter, Nils Frahm, etc) and old tunes(Steve Reich, Peter Gabriel, Gavin Bryars, etc). There's really not much more to say except that I hope you enjoy this collection of ambient, soundtrack, minimal & neo-classical tunes. T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    David Byrne - The Lodger
• 04:15    Maya Beiser - Memories
• 08:45    Max Richter - The Haunted Ocean 2
• 09:05    Nils Frahm & Anne Müller - Reminds to Teeth
• 13:15    Olan Mill - Country
• 16:30    John Murphy - The Last Message
• 18:00    Chihei Hatakeyama - Light Drizzle
• 20:30    Hummingbird - Starfish Seastar
• 22:30    Tarwater - Clock
• 23:30    Terry Riley - is in c in f (r. luke dubois remix)
• 25:30    Steve Reich - Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & organ
• 34:50    Sufjan Stevens - Movement III - Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise
• 39:15    Max Richter - Infra 2
• 40:50    Kyle Bobby Dunn - The Tributary (for voices lost)
• 46:20    P Jorgensen - Palimpsest II
• 48:15    Gavin Bryars - Epilogue from Wonder Lawn
• 52:20    Peter Gabriel - The Nest that Sailed the Sky
• 54:55    end