low light mixes

    Welcome to another great collaboration with my cosmic friend, Paul Asbury Seaman. The term "collaboration" gives me too much credit because Paul does the heavy lifting of finding the tunes and deciding on a sequence. I just mix them together.   This is another mix with a train-like propulsive feel but this one also has more space travel vibe. I like this mix more and more with each listen.  He...

    In the distance A lost, forgotten bell sings beyond the water   This is a set of music that adhere's to Jon Hassell's idea of a musical aesthetic that is "a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques."   You'll find some drums, bells, gamelan, vibraphone and other mallet instruments as well as a healthy dose of field recordi...

  A few months ago when I reached out to a few folks to create guest mixes, one of the first people I contacted was Matt Borghi. I've been listening to Matt's music for a long time and with him running the  Ambient Soundbath Podcast  it would be a perfect fit.   I absolutely adore the mix he has come up with as Harold Budd is one of my all-time favs as well.   I'll let Matt tell you about the mix:...

  I've been planning on doing a follow up to Guitarisimo, a mix from April of 2017. When several albums from 2018 fit the sound I knew I had to do the mix now.   The album that got me started is "Con Todo El Mundo" by Khruangbin. It's one of my favorite records this year. Entirely guitar-based it's sound include surf music, Latin, Thai & Indian music. I highly recommend it.   https://khruangbin.ba...

  As I have said about 8 million times before, many mixes start with a single track. In this case it was the rediscovery of the track "Warming Trend" by Adam Pacione. It's a gentle, droning track that reminds me of Eno's Discreet Music.   I knew I wanted to use the tune in a mix and then realized that the track name would make a good title for a mix. From there I went in search of cuts that made m...

    Low Light Mixes has been nominated for "Best Online Music Show - Ambient/Chillout" by Mixcloud. Woo Hoo!   I make these mixes for my own amusement so when recognition like this comes along it's icing on the ambient cake. Judges will be listening to the nominees and making a decision.    There is also a Listeners Choice award as well and that's where you come in.  Please click on the link below...

As so often happens with these mixes, there was a specific event that gave birth to this collection of tunes. On Mixcloud a listener asked if I could help identify a piece of music from a defunct website. The tune is looping electro/acoustic music of the type that came out of Japan 10 or more years ago. I found the track and it's lovely. It's Walden Dos by .tape.(yes, there is a . before and after...

    Here's the first Sunday Morning Music mix of 2018.   Most of the music is new. All of the tracks were released in 2018 with the exception of "To Earth" by Ariwo from 2017 and "Jade Visions" by Bill Evans from 1961. There are no vocal tunes in this mix, which wasn't on purpose, it just sort of works out that way sometimes.   Many thanks to the artists and labels for the excellent music that app...

  Somewhere out there in the Multiverse, there is another universe just like ours except that everything runs much slower. With a DIY quantum tunneling device in my studio I've been able to bring over a few pieces of music from this other reality.   I'm sure many folks have heard the tracks "Justin Bieber slowed down 800%" or "Windows startup sound slowed down 2000%."  Those slowed down cuts(and B...

It's the 88th day of the year so that means it's Piano Day(88 keys on a piano)! There's actually not much to say about the mix other than it contains some excellent piano music. Most of the tracks are fairly new with many being from 2017 & 2018. There's so much piano based music out there to choose from it's a bit overwhelming when first starting the mix. But as so often happens, once I start with...

When researching artists or labels that might be interested in doing a guest mix I came across a label that is based very close to me here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I'd never really thought that there might be an ambient community here.  I decided to do a search for "ambient" and "Milwaukee." And what do ya know, I got an interesting result right away. In an article about the essential Milwaukee a...

    I saw the film Annihilation on opening weekend and really liked it. It was directed by the same guy that directed Ex Machina and has the same crew doing the score. While I didn't like it quite as much as my favorite sci-fi film of the last few years, Arrival, I did like it quite a bit. And I especially loved the score. It goes seamlessly from acoustic guitar to synthetic noises to creepy chora...

                   I wanted to get a snow themed mix in before winter starts to wane. So here it is.    Most of the tracks have the word snow in the title.  Anytime I can use a tune from Yagya's "Rhythm of Snow" I'll gladly take it.  Looking forward to a new guest mix in the coming weeks and a mix featuring delicate micro-sounds from 10 years ago.   Cheers!      T R A C K L I S T : 00:00    Blamst...

