low light mixes

"Music is the space between notes." - Claude Debussy I found a couple of tunes recently that exemplify that Debussy quote.  So I looked for more tracks that had definite valleys between the peaks of synth washes or long pauses between piano chords and then I let the mix take off from there. The result is similar to the "breathing" mixes I've done before with the lulling ebb & flow that I like so m...

"The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh So much of ambient music has a beautiful ebb & flow that lends itself perfectly to sea metaphors.  Whether its bobbing up & down on the surface or plumbing the depths, ambient music music seems to fit well with imagery of the sea. I could c...

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." -- Plato (427-347 B.C.) I realized that I hadn't done a stargazing mix in quite awhile and with the weather getting warmer & spending more time outside, I figured a new star mix was in order. So here it is... T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Sonmi451 - Cumulonimbus 05:30 Manual - As the moon Spins Around 09:35 Cyber Zen...

On the heals of the last mix, which was sort of modern classical, comes another neo-classical type mix. I started collecting tunes for this mix after I heard Alva Noto's "Argonaut Version" in a Quiet Sounds mix.  I like that song & wanted it to find a home in a mix. Speaking of Quiet Sounds , there are some excellent mixes available for download there.  I wish Brian would crank them out more often...

I love soundtracks. And if you look at the tracklist for this mix, you'll see that I have a few favorite composers. At the top of that list are Clint Mansell & Cliff Martinez. They are responsible for two of my favorite soundtracks, The Fountain & Solaris . Jon Hopkins, a new composer on the soundtrack scene, could soon join those two as a favorite. His soundtrack for the movie Monsters , got a lo...

As the days get longer, I am able to enjoy a bit of sunlight when I get home from work. There have been a few days recently where I stopped during a walk to gaze at the evening sky as the color deepens to indigo & the stars first start appearing. Being a music geek, I can't help but think of tunes that would make a nice soundtrack for that scene. So while listening to music the last couple of week...

I am very excited to present this next mix. It's a guest mix by longtime listener/downloader, Ron Sylvester. Ron was the inspiration for a couple of my mixes that used old 78rpm recordings as a basis for the mixes "Sustain & Decay" and "Revenants of the Past". Ron sent me some mix cd's which I really enjoyed & I told him he really should do a proper mix someday. Well I am delighted that Ron has al...

"Distant transmissions flicker and fade, there's a drift on the signal, a ghost in the phase."I've had that phrase on my blog profile for a long time. I've used different parts of it as titles for my series of 'shortwave' mixes(drift on the signal, ghost in the phase, flicker & fade).With this mix I've completely tapped out that slogan because the new mix is called "distant transmissions."I'm not...

No pretense of ambience in this mix, just straight forward jazz.  I came across an interesting list here... Quintessential Jazz Songs. The Jazz 100 is a list compiled by listeners of jazz24.org & NPR Music.  It's kinda fun to read some of the comments because the listeners get very passionate about the list.  Much of the list is very recognizable & some of the tracks I'd never heard before, so it...

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." >    _ William Gibson,  Neuromacer I love that line from "Neuromancer" & it's the jumping off point for this mix. Now if I was going to do a true Neuromancder mix I'd use stuff like Autechre & other noisy, abrasive electronica.  But this isn't really a Neuro mix, I'm not a big fan of later Autechre & music that gets so...

Yah! A new mix finally! I've been ridiculously busy lately(10 days at the Super Bowl) so haven't been able to do much mixing. Hopefully that will change. This is another mix where the title says it all...slow & sleepy. Pretty straight forward ambient with long, stretched out chords, slow motion sounds to suspend consciousness. Many of the tracks used here are new or fairly new. A lot of good music...

"The passage of time is flickering dimly upon the screen." I've called this mix "Obscured by Time" because it has that grainy, blurry feel to it, like looking through gauze. The once distinct events in our memories melt together like the washes of sound in this mix. This collection was inspired by the two 2010 releases by 36, " Memories in Widescreen " & " Hollow ". A pair of great releases that a...

This last mix of 2010 is a mix that I did for Headphone Commute about 3 months ago. They were kind enough to ask for a mix & I was honored to add it to their great collection of mixes they post at their own site & at their Mixcloud site. I realized that if I was going to post this piano mix I'd better do it now because the title is "pno 2010" so I need to squeeze it into 2010 before it's gone. Thi...

The term "dubscapes" in the title of the mix pretty much says it all.  This is dub mix.  I've used dubby style songs in mixes before but never did a whole dub mix. Of course after setting out to do an all dub mix, I veered off course pretty quickly by including a cover of the Twin Peaks theme &  track from Vangelis.  I'd been looking for a way to work those two tunes into a mix & they seem to fit...

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 famili...

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...

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.  Wait...

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...

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 "cou...

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 art...

One of my favorites albums this year is The 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 fe...

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 W...

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 & artis...

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 a...

Breathing is rhythmic process of expansion and contraction, in & out, inhale & exhale. Breathing is one example of the cycles we see in nature such as night and day, wake and sleep, seasonal growth and decay, tides going in & out. And like waves in the tides, the rhythmic nature of breathing can be very calming. Some of my favorite sleep music has this cyclic, breathing quality to it. I made my fi...