low light mixes

I haven't had time to do anything new lately but today I'm home sick so I had some time in between naps. I was listening to " Nautica " by krill.minima , and it got me in the mood for some "sea" music. A few things came to mind immediately, such as Eluder, Loscil & a new track by Intrusion. From there I just searched for tunes with 'sea', 'water', 'ocean' or other watery words in the titles. I thi...

Generally I like autumn.  I don't mind the colder temps, colors are great, don't have to mow the lawn anymore, etc.  But this year the weather has been nasty, too cold too soon & lots of rain. So I set out to do a bleak, cold October mix.  But as usually happens with mixes, they take on a life of their own and lead you in different directions.  I realized, as I was collecting tunes, that I didn't...

One of my favorite mixes from last year was Sustain & Decay . It was fun digging up old recordings & mixing them with new releases. So I decided to do a follow-up, with the result being "revenants of the past". It follows the same basic formula of last years mix(which was also released in October). I browsed through a ton of files at archive.org , looking for things like old vinyl records & Edison...

I have been very busy this summer and I haven't had time to even think about a new mix.  So it's perfect timing that I have a new guest mix to present. "Gravity" is a fantastic new mix by Jason O'Gorman.  Jason did a mix called "Satellite" for us in March of last year.  I really enjoyed that mix & was always hoping he'd do another and here it is. About the mix, Jason says... "Think I'll call it "g...

I listen to ambient music every night when I go to bed. I usually browse my recent acquisitions to find something for sleep music. There are a few recordings which get used more than others. Two recent releases by Steve Roach get regular airtime here at Low Light Mixes. Last year's "A Deeper Silence" and this year's "Dynamic Stillness". There was a time when I played Deeper Silence in the backgrou...

My last mix was done for SubVersion and now Mick was kind enough to return the favor with a mix for Low Light Mixes. It's an excellent mix which Mick describes this way... "Drones In Duality" is the first in a series of mixes dedicated to Bridewell Gardens, which I visit every week to engage in therapeutic conservation and decorating work. The name is a reference to the double meaning properties o...

The transition from spring to summer brings two new mixes from Low Light Mixes central command. We've had a fair amount of rain lately so both mixes are "rain" mixes. Rain evokes so many memories & emotions, it's a great theme for mixes. Using field recordings really helps hold the mix together. I try not to over do it with the rain sounds, hopefully it works well. This first mix is a vocal mix, w...

I got the idea for this mix over at the Hypnos records forum. In the "Now Playing" thread, someone posted several entries in a row about listening to various soundtracks. Some favorites of mine, Cliff Martinez's "Traffic" & "Narc" and Clint Mansell's "The Fountain", were on the list. It got me thinking & listening to soundtracks for a week or two and this new mix, "Cinematica", is the result. Ther...

I was inspired by my daughter's mix cd's to do my own vocal mix. She does great mixes that I listen to in the car and I thought I'd do a similar one of my own. Of course the finished product is not as uptempo as hers. This being an ambient mix blog, most of the tunes are fairly quiet. There is no unifying theme here, other than I like these tunes. The Martin Grech tunes are from "March of the Lone...

This is another new kind of mix for the blog. This is an all Eno mix. I came across the Eno tune "Spider & I " in a recently downloaded mix & I was reminded of how much I like Eno's voice. So I thought why not collect some favorite vocal tunes together in one place. For the first half of the mix I alternate between vocal tunes & instrumentals. I thought this might be nice to break things up a bit....

The inspiration for this mix came from the new Jon Hassell album. If you haven't picked it up yet, do so. It's called "Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street". It's already in my best of 2009 folder. It's very moody, very ambient, just a little jazzy. Very much like the wonderful release from Arve Henriksen last year. I wanted this mix to have a moody, melancholy, late-night j...

I have been wanting to do another field mix almost since the moment I finished the last one. So here it is, a new mix entitled "in_transit". I like field recordings but not as much nature recordings. I'm not wild about birds chirping & water flowing. I like mechanical sounds or crowd noise or as you'll hear in this mix, trains. I used train sounds in the last mix & they play a prominent role here...

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...