  Johann Johannsson died on Friday, February 9, 2018.   Devastating.    I absolutely adored his compositions.   I am at a complete loss for what to say about his music. So rather than try I made this mix.   Because I cross post all these mixes over on Mixcloud I am not able to make a mix with nothing but Johannsson music. Mixcloud has a policy of only 4 tracks from a single artist per mix. So I us...

I have decided to reach out to a few folks in the ambient community about doing some guest mixes.  Basically I'm just lazy and want content without much work. ;-)  Actually I thought it would be nice to come at these mixes from some new perspectives. And at the same time promote some artists and labels both here and on Mixcloud. This first guest mix is exactly what I was looking for. It is a bit d...

I recently stumbled upon an album by The National Pool called "Relaxation Tape for Solo Space Travel."   https://infraction.bandcamp.com/album/relaxation-tape-for-solo-space-travel First of all, what a great title!  And second, what fantastic cover art! When I heard the song "Simpler Times" I knew that I had to buy the album and I knew that I had to make a mix with an retro, analog, space sound. ...

image by Siobhan Allen   I am starting the year off right with another fantastic mix from my friend Paul Asbury Seaman.  You may remember his previous collections posted here - The Memory of Trains, Floating Through Moonlight, and Icelight.   This mix does a wonderful job of creating a mystical vibe, like the title says, but without being too new agey.  I love the nice long track from Louigi Veron...

  This mix is less of a best jazz recordings of 2017 and more of a mix of jazz that I enjoyed in 2017.  I don't listen to nearly as much jazz as I do ambient and indie music. But I liked enough releases to come up with an end of the year jazz mix. So here it is.   The year was anchored by two spectacular recordings - Aytche by Joseph Shabason and All This I Do For Glory by Colin Stetson.  I saw St...

  It's that time of the year again - end of the year Best Of list time!  It's always a difficult task to pick albums for one of these lists.  But it's also fun because I get to sort through a bunch of music and it's definitely cool to have a look at other lists and discover a ton of things I missed.   There is no way these lists are close to being definitive.  A lot of ambient releases can tend to...

  Being a science fiction & electronic music geek, it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of the soundtrack for the original Blade Runner film.  When I heard that they'd tabbed Johann Johannsson to do the score for the 2049 film I was very excited.  But then he was pulled from the project & replaced with Hans Zimmer.  While I've actually liked a few of Zimmer's recent scores, I wasn't overly impresse...

  This mix was inspired by a couple of new releases from Benoit Pioulard.  Both recordings are hazy, dusty, blurry ambient beauty.    Benoit Pioulard on Bandcamp   The rest of this mix all fits in with that dusty, softly granular feel.  It's dreamy and hazy without being too annoyingly noisey.   Cheers!      T R A C K L I S T : 00:00    Huerco S. - A Sea of Love 06:44    Spheruleus - Blue Cast 09:...

  For this Sunday Morning Music installment I used almost all brand new music.  16 of the 19 tracks are from 2017 & most of those are from the last two months.  Two cuts are from 2016.     One outlier is from all the way back in 1999.  That track is October Sky by Mark Isham.  As I was putting the mix together I came up with the title of vol. 15 - October Sky(cuz it's October) and thought that it...

  Who remembers what a big thing tribal ambient was for awhile back in the 90s?  The first time I heard "Fearless" from the album Strata by Steve Roach & Robert Rich I was hooked.  There were many Roach albums from that time period that drew on the tribal ambient sound - World's Edge, On This Planet, Soma, Australia: Sound of the Earth, Forgotten Gods, Cavern of Sirens, Earth Island, Well of Souls...

  As I said a few posts back, I am a huge space science dork.  My top 5 favorite NASA probes are:   1. Voyager 2. Cassini 3. Viking 4. Galileo 5. Spirit & Opportunity   Number two on that list disintegrated in the atmosphere of Saturn today.  Cassini was in orbit around Saturn for 7 years and made some of the most fantastic encounters of any planetary mission.  The most amazing discovery concerns...

  Here is another fantastic mix curated by Paul Asbury Seaman. His earlier mixes are "Floating Through Moonlight" and "The Memory of Trains."   I'm listening to it as I type this and it's another wonderful collection. Here's what Paul has to say about it:   “I’m no fan of winter, but I love the visual patterns created by ice. And I’ve always loved the bell-like sounds sometimes used in electronic/...