low light mixes

There is a new release from Loscil called  "Sketches from New Brighton." And of course it's excellent, everything from Loscil is excellent.  As I listened to it I figured that Loscil would have to be one of my favorite ambient artists of all time. That got me thinking...what are my top ten ambient artists of all time?  The artists on the list are ones I come back to again and again.  And also ones...

This is a mix I did for my good friends at acloserlisten.com and lostchildrennetlabel.com The mix is called “daylight fades” because as I was listening to “Olancha Farewell” by Harold Budd [off Lovely Thunder]  it made me think of sitting on the front porch watching the sky begin to darken as daylight fades.  Once I had that feeling in mind I just kept my ears open for a couple of weeks listening...

Back in November I did a mix for the launch of Curiosity, NASA's newest Mars rover.  Now 8 months later, Curiosity has arrived at Mars.  So this mix is music for landing on Mars, in honor of Curiosity's EDL or entry, descent and landing. As I write this, the landing has not taken place yet.  But I wanted to get the mix uploaded on the day of the landing.  I'll update the post depending on the resu...

Those of us who are science dorks were fascinated earlier this month when it was announced that the discovery of a new particle was very likely the elusive Higgs-Boson.  The particle has been the subject of a nearly 50 year hunt to explain why matter has mass. This mix is a celebration of that discovery.  With titles like "Particle," "Sweet Collision," and "Magnetic Fields," all the track titles w...

Sunday mornings in summer...put on some coffee even though the temps are already climbing. Sunday mornings in summer...are spent on the deck with the paper & the birds. Sunday mornings in summer...slow motion start to a slow motion day. This is the third in my unplanned Sunday morning music series.  I hadn't intended to more than one of these mixes but the first was so popular on Mixcloud that I c...

A mix in honor of the recent transit of Venus across the face of the sun. It won't happen again until 2117. All the tracks have Venus, sun or transit in the title. Enjoy. T R A C K L I S T : 00:00    Casino Versus Japan - Names on Maps of Venus part 6 01:27    Laurie Anderson - Transitory Life 02:39    Ishq - Diving into Sun 8:33    Glen Velez - In Transit 10:50    Jon Hopkins - The Wider Sun 12:1...

Shortwave radio signals spread across the planet, the signal fades in & out, washes of static mix with music & voice, creating an eerie mashup of music & electronics. This is the latest mix in a series, going back years, that utilizes shortwave broadcasts & music that already has a noisy, grainy tone. That combination of sounds creates a strange, other-worldly feel, transporting the listener aroun...

The music in this mix has a strange, sort of alien feel to it.  The pieces are a bit darker, but not creepy or annoying.  But they do all have a weird other-worldly sense to them. This started with the first track, "We Swallowed the Night" by Anduin.  It just sounded vaguely alien and a bit threatening.  So from there I decided to construct a mix around that feeling. When I make mixes I collect tr...

On Sundays I don't do anything useful until noon.  I read the paper, listen to music, read a book, sort & catalog my mp3's, sit out on the deck, etc. This mix is a soundtrack for Sunday mornings.  Some instrumental tunes, some vocal tracks.  All of it mellow & laid back.  Perfect for a lazy Sunday morning. When I did my first Sunday morning mix I wasn't really sure if I even liked it.  Then it tur...

This is my 5th "sea" mix.  I guess ambient artists really like the imagery & sounds of the sea.  Me too. This one is very similar to the other "sea" mixes.  A lot of white noise accompanies you as you drift on the swells of "a further sea." Most of the music is fairly new, especially nice is the new release from 36 - " Lithea ".  It's another excellent recording from Dennis Huddleston .  Definitel...

I've been on kind of a moon binge lately. It started with watching HBO's excellent series, " From the Earth to the Moon. " Then I read " We Reach the Moon ," a book written in 1969 by John Noble Wilford, the NYT science reporter. Next I moved on to the wonderful film, " For All Mankind. "  It's the story of the men who went to the moon, told in their own words.  Beautiful images and of course Eno'...

I guess you could say that all the music I listen to is a soundtrack of one sort or another.  Soundtrack for cleaning the house, soundtrack for sleeping, for biking, for reading, for living.  Most of my mixes could be considered to be mini soundtracks. So what makes this one different?  I guess the tracks collected here just sort of had that "soundtrack" feel when I first heard them.  I imagined a...

