low light mixes

This mix doesn't need a lot of introduction or explanation. It's a collection of ambient guitar tunes. The kind with swells of sound and long, slow washes of beautiful ambient guitar.   Some of the tracks came from ideas found in this thread on Mixcloud. Feel free to add any other tracks to the discussion.   https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/posts/ambient-guitar/   Enjoy the ambient guitarscapes....

  I was digging through some old mixes that had never been uploaded to Mixcloud and I came across a couple of old field recording mixes. The plan was to combine the two into a new mix. Well, as usual, the mix changed and I ended up creating a new field recording mix from scratch. Sort of.   I did use a couple of snippets from the original mixes. The first is from about 4:40 - 6:30, next one comes...

This mix started with an interesting album I came across this past weekend, Ernest Hood - Neighborhoods. It was originally released in 1975 but was recently rediscovered and rereleased. It's a curious combination of field recordings and early ambient noodling. The result is captivating. https://freedomtospend.bandcamp.com/album/neighborhoods I picked the track "Saturday Morning Doze" as the starti...

When Paul emailed a few weeks back with the idea of doing a bell themed mix I got all excited. I thought to myself - "Perfect, I have a whole folder of bell tunes I've been collecting." So I go to that folder and there are two tracks in it. That's it. I guess it's the thought that counts?  If Paul hadn't come up with this mix I probably never would have gotten around to it. Maybe there's some sort...

  Ugh, this was difficult. I went through old end-of-the-year lists, checked Spotify playlists, looked up other folks' lists and dug up old mixes. There is just no easy way to sort through soooooo much music. But I finally ended up with something that is sort of coherent.  I decided not to call this mix Best of the Decade as I have done with mixes for years. I've realized that the "Best" label is...

  Here's another impossible task - compiling a mix of the best film scores of the decade. Like any of my other year-end mixes, this is not really a "Best" mix. It's a collection of scores that I listened to a lot and fit within my ambient aesthetic.  The tracks are laid out chronologically from when the films were released. Starting with Monsters in 2010 to Ex Machina in 2015 and finishing up with...

    As I said in the previous post, there was so much good music this year, every year really, that I couldn't fit it all into one mix. So here is volume 2. This one focuses on modern classical/electro-acoustic music.   The first track in the mix is from William Ryan Fritch's massive album - Deceptive Cadence - Music For Film Vol I & II, easily the best release of the year. It was just one of seve...

  It's an impossible task to narrow down the multitude of ambient recordings released every year into a definitive "Best of" list. There's so much music out there that I'll never hear it all and what I do hear is hard to give the proper attention to. So many factors can influence a record making the list - where did a first hear it, what mood was I in, what other music did I listen to around it, d...

  I use a fair amount of film music in my mixes and have done mixes of all soundtrack tunes but I have never made a best of the year mix for film scores. Until now. There were no blow my mind scores, like Arrival or Solaris, this year but there was a lot of excellent music to choose from for this mix.   As an ambient guy, I lean towards more atmospheric film scores. I'm not at all interested in th...

  I have a bunch of folders of music that I collect for mixes. I have one called "sea '19" for a sea-themed mix. One called "fog bound" for music that sounds like a foggy night. Other folders include PNO, stargazing, foreign lands, retro synths, dusty, 4th world and many more. The music for this mix is in a folder called "ambient just plain old ambient." So this mix is just that - a simple collect...

Cover art created by and courtesy of Robert Rich,  https://robertrich.com/graphic-art/ .   As regular visitors to this blog have probably figured out, I don't really plan things out here. Sometimes it's a mix a week, sometimes it's a month between mixes. The last Blade Runner mix is the perfect example, I wasn't even thinking about that mix until we hit Nov. 2019 which is the month and year of Bla...

  I wasn't planning on doing this mix. But then on Friday, someone on Twitter posted that we have caught up to the time when the film, Blade Runner supposedly takes place. I knew immediately that I had to make a mix.   This collection is pretty straight forward - all the tracks sound like they fit into the Blade Runner soundtrack universe.   Enjoy!   T R A C K L I S T : 00:00    Pye Corner Audio -...

Cover art by Sven Geier,  http://www.sgeier.net/fractals/     I have talked many times here about how a single track or artist can inspire a mix. Well, that seems to have happened with this latest mix from Paul.   He emailed me about a month ago about Kubusschnitt, a group creating berlin school style electronic music. That discovery set him on the course of creating a mix of sequencer tunes. And...

