About a year ago I did a mix of my favorite ambient artists of all time. I have been meaning to do a mix of my favorite ambient albums ever since. And now here it is. I did not go back and look at my favorite artist list. I sorted through my ambient collection and came up with my fav albums. Then I compared the two lists and not surprisingly they are almost identical. Basically I substituted Scott Solter for Alio Die when I made the fav album list. At least I didn't repeat any tunes from one mix to the next. Choosing a favorite album from some of these artists was difficult. Steve Roach has some many recordings that it was tough to know where to start but I kept coming back to the one that gets the most play and that is "The Dream Circle." I wonder how many other folks like this album as much as I do. I'm not e really sure why I like it more than his other releases, it definitely sounds similar to a lot of his other output. I guess over the years it's become like a comfy sweatshirt. Stars of the Lid & Eno were both hard to choose a favorite as well. With SOTL I ended up going with the album that I first discovered them with. In choosing "On Land" from Eno I really could have just flipped a coin to choose between it and "Music for Airports,""Apollo" and "Music for Films." The one favorite that probably doesn't make a lot of lists is "One River" by Scott Solter. Using mostly processed guitars this album ebbs & flows beautifully from one tracks to the next. You can find it HERE. Enjoy. [ s t r e a m ][ d o w n l o a d ][ i t u n e s ] T R A C K L I S T :
00:00 Scott Solter - Cypress Road from One River
04:38 Stars of the Lid - Dust Breeding from Avec Laudenum
11:45 Maps & Diagrams - Honeycomb Archipelago from Get Lost
14:45 Brian Eno - Unfamiliar Wind(leeks hills) from On Land
19:25 Loscil - Lucy Dub from First Narrows
25:25 Sonmi451 - Orange from Spectrum
31:00 Steve Roach - The Dream Circle from The Dream Circle
40:45 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Empty Gazing from A Young Person's Guide to
46:35 Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Against the Sky from The Pearl
50:00 William Basinski - 1.2 from The Disintegration Loops
As I have said many times before on this blog, a new mix is very often born when a track or two inspires me to create something new. In this case it was the new album by Esmerine called "Dalmak." The group recorded the new tracks in Instanbul and the whole album definitely has the texture and feel that one would associate with Turkish music. The Constellation Records website describes it perfectly...
"As a title for Esmerine's new album, "dalmak" refers in a literal sense
to immersion in the culture and music of Istanbul but also appropriately
evokes the range of music that emerged from this immersion: a
collection of songs that shift between meditative pulsing and enveloping
restraint to headlong flights into rhythm and groove."
With Esmerine as I starting point I went to some familiar sources. One being the wonderful recordings of Myke Dodge Weiskopf. I excerpted part of his Field Recordings & Global Ambience mix and also used a cut from his latest release - "The Muezzins of Mali." I also worked in some Byrne & Eno early mixes from the "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" sessions. As well as some early mixes and extracts from Peter Gabriel's "Passion."
