low light mixes

    I'm getting this mix up & running just in time for Halloween. This one, while it does have a bit of a nighttime feel to it, is a little less creepy than some past Halloween mixes. For this collection I looked for titles that fit the theme of night to day. The mix moves chronologically from sunset to night to moonrise and set to darkness to dreaming and finally to light and dawn. Grab a pumpkin...

    WORLDS COLLIDE! In this mix I combine my love for new indie music with my love for all things quiet. The third installment of the Quiet Indie Songs series is here.  All tracks are from 2021 and it features artists like Jose Gonzalez, Billy Bragg, Matt Maltese, Cassandra Jenkins, Big Red Machine, Big Thief and more. Go for a nice walk in the woods while listening to some quiet indie songs. Chee...

  Eight years ago I did a mix with covers of Eno tunes - UNDER ENO'S COVERS   Since then I've collected a few more that I was planning to use for a follow up. I found the most covered Eno album is Music for Airports. So I decided to recreate the album with covers. Hence the title of the mix - Music for Covered airports.   The tracks follow the same order as the original album - 1/1, 2/1, 1/2, 2/2....

    This mix started with one album -  Goats & Distortions 5 by Dictaphone . It's one of my 2021 favorites. I began a new mix project with one song from that album as the starter, not knowing where it would go but the vibe was off-kilter. Then I heard a new album on Lost Tribe Sound,  Departures by mastroKristo , and I knew where the mix would go. This mix features a lot of wind instruments, altho...

    Autumn seems perfectly suited to ambient music, especially ambient with a tinge of melancholy. I was thinking about doing an fall-themed mix when Paul approached me with his fully curated mix for autumn. Perfect! Here's what Paul says about this mix: “Dedicating this one to my sister, Miriam Walter, professor of nursing at Chico State University in Northern California. Her birthday is today, S...

    This mix is pretty much what the title says - a collection of quiet/ambient tracks featuring the beautiful sounds of the pedal steel guitar. I did another pedal mix two years and since then it seems to be easier to find practitioners of the ambient steel guitar sound. Only one artist, Chuck Johnson, is repeated from that mix in this one. Here's the first mix:   http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.co...

    I love guest mixes because they expose me to tracks I might have otherwise missed in the monthly deluge of new releases. This new mix comes to us from Michael Southard(Time Rival) of Triplicate Records. I've included a few Time Rival tracks in mixes over the years so I was excited when Michael agreed to put together a mix of some of the best his label has to offer. Here's a blurb from Michael...

  I recently stumbled upon a post or tweet that mentioned Moteer, a UK record label active in the 2000s. I was like - oh man, I haven't listened to that stuff in a while, time to give some a spin. It was fun going back into that world of clicks, loops, vinyl records pops, and glitchy ambience. So I decided to make a mix. Moteer released music from 2003 to 2011. It was run by Andrew Johnson and Cra...

  Last year at this time I did a mix called " simply ambient " which was a nice, straightforward mix of ambient tracks. This mix is a sort of follow up titled "purely ambient." There is no theme, no story being told by the music, no big concepts. Just ambient music, pure and simple. This might be the start of a series of mixes - utterly ambient, perfectly ambient, naturally ambient, totally ambien...

  I few weeks ago the good folks over at  The Slow Music Movement  sent me a couple tracks by Wiki Chaves. After listening I immediately knew I had to construct a mix around the laid back guitar style. A style The Slow Music Movement calls - "Perfect for all your beach lying, garden barbecuing, hammock slouching, sunbathing, holiday taking soundtrack needs." Here's a link to the latest Wiki Chaves...

                                "Then he leaves the platform/For the sleeping car that's warm                                       You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter                                       And it comes to you, he never was a stranger"                                                                          - Leonard Cohen, "The Stranger Song"     I have been lucky...

I have been lucky to have had some awesome guest mixes this year. The streak continues with this excellent modern classical mix called "Cello Mood Swings." It's an excellent collection of music that features the cello. Duh!  This tracklist comes from loyal listener, Kevin, who was also responsible for last year's Japan themed mix - "Not Seeing is a Flower"  Which you can find here -  http://lowlig...

