retroact 1.0

I listen to music every night when I go to sleep. Most of the time I keep a small stack of recent cd's on the nightstand for nighttime listening. I was getting tired of the selections so I dug into the back catalog & pulled out Steve Roach's Structures from Silence. Wow, it was great to hear that recording again!

That lead me to pull out a couple of other oldies, which then lead to this mix. All the music in this mix, retroact 1.0, is at least 10 years old. Structures from Silence is from 1984! The Aphex Twin cut is from 1994. I cheated with a couple of tracks, such as Tollefson & Vidna/Pearce, that are from 1999.


It was wonderful to listen to albums I hadn't heard in years. I had forgotten just how great Saul Stokes Washed in Mercury is. I am very happy to have worked in Thom Brennan's The Path Not Taken, one of my all-time favorite ambient tracks. This mix is not supposed to represent a certain time period or demonstrate evolving styles. It's just a bunch of older cuts that I sort of randomly pulled out & thought would work well together. I hope you enjoy this ambient trip down memory lane.

download(right click/save as)...
retroact 1.0 114mb, 62:40

T R A C K L I S T I N G :

• 00:00 Brian Eno - Sparrowfall 1 [1978]
• 01:00 Aphex Twin - rhubarb [1994]
• 08:00 Steve Roach - Structures from Silence [1984]
• 17:20 Biosphere - Chukhung [1997]
• 23:55 Saul Stokes - Sweet Parafin [1997]
• 26:40 Brian Eno - Sparrowfall 2 [1978]
• 28:05 Vidna Obmana & Jeff Pearce - A Scattering Flock [1999]
• 31:35 David Tollefson - Maja [1999]
• 36:10 Paul Schutze - Sleep 2 [1995]
• 43:30 Thom Brennan - The Path Not Taken [1997]
• 55:40 Jeff Greinke - Glacial Returns [1988]
• 01:21 Brian Eno - Sparrowfall 3 [1978]

a ghost in the phase

I was having a tough time coming up with an idea for a new mix. The shortwave mix, a drift on the signal, is one of my favorite mixes so I decided to do a sequel.

And thus, through ionospheric transit, comes...a ghost in the phase. The formula is pretty much the same as before, a nice mixture of real shortwave radio recordings and ambient music with shortwave elements. Most of the shortwave stuff comes from the Shortwavemusic blog. That's the same source I used for the last shortwave mix. It's run by Myke Weiskopf. Here are a couple of his other sites...Myke Weiskopf and Myke's Live Journal

Lots of cool sounds at all three sites.

After the last shortwave mix a listener said it reminded him of Tetsu Inoue's World Receiver. How could I have forgotten that disc?! This time I made sure to include it. It's such a fantastic recording. You can buy it from Infraction records . Another excellent release that made it into the mix is the new one from Steven Mathieu called Radioland. Check it out.

The Entia Non and krill.minima and Unproduct cuts are all available for free download.


Download(right click/save as):
a ghost in the phase


The times in this tracklist are just approximations. Sometimes there are several cuts playing at once, things fading in and out, etc.

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 - Pulse Wave FX & JBO Tokyo Radio
• 00:16 - Entia Non - Cultural Plagiarism
• 01:28 - Fennesz - A Year in a Minute
• 04:33 - Myke Weiskopf - Shortwave Condensation
• 05:55 - Djivan Gasparyan - dle yaman
• 06:56 - Cairo Radio
• 07:45 - Punkt - Speechless
• 08:24 - Cairo Radio
• 09:13 - Rod Modell - Aloeswood
• 12:38 - Tetsu Inoue - Elevator Drops
• 19:05 - Stephen Mathieu - Auf der Gasse
• 22:45 - Fennesz  Sakamoto - Aware
• 26:37 - Radio RASD
• 26:54 - My Fun - Signal Drift
• 29:06 - Felicia Atkinson with Sylvain Chauveau - Aberdeen
• 34:11 - Chris Bissonnette - Traveling Light
• 40:00 - WEWN
• 40:46 - Post-Soviet Melancholia Pt. V: "Мой Рок и Ролл" via Russian International Radio
• 42:40 - krill.minima - Projektor
• 45:34 - Myke Weiskopf - The Grotesque
• 46:23 - Unproduct - Radio Canvas 3
• 46:52 - numbers
• 47:40 - pulse transmission
• 50:30 - Rameses III - Origins IV May 25, 2007
• 53:20 - Stephen Mathieu - Radioland
• 02:30 - Pulse Wave FX

Suspended in Air

Last year I discovered British drone master Paul Bradley. This year it's the beautiful drones of David Tagg. I have two of his recordings now, "Expanding Electronic Diversity" & "Waist Deep Seas Of Milk". Two excellent albums.
So because I've been listening to more drones than usual I've decided to do a drone mix. Nothing extraordinary here, just one drone slowly slipping into the next.
Most of the music here is fairly new. Almost all of it released this year or last, except of course for the Aloof Proof, which almost counts as new because of the reissue last year. This was fairly easy to put together but it flows nicely. Should be excellent for sleeping.

