low light mixes

enosification

This is another new kind of mix for the blog. This is an all Eno mix. I came across the Eno tune "Spider & I " in a recently downloaded mix & I was reminded of how much I like Eno's voice. So I thought why not collect some favorite vocal tunes together in one place. For the first half of the mix I alternate between vocal tunes & instrumentals. I thought this might be nice to break things up a bit. About half way through I realized I'd run out of time so I went to all vocals. I love singing along with his songs & it is nice to have some favorites all together. The title comes from Genesis' "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" album, where Eno is credited with "enosification." Which he described this way..."I would take existing instruments and feed them through various devices to 'weird them up'." I hope you enjoy this Eno mix..... T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 By This River (Before & After Science) 02:51 Music for Glitterbug - track 10 (music for glitterbug) 05:37 Everything Merges with the Night (Another Green World) 09:20 Marine Radio (Spinner) 14:05 And Then So Clear (Another Day) 19:25 Summer Ride (Curiosities vol.2) 23:21 Spider & I (Before & After Science) 26:55 Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960 (On Land) 28:55 Taking Tiger Mountain (Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy) 34:00 Zawinul Lava (Another Green World) 25:36 Julie With (Before & After Science) 41:00 Golden Hours (Anoter Green World) 44:44 This (Another Day) 48:04 On Some Faraway Beach (Here Come the Warm Jets) 52:25 No Orders w/ J. Peter Schwalm (Musikain) 56:23 Bottomliners (Another Day) 1:00:00 end

shadows at midnight

The inspiration for this mix came from the new Jon Hassell album. If you haven't picked it up yet, do so. It's called "Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street". It's already in my best of 2009 folder. It's very moody, very ambient, just a little jazzy. Very much like the wonderful release from Arve Henriksen last year. I wanted this mix to have a moody, melancholy, late-night jazz feel. Although I have used some of these artists in other mixes this is the first jazz mix for Low Light mIxes. I wasn't sure what to expect when I began but it turned out fairly well. It didn't take long to put together because it's not a sound collage like the last mix. But I think the tunes flow nicely together. Sometimes sitting around with a good scotch, you need soemthing with a jazzy flavor & I hope this works for that while remaining true to the Low Light feel. Next up...an all Eno mix. T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Arve Henriksen - Migration 05:21 The Necks - Black 10:35 Mort d'un Pourri - Valerie 13:50 Slowhill - Nikos Dream 17:59 boren & der club of gore - Midnight Walker 24:45 Jon Hassell - Courtais 29:40 Miles Davis - In a Silent Way 33:35 Nick B. Ronin - Modul 42 39:30 Duke Ellington - Melancholia 42:25 Arve Henriksen - Recording Angel 48:20 Jon Hassell - Last Night the Moon Came 58:17 Mort d'un Pourri - tout est tranquille 1:00:00 end

in_transit - an ambient field mix

I have been wanting to do another field mix almost since the moment I finished the last one. So here it is, a new mix entitled "in_transit". I like field recordings but not as much nature recordings. I'm not wild about birds chirping & water flowing. I like mechanical sounds or crowd noise or as you'll hear in this mix, trains. I used train sounds in the last mix & they play a prominent role here too. I had planned on doing more of my own field recording but I just never seemed to find the time. I did manage to sneak two of my recordings in, one occurs at about 8:50 in the mix. It's a recording of the humming sound of telephone pole at the end of my driveway. The pole hums when it gets windy, so I just went out stuck the mic right up to the pole & froze my arse off. I then fattened up the sound a bit. The other recording is of my daughter playing piano, but you'd never guess that's what you're hearing. It happens at about the 19:10 mark. I had her play about 40 seconds of chopin or schubert. Then I used a simple little program to stretch that 40 seconds into 12 minutes & 40 seconds. The result sounds nothing like classical piano. You can find the program here...Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch. Give it a try. Works great on piano & classical music. It makes the human voice sound very creepy. Most of the other sound used in the mix are a combination of field recordings from all over the web, music & music that already has field recordings built in, like the last cut by RF. There is new music from sleepy town manufacture & unit 21, elegi, Loren Chasse & terje isungset. Two tracks used in the mix are from a cd that I got from Rick over at Hydrogen Cafe. Years ago he burned some ambient background sounds from Blade Runner. At the 6:20 mark we get ambience from the Tyrell Coporation & at about 23:50 we hear sounds from Blade Runner Chinatown. I'll definitely be using more of these in future field mixes. Well I guess that's enough for now. I'm not making a tracklist as the cuts are playing all over each other, many times 2 or 3 at the same time. If you are curious about certain sounds or tracks just email or comment with the time in question & I'll do my best to get info back to you. Enjoy the trip!