  The track, "I Will Not Be Sad In This World", is one of the most beautiful recordings ever made. It is hard not to be sad, however, upon hearing the news of the passing of Djivan Gasparyan.    I will forever be grateful to him for introducing me to the wonderful sounds of the duduk, an Armenian double reed woodwind instrument made of apricot wood. Despite it's single-octave range, Gasparyan was...

    One of my favorite new indie albums of 2021 is An Overview on Phenomenal Nature by Cassandra Jenkins. It's a mostly fairly quiet, folky album. Except for the last cut which is instrumental with a kind of jazzy/ambient vibe. I knew immediately that I wanted to use it in a Sunday morning mix. Then I realized that it had been more than a year since I'd done a Sunday mix. So here it is - Sunday Mo...

    Last year we lost Harold Budd. And now, just six months later, we lose another icon in Jon Hassell.  It's nearly impossible to overstate his importance in shaping an entirely new sound, what he would call Fourth World music. His music has influenced scores of musicians and listeners. I've included a lot of Hassell's music in mixes over the years. And, considering he just released a fine album...

    I recently read an article in the New York Times that was published in 2016 about an unlikely collection of admirers. A group that started back in 2004 to sing the praises of...clouds. These devotees are known as "The Cloud Appreciation Society." Here's a link to the NYT article...  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magazine/the-amateur-cloud-society-that-sort-of-rattled-the-scientific-commun...

    I've had a good run lately, posting a lot of mixes. But due to busy schedules and a bit of laziness, I've run out of fresh mixes ready to upload. Then comes Paul to the rescue! This mix is a breath of fresh air, going in a different direction than any of my recent mixes. Here's what Paul has to say about this excellent set: “This mix features oud, sitar and koto, moving from the Near/Middle Ea...

    I've been wanting to make an orchestral mix for a long time. Sometimes individual tracks will show up in other mixes but I haven't done one devoted exclusively to modern classical music in a long time. What finally got me going with this mix was the new album from Max Richter - Voices 2. It's a beautiful album with lots of tracks that would work for an ambient leaning modern classical set.  I...

    Last year saw a trio of very fine albums of harp music from Andrea Cortez, Mary Lattimore, and Kirsten Agresta Copel. Here are links to all three albums:   https://auralcanyonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-secret-song-of-plants   https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/album/silver-ladders   https://kcopelymusic.bandcamp.com/album/around-the-sun   I used "The Secret Song of Plants" quite a bit...

  At the end of 2020 I posted a mix called "Quiet Indie Songs" and it did a lot better than I expected. A few folks thought it should be a recurring series and I agreed. So here you have installment #2 - "Quiet Indie Songs #2 - Spring 2021."   I'm sneaking this in under the wire as it's barely spring anymore. Most of the songs are from 2021, with 4 of them from 2020. There are some old favorites i...

The origin of this mix is very simple - I simply wanted a new collection of meditative tunes to sleep to or zone out to while sipping tequila on the deck. Once I decided to go with a meditation mix I immediately thought of a recent purchase of music from an artist known as Calm Whale. You can't go wrong with any of their releases. Just close your eyes and pick one and it will be beautifully calm a...

    A year or two ago I read a sci-fi novel in which some of the main characters were sentient robots. When two of them would meet they establish secure channels with dialog such as "I am Paladin. You are unknown. Here comes my data. We want information about a pirate named Judith Chen. She goes by Jack … That is the end of my data." For some reason the line "Here comes my data" stuck with me.   I...

    After the craziness of the last mix it's nice to slow down. And what better way to slow down than with a guest mix from James over at  The Slow Music Movement . They have a wonderful new album called "Future Folk: Friendly Faces; Different Spaces."  https://theslowmusicmovement.bandcamp.com/album/future-folk-friendly-faces-different-spaces After I heard it I asked James to do a guest mix featu...

And now for something completely different. This mix is a collection of instrumental tunes from the progressive rock sub-genre known as The Canterbury Scene. According to Wikipedia:   The Canterbury scene (or Canterbury sound) was a musical scene centered around the city of Canterbury, Kent, England during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Associated with progressive rock, the term describes a loose...

It's funny how mixes come together sometimes. I started this one only knowing I wanted it to be pretty straightforward ambient. The easiest thing to do was to start with some new music from the last month or two. As I laid down a few tracks I started to get this feeling of the sea, of drifting on the water, of a quiet harbor. So I went with it.   Before long I had an entire mix of new music that h...