low light mixes

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...

What the heck?  Two sea/water mixes in a row?  I didn't plan it this way.  It just sort of happened that I collected a few sea songs, then the library/soundtrack mix got done, then I found a few more sea songs and this mix happened. "lost at sea" is very similar to "a solitary sea" from last year.  Some nice drifting, flowing tunes with a definite sea/ocean feel to them.  And of course all the tun...

Right off the bat, I have to come clean. I stole something. I stole the idea for this mix. But I'm glad I did because I'm very excited to post this new track. Over at SoundCloud I ran into some mixes by Astromatt . He uses sounds from music libraries and soundtracks of '60's and '70's to create great underwater themed mixes. I love the sound of these old tracks & how they work together in a mix. W...

Modern-classical, neo-classical, acousmatic, electro-acoustic, ...whatever you want to call the genre, I think this mix fits. You'll hear lots of strings, some piano, some beats and more strings.  It has a vague sort of chamber music feel to it.  The mix takes a detour about halfway through with the Pjusk track.  It's a good tune but doesn't necessarily fit the modern classical theme of the mix. ...

I've been listening to a lot of older music lately. Been on a big progressive rock kick, King Crimson, Steve Hackett, Willowglass, Pink floyd, Phil Manzanera, Strawbs, etc. This lead me to dig up some older ambient tunes, which lead to this mix. Listening to Michael Brook's "Hybrid" from 1985 brought back memories of how wonderful that album is. So I grabbed other ambient recordings from around th...

I recently was given a box of old sound effects records like the one in the picture. These albums brought back a lot of memories. As a kid I would go to the public library down the street and borrow their sound effects records. I guess that was an early sign that I'd end up with music tastes that were a bit different. This new mix is perfect for my new vinyl sound effects collection, unfortunately...

Drifting...floating...coasting...gliding...swimming... Whatever word you choose, all would describe this mix perfectly.  It's just a nice collection of mostly new tunes, all with a drifting, floating feel. This mix works great for sleeping, enjoy. T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Moustache Mountain - poisonoussnake 05:50 Ben Fleury Steiner - Purple as the Dawn 09:45 Pausal - Midshipman 12:40 Back to Comm...

The mixes are coming fast and furious!  I'm trying to crank out a few more than normal.  This one seems to be fast paced compared to the usual mixes found here. This creation is similar to a mix I did in 2008 called "Motion for Relief" .  Ambient dub would be the best way to describe this installment.  Not all the tunes are "dub" but most have beats, some more prominent than others.  The feel is s...

This is the third mix I’ve done with a shortwave radio theme. Many of the tunes have noise & static already built in. Sometimes radio washes have been added. As with past shortwave mixes, the actual shortwave recordings come courtesy of Myke Dodge Weiskopf. He runs a great site dedicated to shortwave music . This mix was originally posted on MixCloud by folks at Fluid Radio .  I am honored that Fl...

I have no idea why I called this mix "cloud mapping". It started off as something about the sky, then aerial views of something, then blah blah blah...then it ends up as "cloud mapping". Most of the music is new or new-ish.  There is no big time theme in this mix, just good, drifting ambient music.  I guess you could picture yourself flying over clouds while listening to this.  My favorite track i...

a canticle unfolds I love all the mixes being posted on Mixcloud by Fluid Radio . They have a ton of neo-classical, Ambient, Modern Classical, Experimental Acoustic mixes on their Mixcloud page. So I set out to make my own "neo-classical" mix. And as I have said here before, sometimes mixes take you in directions that you weren't anticipating. With "a canticle unfolds", I discovered some vocal mus...

It's the dead of winter, just trying to outlast the snow & cold, trying to make it to spring break. The music in this mix has a sort of lonely winter feel to it. The tracks are not too dark or depressing, they just seem to conger up images of vast, snowy landscapes. There are a few recordings in this mix from some of my recent favorite record labels. I'll just list some of those favorites... Low P...

Here's the first mix for 2010.  It's called slo_mo because all the tunes are slow & droney. One aspect of this mix that makes it a bit different is the use of a few "stretched" tracks.  I think I've mentioned this program here before, it's called " Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch ".  I couldn't find a link to it, but at one time, on the web, there was a version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony that had be...

I was listening to music from Lunar Testing Lab the other day.  The album, "Space Program", has a sort of retro/space/electronic feel to it.  Boards of Canada in space? I thought a whole mix of music with this kind of feel would be fun, so the result is "Remember Tomorrow".  I tried to use tunes that had that retro, space program vibe without being too kitschy or cheesy.  It's fine line & I hope I...