low light mixes

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...

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 th...

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 compilat...

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 ar...

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....

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 in...

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 made this latest mix for our annual trip to northern Wisconsin. I usually try to make one stargazing mix & one morning mix. The stargazing mix will be posted soon. This is the morning mix, to be listened to while drinking Intelligentsia coffee & reading the morning paper. At our northern cabin we didn't have daily newspapers so I made due with coffee, crossword puzzles & science fiction. To go w...

There is no clever theme to this new mix. I noticed a similar feel to much of the new music I was listening to so I decided to cobble some tunes together in a mix. All of the music in this mix is new, either 2007 or 2008, except for the Andrew Deutsch cut which is from 2005(although it is new to me). The music in this mix has a sort of subdued, orchestral fell to it. I started thinking about this...

I listen to music every night when I go to sleep. Most of the time I keep a small stack of recent cd's on the nightstand for nighttime listening. I was getting tired of the selections so I dug into the back catalog & pulled out Steve Roach's Structures from Silence. Wow, it was great to hear that recording again! That lead me to pull out a couple of other oldies, which then lead to this mix. All t...

I was having a tough time coming up with an idea for a new mix. The shortwave mix, a drift on the signal, is one of my favorite mixes so I decided to do a sequel. And thus, through ionospheric transit, comes...a ghost in the phase. The formula is pretty much the same as before, a nice mixture of real shortwave radio recordings & ambient music with shortwave elements. Most of the shortwave stuff co...

It rained all day yesterday & it seemed to really bring out the frogs tonight.  So I went to the pond across the street & recorded some frog vocalization.  Nothing spectacular here, it's just 2:45 of frog sounds.  But it's still cool.

Last year I discovered British drone master Paul Bradley. This year it's the beautiful drones of David Tagg. I have two of his recordings now, "Expanding Electronic Diversity" & "Waist Deep Seas Of Milk". Two excellent albums. So because I've been listening to more drones than usual I've decided to do a drone mix. Nothing extraordinary here, just one drone slowly slipping into the next. Most of th...

I had already started this mix when our guest mixer, Jason, sent me his "Satellite" mix. I hadn't thought of satellite = moon until I saw his pic for the mix. So it's kind of funny that the next mix to be posted is a moon mix. I did this one the way I've done some mixes in the past, all the tunes have the word "moon" in the title. Came up with an interesting collections of tracks. It would have be...

This new mix is something different. It is a guest mix courtesy of a listener/downloader in Ireland. Jason is an electronic music producer who discovered new artists such as Tim Hecker, Fennesz & Murcof through some Low Light mixes. He said "Stunning artists, I never knew music could sound so minimal yet full." It is an excellent mix. Jason has put together an hour-long mix of "some of my favorite...

I don't really like berlin school music much anymore. I used to love that style. The first electronic music that I bought was Tangerine Dream & Jean Michel Jarre. I liked both of those artists for a long time. Eventually I think I just became bored with that style of electronic music. Recently, however, I've been listening to some berlin-type music. It started with the latest Steve Roach release,...

I have been interested in doing a mix of field recordings ever since I did the shortwave mix last year. I've been collecting field recordings from various sources & even bought a digital recorder so I could do my own phonography. I haven't really had the time to seriously record anything but I did manage to squeeze a few of my own things into this new mix. There is very little proper music in this...

There were some excellent releases in 2007, so I thought I'd feature some in a new mix. . My favorite ambient recording of the year was Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline. I know there are quite a few people who didn't care for the cd, but I love it. I like the more orchestral feel. I like that SOTL relies less & less on synths. A beautiful record. . My favorite vocal record wa...

I am starting to repeat myself. I've done two piano mixes, two string theory mixes, two winter mixes and now a second guitar mix. I decided to do a new guitar mix because I seem to have come across a lot of good guitar music lately. All the tracks on this mix are new, from either 2006 or 2007. The music ranges from electric to acoustic. Originally I intended to do a feedback-filled guitarscape lik...

I've gone on another binge of downloading music from netlabels. You know how the net is...one link leads you to another and then another and another and the next thing you know, you've download 10 free releases. Free is obviously a huge attraction for most netlabel releases. With some of the recordings, it's a good thing they are free. It's not that they are bad, just that I probably won't come ba...

The mix I did last year, called String Theory, was one of my favorites. This is the sequel, creatively titled String Theory Vol. 2. Originally posted at the Low Light Mixes site on blogspot, this mix features mostly orchestral style ambient. This one relies on new music more than the first mix did. I'm pretty happy with the way it flows from track to track. The goal is to never really be sure wher...

After a quick side trip we are back to a straight forward, ambient mix. I got the idea for this mix from my online friend, Brian and his an excellent podcast, The Quiet Sounds. At the beginning of the year he did a mix of sleep music and said this about it..."many of these tracks have a lullaby, 'breathing' quality...". The idea of "breathing" music caught my attention. I would come back to the co...