Download(right click/save as)
s u s p e n d e d i n a i r

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Paul Bradley - Irenic
• 05:45 Stars of the Lid - Virgina
• 09:00 Andrew Chalk - Suspended in Air
• 14:00 David Tagg - Waist Deep in Seas of Milk #6
• 20:30 Emeralds - arbol del tule
• 28:05 Belong - Vowel
• 35:00 Nelson Foltz & Tom Lynn - still life interlude
• 43:00? David Tagg - The 25th Door
• 49:30 Aloof Proof - The Last Leaf
• 59:30 Paul Bradley - Chroma #1
• 02:30 The Beautiful Schizophonic - cantiques la gloire du soleil

Moonlight Daydreams

I had already started this mix when our guest mixer, Jason, sent me his "Satellite" mix. I hadn't thought of satellite = moon until I saw his pic for the mix. So it's kind of funny that the next mix to be posted is a moon mix.

I did this one the way I've done some mixes in the past, all the tunes have the word "moon" in the title. Came up with an interesting collections of tracks. It would have been fun to use more of the vocal cuts like Nick Drake - Pink Moon or Cowboy Junkies - Blue Moon, but I guess I wanted it to be mostly ambient. So only one vocal tune gets used & that's "Moon River" by Petra Haden And Bill Frisell to close out the mix. I think my favorite tune is the first one by Belbury Poly, it sounds like it could be used in some old sci-fi moon flick.

Hope you enjoy the mix.

Download(right click/save as):
Moonlight Daydreams

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Belbury Poly - The Moonlawn
• 04:00 Robert Davies - Moon Chart
• 07:40 Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Our Way was Lit by Moonlight
• 13:00 Lisa Gerrard - Liquid Moon
• 16:00 Djivan Gasparyan - Moon Shines at Night
• 17:45 Rain Tree Crow - New Moon at Deer Wallow
• 19:36 Rumklang - Moonlight Walking
• 21:40 Maps & Diagrams - Man in the Moon
• 22:35 Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - Moon
• 27:35 The Green Kingdom - Broken Moonbeams
• 32:40 Steve Roach - Moonshroud
• 40:10 Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Phases of the Moon
• 44:05 Susumu Yokota & Rothko - Floating Moon
• 46:15 Petra Haden And Bill Frisell - Moon River

Satellite

This new mix is something different. It is a guest mix courtesy of a listener/downloader in Ireland.

Jason is an electronic music producer who discovered new artists such as Tim Hecker, Fennesz & Murcof through some Low Light mixes. He said “Stunning artists, I never knew music could sound so minimal yet full.”

It is an excellent mix. Jason has put together an hour-long mix of “some of my favorite trax from a few of the artists I’ve grown to love over the past year.”

It starts out nice & dreamy then gets a bit noisey, but in a good Tim Hecker way. It smooths out again then brings back some Hecker & Murcof noise before ending quietly with Fennesz & Sakamoto. A fine mix from start to finish.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Download(right click/save as) :

Satellite

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00.00 "amb" Rafael Toral
• 1.20 "the Mouthchew" Stars of the Lid
• 4.28 "Reciting the Airships" Eluvium
• 8.00 "Crossing Signals" Manual
• 9.23 "Faces (Where Are You Now)" Stendeck
• 12.47 "Going Dark" EchaSkech
• 13.24 "Fractales Pt.2" Apparat
• 14.48 "Blood Rainbow" Tim Hecker
• 17.32 "Remove the Inside" Belong
• 22.56 "Junitaki" Manual
• 24.50 "Dizzy Sun" Manual
• 27.57 "I'm too Sleepy, shall we swim?" Belong
• 32.05 "Even (out) +" Stars of the Lid
• 35.00 "Chimeras" Tim Hecker
• 36.50 "Pillowcase" Dntel
• 39.00 "The Point of it all" Fennesz
• 42.33 "Radio Spiricom" Tim Hecker
• 44.45 "Cosmos II" Murcof
• 53.30 "Kuni" Christian Fennesz & Ryuichi Sakamoto

Sequential Circuits

I don't really like berlin school music much anymore. I used to love that style. The first electronic music that I bought was Tangerine Dream & Jean Michel Jarre. I liked both of those artists for a long time. Eventually I think I just became bored with that style of electronic music.