searching for objects

The original name for this mix was "noisy, droney, scratchy". Very catchy title. That's a pretty good description of how I wanted this mix to sound. I don't like too much noise, however. Most of the tunes have some grit, some distortion, some white noise, some scratches but not too much. I still wanted the mix to be very ambient, not annoying or distracting. I guess the Fripp & Eno cut isn't very noisy or scratchy but could be considered droney. I'm just happy to have squeezed into a mix. I hadn't listened to it in years & had forgotten how much I loved that track. Of course now that I just posted the mix, Tim Hecker comes out with something new that would have fit perfectly. And the next Infraction release from Sleepy Town Manufacture sounds like it would be a good fit too. Oh well, I guess I'll have to save those for volume 2. T R A C K L I S T I N G : 00:00 Jasper, TX - home 04:15 Chris Bissonnette - orffyreus wheel 12:15 Rain Cloud - keeping a low profile 17:40 Belong - same places (slow version) 27:40 Eluder - the most beautiful blue 33:25 Fripp & Eno - heavenly music corp. 41:00 Rameses III - origins IV 49:20 Forestflies - processed vocals & strings 52:35 Erstlaub - sinking together 58:40 Milieu - burnt rust 1:00:13 end

antique sunlight

I cross familiar territory here with another piano mix. I think this is the third I've done. There's no particular reason for doing a piano mix other than I happened to run into a few nice piano tunes & figured I'd slap together a short mix. As usual this is fairly quiet music, good for reading the paper on a Sunday morning.(when newspapers disappear I'll really miss doing that) I'll be sending this one to Mick & his "15 Minutes of Fame" mix series which you can find here...15 minutes. Enjoy. TRACKLIST: 00:00 Milieu - antique sunlight 05:00 Ryuichi Sakamoto - ropa 10:00 Taylor Deupree & Kenneth Kirschner - may 15:11 Library Tapes - fragment VIII 18:30 Con Cetta - ker 22:46 Jeanne Moreau - un entretien avec 24:14 NIN - ghosts 11 27:20 Kosik - lastly empty 30:40 Goldmund - Threnody 35:00 United Bible Studies - sea of rains 35:46 end

a northern holiday

The mixes keep coming fast & furious. Last year I downloaded a very cool holiday compilation. It's called "That Fuzzy Feeling". It looks like they still have downloads available but are sold out of the cd's. You can have find it here... http://lorecordings.greedbag.com/buy/that-fuzzy-feeling-0/?tab=description That release was the starting point for this mix. There are three cuts from the compilation in the mix....Brave the Cold by Vincent Oliver and Isan...Family, Giving by Peter Broderick...Snowstorm in a Snow Globe by Fuzzy Lights. From there I just looked for other tunes that fit the theme. So grab some hot coco & trim the tree with some ambient goodness playing in the background. Happy Holidays from all of us(actually just me) here at Low Light Mixes. T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Vincent Oliver and Isan - Brave the Cold 02:35 Freescha - Holiday Frost 07:25 Takahiro Kido - Christmas Song 12:50 Chris Abrhams - Christmas Island 19:10 Stuart Busby - Snowfall 22:13 Peter Broderick - Family, Giving 25:30 Dakota Suite - December 8, 1980 27:40 Maps of the Heart - Skating Away 31:40 July Skies - Holidays to Wales 33:00 Fuzzy Lights - Snowstorm in a Snow Globe 35:50 Northern - December 39:57 end

motion for relief

I thought I'd try something a bit different...a mix that is beat driven. Of course it's not going to be some house music mix or techno dance trax. The mix is sort of in the same vein as the ones done by Alan, of Great Axescapes fame. He has a fantastic mix called "nowthatswhaticallmnmlambidubtechno! vol.1" that you can find here...vol. 1. This mix is similar in that dubby, ambient way. Only one artist, Quantec, in common though. I wasn't sure how the mix would work but I like the results very much. I'm listenbing to it as I type this, nice & loud so the low dubby bass lines reverberate around the house. Excellent. The other different thing about this mix is it is shorter than the others. An online friend, Mick, is running The "15 Minutes Of Fame’ Mix Series" & he asked me to do some mixes. The only requirements are up to 40 minutes in length & no more than 10 tracks. That should help with some experimentation, may be an idea will work in a 30 minute mix but not for the usual hour-long mix. When I get a link to the mix series I'll post it here. I should be able to crank out 3 more mixes by the end of the year. Next up...a piano mix, a noisy-droney-scratchy mix and a best of the year mix. t r a c k l i s t : 00:00 Plastikman - consumed 04:44 Marconi Union - buildings without people 08:05 Trentemoller - miss you 11:50 Yagya - rhythm of snow #5 17:55 Underworld - pizza for eggs 20:20 Quantec - unusual signals 25:25 Ontayso - procesamiento 2.05 28:45 Tiki Obmar - ankeney, iowa 39:30 end

