low light mixes

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...

It is freakin' cold here in Wisconsin right now.  It's going to be -20f below zero tonight and the high temp on Monday didn't get much above -10f.  Frigid temps like that call for a mix. It's perfect timing for a freezing mix because a recent purchase was the album arctic conditions by stormloop.   With song titles like "Ice Wind," "In The Frozen Morning Light" and "Arctic Conditions," it was a pe...

The title of this mix pretty much says it all.  This is a collection of tunes that works well at night. I didn't want the mix to be dark & depressing or dark and scary, just something that feels more at home at night.  It's sort of the opposite of the Sunday morning mixes.  Although a few tunes could go either way. I didn't start out making a "night" mix, it just sort of happened on it's own after...

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 lov...

  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...

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...

As I have said many times before on this blog, a new mix is very often born when a track or two inspires me to create something new.  In this case it was the new album by Esmerine called " Dalmak ." The group recorded the new tracks in Instanbul and the whole album definitely has the texture and feel that one would associate with Turkish music.  The Constellation Records website describes it perfe...

 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 me...

I happened to come across a new tune from Moritz Von Oswald Trio.  The song, Blue Dub , has this great, slow, sparse dub thing going on that I love.  I knew as soon as I heard it that I'd have to make a new mix of dub related tunes. So, "dub transmissions" is, duh, is mix of dub tunes.  I've done them before & this one is similar to the others.  I think the previous ones have had parts that are a...

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 strai...

This mix is completely different from anything that I've posted here.  It's not ambient, or electronic or Sunday morning jazz.  This is music for motion. This is a mix I made last summer to listen to while biking.  I liked it so much that I added some new tunes this year and made it longer.  All of the songs have a propulsive, forward-moving feel to them.  There are some oddball choices in there b...

At the suggestion of a listener I set out to do a mix of ambient covers.  Not so easy. But I did find a bunch of Brian Eno cover tunes.  Some I was familiar with, Bang on a Can & Sakamoto, but many of the others were new discoveries made by cruising the web.  The mix starts with probably the most covered Eno tune - An Ending (Ascent), from Apollo.  The cover of that song comes from a new album by ...

I usually keep different folders of music for different types of mixes.  I have a "sea" folder.  And one called "dub & stuff."  Another is "piano."  And of course several "Sunday morning" folders as well. The folder for this mix was called "just plain old good ambient."  And that's a pretty darn good description of this mix.  There's no special theme or concept other than the fact that these cuts...

The title pretty much says it all - this mix is a field recording mix.  I think I've done 3 field mixes in the past but haven't done one in a long time.  So I thought it was time for another sonic exploration. The track that got me thinking about doing a new field mix was "El Divisader" by Chris Watson from the excellent "El Tren Fantasma" album.  Really a phenomenal track. The mix starts with som...

More Sunday morning music - this time all the tracks are from the 1970s.  In collecting these cuts I discovered two albums that I somehow missed - Kraftwerk - Ralf & Florian and Cluster - Sowiesoso.  I have plenty of Kraftwerk & Cluster in my collection but I didn't have those two albums &  they are both wonderful.  So thanks to Matt for suggesting those two records.  Also thanks Matt for suggesti...

The good folks over at Nocturne Records asked me to do a mix for their podcast . They put out some great music so how could I resist! Most of the time with my mixes I'll stumble upon one or two tunes that spark an idea. In this case I rediscovered an old electronic album that I had in college. It's a compilation called Music from the 21st Century. That album got me thinking about science fiction m...

Cedar Creeek in Cedarburg, WI. This mix ended up in a different place than when it started.  I have folder in my prospective mix bin called "just plain old good ambient."  It had a few tracks in it & I sat down with it intending to make a mix with that "theme" in mind. But then when I got to tracks #5, the Jasper, TX track, I started to hear something else happening.  It was the title of track #5,...

Ambient music will never be a popular genre.  We all know the kind of looks we get from people when they hear some of our ambient tunes.  But over time ambient sensibilities have crept into a lot of modern music.  And artists that normally don't do ambient music have dipped their toes into a droning sea. So that's where this mix takes us, to tunes that are fairly to very ambient, by non-ambient ar...

I have to be honest.  One of the reasons I've done so many(#5 now) of these Sunday morning music mixes is that they are so popular, especially on Mixcloud.  So I'm a sellout, a ratings whore.  I admit it.  But I like to think that each Sunday mix is a good listen in it's own way. I usually stumble upon a song or two that prompts me to start a new mix.  In this case it was the song "Before My Time"...

I love the end of the year because of all the lists that get posted all over the place.  I love discovering releases that I knew nothing about.  The folks over at Headphone Commute have started their mammoth collection of 15 best of lists here . Over at A Closer Listen they have lists for best field recordings, modern composition, experimental, post rock, overall, etc. and guest lists. Secret Thir...

The awesome folks over at Headphone Commute asked me to do a special mix for them and of course I could not refuse. The mix is special because it is helping promote a fantastic new compilation they have put together.  It's called "...and darkness came" and you can find out about it here... Headphone Commute ...and darkness came . The compilation features 80 tracks(yes, 80 tracks!) from great artis...

Looking back over the last six years of mixes, the piano has been the featured instrument in many of the the tracks.  I guess it goes all the way back to Ambient #1 : Music for Airports.  The piano is a perfect instrument for the contemplative, ambient music in the mixes found here. As far as I can tell, I've done four mixes devoted exclusively to the piano.  They are... 1) Piano Mix 2) Piano Mix...

Oops!  It's Sunday night & I'm posting a mix called Sunday Morning Music.  Oh well, play it next Sunday while reading the paper with a cup of coffee. This is the fourth in the Sunday morning series.  It follows a similar pattern - some ambient, some vocal tunes, some jazz - all of it nice & relaxing.  Perfect for a Sunday morning.  This morning I was actually able to sip coffee out on the deck(sho...

This is a very slow, droney kind of mix.  All the music has been stretched or slowed down so much that the tunes are unrecognizable from the originals. I used a great little program called Paul Stretch which you can find here... h ttp://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/ It take music and stretches or slows it down dramatically but still keeps it very musical.  I've used the program a few ti...

I wanted to get this mix in while it is still autumn.  I originally did this mix last fall for the good folks over at  Headphone Commute . If you've not been there, head over to their great site for reviews, news, sound clips & of course mixes. The music in the mix sort of has an autumnal feel to it at least I hope so considering the title is “Illusions of Autumn.”  Not sure what qualifies a tune...