Recently, however, I've been re-discovering some berlin-type music. It started with the latest Steve Roach release, Arc of Passion. I've been enjoying the album quite a bit so I dug up some other berlin school or nearly berlin tunes to throw into a mix.

Of course there is a cut from Arc of Passion as well as another Roach tune, "Sundial", which I absolutely love. Add in some old T-Dream, Klaus Schulze, Richard Pinhas(3 tunes) and I'm good to go. The Tangerine Dream cuts are from an old cassette that I had of "Hyperborea" which I used to play constantly 10 to 15 years ago.

I'm sure I'll pass out this phase soon. But for now the bouncing sequencers of berlin school are getting plenty of airtime at home & at work.

Download(right click/save as):
Sequential Circuits
t r a c k l i s t :

• 00:00 Arp - St. Tropez
• 05:00 Solvent - wig $1
• 07:15 Richard Pinhas - la ville sans nom
• 10:30 Steve Roach - Sundial
• 17:30 Klaus Schulze - Euro Caravan
• 25:15 Richard Pinhas - Melodic Simple Transition
• 28:20 Tangerine Dream - No Man's Land
• 33:20 Robert Rich & Ian Boddy - Chamber
• 37:30 Detroit Escalator Co. - city lights
• 41:00 Geometric Farms - The Chemist's Lullaby
• 45:15 Richard Pinhas - Home ''ruitor''
• 48:40 Steve Roach - Arc of Passion
• 59:30 Tangerine Dream - Hyperborea

Migrations - an ambient field mix

I have been interested in doing a mix of field recordings ever since I did the shortwave mix last year. I've been collecting field recordings from various sources & even bought a digital recorder so I could do my own phonography.

I haven't really had the time to seriously record anything but I did manage to squeeze a few of my own things into this new mix.

There is very little proper music in this mix. It's mostly field recordings that I downloaded from sites like Quiet American and SoundTransit. Some of the recordings are from cd's that I own. Most of the music is music that already has field recordings built into the track. I used two tracks from a great cd by Emanuele Errante called "Migrations". a few other tracks came from Geir Jenssen 's "Field Recordings From Tibet". A couple of other cuts came from "Classifields - Trips 6" on Tripostal. One of the Tripostal tracks is "A Sunday Walk" by Nim is a Tree, which I already used in the Netlabel Mix. It's such a great cut that I had to use it again. I also sneaked some loops into the mix here & there.

Some of my favorite field sounds are trains, so you'll hear various train sounds at different times in the mix. I also like empty train station reverb, so that fades in & out a couple times. The sounds range from a resonant pipe in a rain storm to foghorns to church bells to chanting to arrival anouncements to piano and an open window. I know that some field recordings may be interesting but not really listenable, not musical enough. I think this mix works pretty well & is easy to listen to.

Download...
M i g r a t i o n s (76.7MB, 42:53)

Sorry there is no track list. It's nearly impossible to keep track of what's playing & when in this mix. Most of the time there several tracks playing at once.

It was a lot of fun putting this together and hope you enjoy the trip.

Album Cover Wallpaper

I'm not exactly sure why I decided to post these pix. I thought that Low Light listeners might get a kick out them.

These first pix are of a wall in my family room. It was ugly dark paneling that I just put up with for years. Then on a whim, I dug up what was left of my vinyl album collection and simply tacked some of them to the wall.

I know it has the decorating look of some stoner kid who lives in his parents' basement. But I don't care, they make me smile every time I look at them.

I liked how it worked so much that I then used more album covers to make a border all the way around the room.

I also did the same thing in a small bathroom right off the family room. It was tough to take a good picture in there because the room is so small. I'd need a really wide angle lens to be able to see the whole wall. I also messed around with the mirror.

These album covers really bring back a lot of memories. I like them even if it does look like some dorm room from the 70's.