november buddha

This mix is called November Buddha in honor of the new Buddha Machine 2.0 which was just released. Mine is on it's way right now. There's not much of a theme here, just a bunch of new tunes that I've been listening to lately. The Lullaby League & Sleep Robot tracks are new discoveries thanks to the fantastic mixes from Alan, an online friend. You can find the mixes here http://albient.livejournal.com/2468.html They are called...Great Axescapes: an Archaeology of Drone-gaze Tone-haze Guitar-wranglings I probably have listened to these mixes more than anything else this year. Just an absolutely fabulous collection of guitar ambient. Most of the artists in this mix can also be found in Alan's Axescapes mixes. A couple exceptions are Eluder, which is a brand new Infraction release. And Disturbed Earth, an excellent recording on Atmoworks. T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 buddha machine 2.0 loop construction 05:30 Apalusa - Obadiah 10:30 Sleep Robot - Prayer Wheel 15:40 Eluder - Autumn Hips 21:30 Shirk - Mocked 27:45 Fabio Orsi - Pure Love 31:40 The Lullaby League - Cantus 38:00 Disturbede Earth - Butterfly 44:30 Hakobune - Melting Reminiscence 47:00 The Fun Years - Garbage Man, Poet 50:30 David Tagg - Stele

sustain and decay

The idea for this mix came from frequent low light mixes downloader/listener, Ron Sylvester. He told me about some mixtape cd's he had done, all of which are fantastic & intriguing. One idea in particular interested me. Ron download some recordings of old 78rpm records from archive.org. The thought of old, scratchy opera recordings was too much to resist. So that's where this mix started. I had intended it to be similar to my shortwave mixes but it didn't exactly end up that way. Part of the reason is my own impatience, I wanted to get a new mix posted but didn't want to take weeks to sort through the tons of possibilities presented by archive.org & other sites. So I collected some pieces, ripped off several other tracks from some of Ron's various mixtapes and grabbed some newly purchased & downloaded music and set off to mix it up. I found the perfect compliment to the old 78's is music from The Caretaker. His music was inspired by the ballroom scene from "The Shining". From the Caretaker website..."The first release played and extended this theme of altering 1920's and 1930's ballroom music creating an eerie and haunted soundworld. Subsequently the sound has become darker and often more abstract over time, moving away from the initial idea of a haunted ballroom into territories involving the mind and its abilities to recall memories." You can download some of the full albums here...Caretaker Releases. I have 3 Caretaker tracks in the mix which is more of one artist than I usually put in one mix but I think these cuts work very well. The mix sort veers away from the old & scratchy theme about two-thirds of the way through. It just sort of morphed on it's own as I pulled tracks. Mixes can be funny that way, developing their own path. I'd like to thank Ron for the ideas & for the tunes in his mixtapes that I ripped off for this mix. T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 intro 00:25 Caretaker - False Memory Syndrome 03:15 Belong - Girl from New York 04:47 Ave Maria remix 05:50 Still - futility 08:35 Ólafur Arnalds - Haust 13:30 Caretaker - Rosy Retrospection 18:00 Fabio Orsi - North of Me(at midday) 21:35 Josef Hollman - traumerei (op. 15, no. 7) 25:05 Eleni Karaindrou - litany: variation i 27:50 SzilagyiImreZenekara - Kranzna 29:50 The Winterhouse - Lost 39:10 Caretaker - Past Life Regression 42:35 Julien Neto - from cover to cover 47:00 Vikki Jackman - The Snow Queen 51:15 Fax - caldera i 55:30 Andrew Deutsch - untitled #1(from The Sun)

sea of stars

This is a mix from our annual trip to the Wisconsin northwoods.  As the title suggests it's a mix for star gazing. As I have mentioned in other posts, Rick, who runs the Hydrogen Cafe blog, and I sit out at the end of the pier and watch for shooting stars and satellites.  We each make a soundtrack for the experience.  Rick's are usually much more thought out than mine(he mix this year was great!). I limited myself to fairly new music, stuff I have been listening to a lot lately.  I knew I wanted to include new music from Area C - Sea of Rains.  It was commissioned by the NASA RI Space Grant Consortium and the Museum of Natural History in Providence, RI as an original score for their "Mission Moon: past, present, future" exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.  It has some Nasa recordings mixed in with the music so it was a natural for this mix. After that the other tracks are just tunes that are kind of new, sound a bit spacey and flow well together. t r a c k l i s t :

• 00:00    bvdub - You'll miss me when I'm gone
• 06:19    Area C - Mare Imbrium
• 11:30    Kyle Bobby Dunn - Furthest From It
• 18:10    Emmanuel Errante - Radio Hopes
• 23:40    Parks - Trains
• 29:50    Kode - Movements #6
• 35:30    Shirk - Itchytime
• 38:55    Deaf Center - Close
• 40:55    The Caretaker - Lacuna Amnesia
• 44:05    Area C - Sea of Clouds
• 51:15    Kabana - dubru
• 56:15    Shirk - Riesal
• 00:09   Le Chat Blanc Orchestra - She Left This Morning