. Ambient dub, minimal dub, ambi-dub, whatever you want to call it, is something that I listen to every now & then.  I like making mixes with this music because the tracks flow so well together. I've done three previous dub mixes and while they are all laid back, this one may be more so.  It collects some dubby cuts & weaves in some noise & washes of field recordings from the fantastic ambi-dub re...

I absolutely love NPR music .  The host of their All Songs Considered podcast is Bob Boilen.  I've heard him describe music as "Sunday morning music."  I'm not exactly sure what that is but I think I know when I hear it. I'd been thinking about doing a Sunday mix for some time and then I heard Wilco's song "One Sunday Morning" & immediately loved it & had to start a mix so I could use that tune in...

Back in 2007 I did a Prog Rock mix that is still one of my favorite low light mixes.  You can find the original post & download here... PROG ROCK '07. I've always wanted to do another prog mix.  While on a pro rock binge I came across "For Absent Friends" by Genesis and that gave me the idea of doing a mellow prog mix. In the original mix I tried to stay away from prog rock mainstays like Genesis...

"I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon and stars." - Hildegard von Bingen Electronic & ambient music seems perfectly suited for stargazing.  So you really could use just about any ambient mix for night sky viewing and it will work just fine.  But sometimes it's nice to do a mix specifically geared towards...

For such a small country, Iceland has produced a surprising number of excellent artists.  From Bjork to Mum to Seabear to Olaf Arnalds to Sigur Ros, it's really extraordinary the amount of wonderful music that comes from that island. This last mix of 2011 is an Icelandic journey.  All the music is created by artists from Iceland.  The brilliant idea for it came from loyal listener, Kevin.  I wasn'...

For some reason,when I think of falling snow, the instrument that comes to mind is the piano.  Maybe it's from years of listening to Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas album.  So it's no surprise that there is a fair amount of piano music in this "snow" mix. We didn't have any snow yet but I had been thinking about doing a "first snow" mix for awhile & decided to throw one together Friday ni...

This past Saturday NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory known as "Curiosity" on a 9 month journey to the planet Mars.  As I was watching video of the launch, I was thinking about music that would work well with a launch & space voyage.  I quickly collected some appropriate tune & cranked out this mix at escape velocity speed. The tracks are all electronic/electronica cuts that I thought seem...

I recently had surgery on a broken collarbone & had to spend a fair amount of time laying around, recuperating, sleeping.  So I decided to make a mix that would work well with Percocet & Vicodin. I've produced other sleep mixes before, "I fell asleep at my desk making this mix" , "slo mo" , "slow & sleepy" , and have often relied on them for nighttime listening.  Of course most of the mixes found...

A friend of mine made an excellent Spotify playlist called "Atmospheric Songs for Travelers" which had some great music from John Martyn, Nick Drake, Wilco & more.(I saved it as my own playlist which is why name is on it if you click the link.) Listening to that collection made me want put together my own mix of vocal music.  I don't do vocal mixes very often but I thought it'd be nice to do one n...

Josh, from Nocturne Records ,  requested a Halloween mix. At first I was reluctant because I'm not a big fan of dark ambient.  I've never really cared for Lustmord records, although I do have "The Place Where Black Stars Hang."  While I do have a fair amount of drone music I don't like dissonant drones. When I set out to do this mix I wasn't sure what direction it would take.  Would it be noisy, s...

It hasn't felt much like autumn around here, with temps in the 70's & 80's the last week or two.  But the leaves are still falling and before you know it we'll have snow flying. So I figured now is as good a time as any to publish this new mix, "Autumn in Slow Motion."  This is a fairly straight forward mix with a nice blend of old & new tracks.  As you can tell all the tracks have the word "autum...

I guess you could call this mix "Televison Sky #2".  It's a continuation of the sounds found in that mix. This has more beats than a normal low light mix, more of an electronica sound.  I think it has a nice mix of old & new material.  The oldest cuts are from Can, Eno & Earthstar, 1973, 1975 & 1981 respectively.  In the middle we have the Casino Versus Japan cut from 1999 & the Aspen track from 2...

"Several times I've seen the evening slide away. Watching the signs taking over from the fading day." - Brian Eno from Golden Hours This is music for sitting on the porch in the evening, as the day slips into night. The sounds of traffic, lawn mowers & kids fade away as the first stars come out. I stole the title from a recording by Fognode, which you can find here... Fognode - Porch Music . Brian...