Somnia Soumd

Just a quick post to point people in the direction of an excellent new mix blog/podcast. Evan at Somnia : Music For The Spaces Inbetween, describes the blog this way..."Music blog and podcast for Somnia record label. Explores ambient, minimal, experimental, electro-acoustic, modern classical, minimalist classical, jazz, post jazz, avant garde, and "other" music recordings." Sounds like a good description of this blog.

I've downloaded all three mixes & listen to them often. Any regular Low Light listeners will definitely enjoy Evan's mixes.

Download and Subscribe at: http://somniasound.blogspot.com/

Best of 2007

There were some excellent releases in 2007, so I thought I'd feature some in a new mix.

My favorite ambient recording of the year was Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline. I know there are quite a few people who didn't care for the cd, but I love it. I like the more orchestral feel. I like that SOTL relies less & less on synths. A beautiful record.

My favorite vocal record was PG Six - Slightly Sorry. Snips from the Boomkat review..."a collection of quite unashamedly gorgeous 'proper' songs...'Slightly Sorry' is an album without tricks...'The Dance', the second track on the record - there's nothing necessarily modern about the song itself, it could have come out any time since 1969 and nobody would have batted an eyelid, but it's great music, pure and simple." I played this probably more than any other record this year.

As far as this mix is concerned, I pretty much stayed away from vocal tunes, with one exception in the middle of the mix. The mix opens with four drone tracks, including Paul Bradley, a new discovery thanks to the folks at the Hypnos forum. Some of his stuff gets a bit dark & dissonant for my taste, but his 2007 release "Chroma" features gorgeous, wide open drones. Th drones gradually giveway to piano based tunes which morph into electronics with a little beat then back to ambient to finish it off.

My full best of 2007 list follows the tracklisting for the mix. What were your favorite releases this year? Please leave some comments, I'd love to hear what you think.

Here's the mix...

Best of 2007

T R A C K L I S T :

1. 00:00 - 04:30 Stars of the Lid - Even(out)
2. 04:30 - 07:30 Paul Bradley - untitled #1
3. 07:30 - 09:40 Adam Pacione - Warming Trend
4. 09:40 - 15:30 Emeralds - arbole del tule
5. 15:30 - 20:30 Alio Die & Luciano Daini - Crucibulum
6. 20:30 - 24:24 Fennesz & Sakamoto - Aware
7. 24:24 - 25:45 Library Tapes - Snowleaf
8. 25:45 - 31:54 Dakota Suite - Because our lie breathes differently
9. 31:54 - 35:20 Wes Willenbring - While my lungs fill with water
10. 35:20 - 41:20 Sonmi 451 - Outer Shell
11. 41:20 - 46:05 Kiln - Flycatcher
12. 46:05 - 50:45 Rameses III - Theme 5
13. 50:45 - 54:20 Meursault - Ivy
14. 54:20 - 58:50 Alio Die & Zeit - Raag Drone Theory
15. 58:50 - 06:20 Taylor Deupree - Landing
16. 06:20 - 10:45 Tim Hecker - Norberg
17. 10:45 - 14:30 Northern - Cinema
18. 14:30 - 19:53 Stars of the Lid - Even if you're never awake

B E S T O F 2 0 0 7

• Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline (kranky)
• Alio Die & Luciano Daini - End of an Era (hic sunt leones)
• Alio Die & Zeit - Raag Drone Theory(hic sunt leones)
• Tetsu Inoue - Inland (fax)
• Taylor Deupree - Landing (room40)
• Adam Pacione - from stills to motion (infraction)
• Paul Bradley - Chroma (twenty hertz)
• Emeralds - Allegory Of Allergies (gods of tundra)
• Fennesz & Sakamoto - Cende (touch)
• Northern - Drawn (infraction)
• Tim Hecker - Norberg (room40)
• Rameses III - Honey Rose ( important)
• sonmi451 - probes & prisms (u-cover)
• Meursault - Sleeping Debris (students of decay)
• Wes Willenbring - Somewhere someone else (Aquarius Records)
• Library Tapes - Sketches (make mine music)
• Kiln - Dusker (Ghostly Int'l)
• Iron & Wine - The Sheperds Dog (sub pop)
• Trespassers William - noble house ep
• various - Box of Dub (soul jazz)
• Once - soundtrack (columbia)
• Canon Blue - Colonies (Rumraket)
• Dakota Suite - Waiting for the dawn to crawl through and take your life (glitterhouse)
• P.G. Six - Slightly Sorry (Drag City)