  I remember the first time I heard the Daniel Lanois tunes From Eno's Apollo album, I didn't really care for them. I didn't like the pedal steel guitar. I absolutely hated country music back then and I associated the sound of pedal steel with country and nothing else.    Eventually, the tunes grew on me and I've come to love the sound of pedal steel guitar. I also came around on country-tinged mu...

  I'm not sure exactly where this mix started. I heard a few tunes that had a wistful, almost melancholy feel to them and began collecting tracks. The result is this new mix of mostly modern classical music but with a good dose of electronics and atmospherics. Most of the music is new with 10 of the 15 tracks from 2019. I think this mix would also work well as a soundtrack for fall.   Cheers!   T...

  Two years ago I did a mix called  "A Distant Pulse"  which featured a lot of tribal ambient sounds. I've been meaning to do a sequel and now it's here with "A Rhythmic Passage."   What finally got the ball rolling for a new mix is a new album from Louigi Verona called "Nocturnal Creatures." Recommended by my ambient collaborator, Paul Asbury Seaman, the album is similar to classic Steve Roach tr...

  I've been heckin' busy this summer. First of all, it's summer so beer gardens, baseball games, northwoods vacations, beer gardens, yard work, beer gardens, etc. Plus I've been doing a ton of freelance work. And lastly, my daughter is getting married in a month and I'm editing a video for the reception. I have not been able to get any new mixes going in a while.   So it's Paul Asbury Seaman to th...

  I can't tell you how excited I am for this mix. Well, actually I'm telling you right now so that first line was bullshit. Suffice it to say I love this mix. It comes from our good friends at  Lost Tribe Sound , an amazing record label that is having a hell of a year. Of course, last year was pretty darn good as well.   Ryan Keane, the man behind Lost Tribe Sound, has put together a mix that is i...

  In honor of the third season of Stranger Things dropping today, Low Light Mixes presents Stranger Synths 2019. This a retro synth mix that falls right in line with the synth sounds of Netflix's Stranger Things series.   Cheers!   T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Just A Human - Stranger Things Remix 01:33 Pye Corner Audio - Deep Space Probe 03:54 Sinoia Caves - 1983 Main Theme 06:22 The Belbury Circle -...

  One of my favorite discoveries over the past year has been Innesti. The last album, released in February, is called Formless and that describes perfectly the music of Innesti. The tunes have a hazy, meandering feel that I love in ambient music.   Today Innesti releases a new album - Between Worlds, which I am very excited about. To celebrate this new release we have a new mix from Innesti create...

  I made a list of my favorite ambient albums of the first half of 2019 and noticed that there were 6 releases from the Whitelabrecs label on it. Harry Towell, who records as  Spheruleus , runs Whitelabrecs and he has done a great job expanding the roster of artists and getting better and better every year.   So to celebrate all these excellent recordings I decided to make a mix using all 2019 Whi...

  The 18th installment in the Sunday Morning Music series is here.  It starts with one of my favorite albums of the year - Spirit by Rhye. It's so beautiful and intimate. From there we get some more pretty tunes because that's what I want on Sunday morning - no dark ambient drones here, just pretty and calm.   All the tracks are fairly new - the oldest being from 2016, while most are from this yea...

created by and through the courtesy of Hollan Holmes     I am excited to bring you another beautifully curated mix from Paul Asbury Seaman. Anyone who has been to this blog in the last couple of years should be familiar with Paul's excellent mixes. The most recent of which was a train mix from a couple of months ago...   http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2019/03/places-ive-never-beenode-to-high-sp...

  I love the film, Arrival, so I should have thought of this myself. But a listener commented on my Blade Runner alternative mix that I should do an alternative mix for Arrival. Yes!   So here it is - An Alternative Arrival Soundtrack. I absolutely love Johann Johannsson's original soundtrack, probably one of my top two or three soundtracks of all time. So this mix is not attempting to make someth...

   And now for something completely different. This latest mix is almost, dare I say, dance music. Yikes! Actually it's not like this is EDM/Dubstep with ridiculous drops and autotune vocals. But all the music in this mix definitely has 4/4 time signature.   One of my favorite discoveries over the last couple of years has been the music of Kiasmos, a minimal techno duo comprised of Ólafur Arnalds...