low light mixes

  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/...

With all the space themed mixes I've done over the years, there was no way I was going to miss making one for this solar eclipse.  So here it is - In The Shadow Of The Moon.   This mix is similar to the Juno mix in that it moves chronologically from sun to total eclipse back to sun.  The titles of the tracks describe the journey.   Cheers!     T R A C K L I S T : 00:00    Arp - The Rising Sun 05:3...

        This mix is a sort of follow up to the train mix of a couple of months ago.  I had a song or two that I hadn't used and then I stumbled upon the album "Simultonality" by Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society. The track, Sideways Fall, has this great repetitive train-like feel to it.  I knew immediately that I needed to make another train mix to fit with that tune.   That Joshua Abram...

  My musical friend, Paul Asbury Seaman, has given us another gift in this beautiful collection.  Paul picked out the tunes and the order & I stitched them together to form the mix.  It was a joy to assemble.   Here's what Paul had to say about the mix:   "This is another bedtime, dreaming, unwinding, floating-away-on-an-interior-journey mix. The starting inspiration came from Michael DeMaria’s pi...

    I'm a space science dork.  I have NASA t-shirts, a large print of the moon in my office, read sci-fi and I make space/science themed music mixes.  Here are links to a few that I've done in the past:   http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-god-particle.html http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2011/11/launch-of-curiosity.html http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/08/music-for-mars-landing...

  The Ocean is a mighty harmonist.                - William Wordsworth     This is pretty straight forward - a collection of tunes that will make you feel as if you are drifting along on ocean currents.  Almost all of the ocean sounds in this mix are in the original pieces of music.  I only added a bit of wave sounds around the 39 minute mark.  Enjoy the float.   Cheers!       T R A C K L I S T :...

        I'm not sure where this mix originated.  It may have started with Johann Johannsson's Kangaru from the Arrival soundtrack, God knows I listened to that a ton over the last 6 months.  Maybe it was Max Richter.    Whatever it was I found myself collecting vocal tunes.  The kind of tracks that have vocals but many times no words or lyrics.  If there are words it's usually unintelligible or a...

I wonder why the sound of trains is so evocative.  Even for folks who have never been on a train there is something about the sound of a train on the tracks that stirs the imagination.  This mix will hopefully have the same effect.   I was surprised to find that I've only done two previous train themed mixes.  It sure seems like I've done more.  Maybe it's the use of train sounds in filed recordin...

  "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives."      - Carl Sagan     I have always loved Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" essay. It's even better hearing his voice reading it.  In the Cosmos reboot from a couple of years ago, when they played a clip of Carl I...

    I love moody guitar music with a bit of dust and twang. In an earlier mix, Mysterioso, I included a cut by Dead Combo.  Their music was new to me.  I was interested to learn from a listener that they are from Portugal and have achieved cult status there.    That listener directed me to a mix he'd done with a Dead Combo track.  I love the mix, you find it here...  https://www.mixcloud.com/jorge...

    I haven't done a Sunday morning mix in quite a while so volume 14 solves that problem.    This follows the usual Sunday morning mix template of a few vocal tunes, some ambient tunes and a bit of jazz.  I was happy to finally use Shenandoah in a mix.  More than a year ago I was at a local high school spring concert and fell in love with the concert band version of this tune.  I know it may soun...

  One of my favorite things about making these mixes for ten years is the people I've come in contact with.  I stay in touch with folks from Ireland, The Netherlands, Canada, Brazil or just down the road in Chicago.    This mix comes from one these online friends, Josh Furey.  He did a previous guest mix for Low Light Mixes called Cartridge, which you can find here... Cartridge - an 8-bit Adventur...

  This week marks the final transmission of the wonderful record label, City Centre Offices.  Their style of electronic music was new to me at the time and I devoured their releases with a rapacious glee.  I think I have somewhere between 40 - 50 CCO recordings.   City Centre Offices has been silent for a number of years and I hate to admit that I'd sort of forgotten about them.  But now this week...

  I haven't had time lately for new mixes but I wanted to get something up on Mixcloud so I thought I'd resurrect an old mix.  This mix was originally done 10 years ago.  Yikes!  I can't believe I've been doing this that long.   There were a few tracks in the original mix that I didn't really like anymore so I added a few new ones and took out a few old cuts.  The new tracks are by Tilman Robinson...