low light mixes

    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...

Photo by Alex on Unsplash   Back in January Paul emailed me about an album called "Bardo Tank" by Ron Miles playing trumpet in The Tank in Colorado. That email started me off in search of tunes for what became my "Resonant Spaces" mix. Paul went a different direction and sought out tracks for an ambient trumpet mix. The result is a great collection of tunes that span different styles and old to ne...

    What if the original Blade Runner film had a pop music soundtrack? You know how some films have an instrumental score but also an album of pop/rock tunes that were used in the film or inspired by the film. If Blade Runner had such a collection maybe it would sound like this mix. This all started when I was listening to Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond part 1 and I thought that it sounde...

    This year I've had the good fortune of posting several cool guest mixes and that continues with this excellent collection from Brad Deschamps of Polar Seas Recordings. https://polarseasrecordings.bandcamp.com/ It's not a mix of all Polar Seas releases, in fact only the opening and closing tracks are from the label. But it is perfect timing for a mix from Brad because Polar Seas is releasing th...

  As I've said here before, solo piano is wonderfully evocative of falling snow. So this mix is a collection of piano tracks that remind me of snow. All the tunes are new, being from 2020 or 2021. Including the opening track from a forthcoming album on Whitelabrecs, i=r by Lorenzo Masotto   https://whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/album/i-r There's not much else to say other than enjoy this last snow mix...

    This mix is nice and straightforward - no funky locations, no focus on a single instrument - just straight up ambient. The closest thing to a theme would be that all the tracks are from 2021.   In trying to come up with a title for the mix, I looked through a list I keep of possible titles. If I hear an interesting phrase or combo of words I'll jot it down to possibly use later. In this case I...

  Somehow last year I missed the album Transcendence by Sherry Finzer. https://heartdancerecords.bandcamp.com/album/transcendence It's an album of solo flute improvisations recorded in an old water tank in Rangely, Colorado. It definitely has the same feel as Paul Horn's Inside the Great Pyramid from 1976. As I listened to it, I wondered if I could collect enough tracks to make a mix of music reco...

  Photo by  Nick Reynolds  on  Unsplash   I am so psyched to have another excellent guest mix. This one comes from long-time friend of the blog, Innesti - innesti.bandcamp.com I have featured a bunch of Innesti music over the years and have hosted guest mixes from him as well. A couple of days ago I got an email asking if I was interested in another guest mix of  ambient vaporwave tunes. Aww, hell...

  As I type this we are getting pounded with another 9" of snow, the second pounding in less than a week. Combine that with semi-lockdown we are still under and it sort of feels like I'm in a research station outpost about to hunker down for The Long Polar Night. Most of the titles fit the theme as well as the feel of the tunes.. I added some weather radio recordings throughout the mix which I thi...

    Great minds think alike. Both Paul and I had the idea of doing a "bell" based mix. I, however, am a procrastinator, and after creating a save folder for bell tunes 3 months ago, I have one track in it. So who knows when that puppy was going to get done. Paul, on the other hand, sought out tracks and compiled them into a perfect playlist that became this mix - Bell Tone Meditation. Here's what...

    I've been a fan of halftribe(Ryan Bissett) ever since he approached me about doing a guest mix roughly 6 years ago - whoa, blows my mind that it was that long ago. Whether it's deep & dubby or straight up ambient, halftribe has released some of my favorite albums over the last 5 or 6 years. So I was excited when Ryan agreed to do a guest mix.  Here's what Ryan said about the mix: "It's been a...

    I was fishing around for an idea for a new mix and mother nature helped out by dropping some fresh snow overnight so that became the theme - The Silence of Snow. I took the picture above on a morning walk through a local nature preserve.   The first draft of this mix had several piano based pieces. I think piano tunes do a nice job of conjuring up snow but I decided to pull them and save them...

  by Sven Geier - sgeier.net   We end the year as we began - with a mix from Paul Asbury Seaman. And a fine way to end the year it is. All of the music in this set is from 2020, making it an appropriate way to say goodbye to this tumultuous year. Here's what Paul says about the mix: “Stillness within motion is a concept that comes from Zen Buddhism and the martial arts. It always seemed to me a go...

  I always label these lists and mixes as "Best Ambient," but with so much music released each year, coming up with a true best list is almost impossible. So this is really more of a list and mix of my favorite ambient albums of the year. Best of 2020 just sounds better. I don't about you but I bought a lot of ambient music this year thanks to Bandcamp Fridays. Through regular purchases and specia...