The title of this mix pretty much says it all. This is a collection of tunes that works well at night. I didn't want the mix to be dark & depressing or dark and scary, just something that feels more at home at night. It's sort of the opposite of the Sunday morning mixes. Although a few tunes could go either way. I didn't start out making a "night" mix, it just sort of happened on it's own after the first few cuts. The mix opens with a fantastic remix of Bowie's Sound & Vision. This cut isn't necessarily a "night" tune but I just had to use it. The next three cuts are what took the mix in the nightside direction. I labeled the mix "Vol. 1" because I'd like to turn this into a series just like the Sunday morning mixes. So look for more in 2014. But there's still one more mix on it's way in 2013. 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 David Bowie - Sound and Vision(Sonjay Prabhakar remix)
02:50 Arve Henriksen - Shelter From The Storm
06:00 Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle - By The Time That I Awoke
10:00 Moritz von Oswald & Nils Petter Molvaer - Step by Step
15:45 Justin Walter - The Way Of Five
20:10 A.A. Bondy - Mightiest Of Guns
23:22 Loren Connors - Shadows
26:30 Labradford - By Chris Johnston, Craig Markva, Jamie Evans
31:00 Public Service Broadcasting - Late Night Final
36:30 Jon Hassell - Amsterdam Blue
44:30 The National - Hard To Find
48:25 Jonathan Boulet - Cent Voix
52:55 Ghosting Season - Lie
56:00 Mirroring - Mirror Of Our Sleeping
59:30 Loren Connors - Night In Vain
1:01:45 Grace Cathedral Park - Hey Pretty, Could You Stay Awhile
Another year, another best of list. This is my list of my favorite "normal" music of the year. Indie, alternative, rock, Americana, whatever you want to call it - this is not the ambient music which goes into most of my mixes. Over the last 3 or 4 years I've been listening to more and more "normal" music. It's hard to keep up with the pace of new releases, new bands, new artists. One can develop a sort of obsessive disorder where you consume more and more music, ever worried that you'll miss something. My Spotify playlist of 2013 music has nearly 3000 tracks and that doesn't really include much of the ambient stuff I listen to. That's a lot of music to wade through in a year. Spotify and other streaming services are changing the way we consume music and the way we think about music. It's difficult to say whether that change is for the better. I do know that I love having so much music available all the time. I love sampling new stuff, testing it out to see if it will have the staying power to make to the end of the year. I like having a friend send me recommendations, being able to listen to the entire album instantly and sending a reaction or new suggestion back the other way. At this time of year, with all the best of lists, I have added about 20 albums to that Spotify playlist just in the last week or so. Which of course just puts me further behind. But I LOVE IT! And now here they are, my favorite albums of 2013. What are yours? 1. Blaudzun - Heavy Flowers
2. John Vanderslice- Dagger Beach
3. Volcano Choir - Repave
4. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
5. Phosphorescent - Muchacho 6. Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer Different Park 7. The National - Trouble Will Find Me 8. John Vanderslice - Diamond Dogs "A Better Whirlpool" 9. Mikal Cronin - MCII 10. Darkside - Psychic 11. Jon Hopkins - Immunity 12. Vic & Gab - Love of Mine 13. Elvis Costello & The Roots - Wise Up Ghost 14. Boards of Canada - tomorrow's harvest 15. The Flaming Lips - Peace Sword ep 16. Wavves - Afraid of Heights 17. Rhye - Woman 18. Daughter - If You Leave 19. Public Service Broadcasting - inform - educate - entertain 20. San Fermin - San Fermin
It is strange that for someone who runs an ambient mix blog, I've been listening to less and less ambient music over the last two years. I still love ambient but I no longer feel the need to accumulate huge amounts of it. Maybe because I have so much already that it all starts to blend together and I don't feel I need another 70 minute drone album. This year's "Best of" list is mostly ambient but contains some other instrumental albums as well. Some of my favorite albums of the year in any genre were albums from artists like Esmerine, Arve Henriksen, Moritz von Oswald & Nils Petter Molvaer and Jon Hopkins. There are other odd non-ambient albums, like Paris DJs Soundsystem & Calibro 35, which just stuck with me for some reason & got a lot of play this year. Of course there was some straight forward ambient which was in heavy rotation all year. Albums like The Seaman and The Tattered Sail - Light Folds, Nobuto Suda - Transitoriness, infinite_coil - transmit, and Spheruleus - The Possibility Of Lossreally hit the spot for a beautiful ambient listening experience. I listened to a lot of ambient dub this year. Only three actually made it to the list - Coppice Halifax, Deepchord and Optical Frameworks but there were many more dub recordings in this year's regular rotation. A few other favs not on the list include Lars Leonhard - Stella Nova Adam Michalak - Returning To Essence Vytis - Deepchord Avenue VA - Mountain-Stream Nikosf. - Silence Speaks When The Words End krill.minima - Sekundenschlaf Miktek - elsewhere Blamstrain - Sunday Dub Two great albums from 2013 both combine electronics with trumpet. Moritz von Oswald & Nils Petter Molvaer - 1/1 and Saffronkeira + Mario Massa - Cause and Effect are wonderful collaborations that gave a jolt to end of the year releases. Here's my list of 2013 favs. What are some of your favorites from 2013? Best of 2013:
I love dubby ambient. I think this is my third dub mix this year. I'm sure I'll grow tired of this style of music but for now I'm soaking it in. It was snowing while I made this mix & the music just seemed to fit the winter mood. Hence the name "A Winter's Dub." Many of the tracks in this mix came from Bandcamp. As a matter of fact, all the links in the tracklist are to Bandcamp pages. I love Bandcamp. So easy & convenient. And great for discovering new music. I bought a bunch of stuff this year by following other folks & sampling we they buy. Here is my Bandcamp collection for anyone that's interested. Enjoy the dub! [ 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
I know this is not the best time of year for sitting out side and stargazing. At least not here in Wisconsin. But I haven't done a stargazing mix in a long time so i thought I'd throw this out there. The piece that got me started on this mix isn't an actual song. It's NASA's Voyager spacecraft recording the sound of interstellar space. Voyager's plasma wave instrument detected the vibrations of dense
interstellar plasma, or ionized gas, from October to November 2012 and
April to May 2013. You can find the recording here... Voyager. I couldn't resist using that sound as a launch pad for this mix. The rest is pretty straight forward ambient/space music. For some strange reason I felt compelled to make this mix nearly 2 hours long. If you want to lay outside for two hours & gaze at the night sky in the middle of December, better bring some scotch & an electric blanket. ;) Enjoy.
