november buddha

This mix is called November Buddha in honor of the new Buddha Machine 2.0 which was just released.  Mine is on it's way right now.  There's not much of a theme here, just a bunch of new tunes that I've been listening to lately.  

The Lullaby League & Sleep Robot tracks are new discoveries thanks to the fantastic mixes from Alan, an online friend.  You can find the mixes here Great Axescapes: an Archaeology of Drone-gaze Tone-haze Guitar-wranglings.

 I probably have listened to these mixes more than anything else this year.  Just an absolutely fabulous collection of guitar ambient.

Most of the artists in this mix can also be found in Alan's Axescapes mixes.  A couple exceptions are Eluder, which is a brand new Infraction release.  And Disturbed Earth, an excellent recording on Atmoworks.

Download(right click/save as) :  153mb, 64 min.

november buddha

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    buddha machine 2.0 loop construction
• 05:30    Apalusa - Obadiah
• 10:30    Sleep Robot - Prayer Wheel
• 15:40    Eluder - Autumn Hips
• 21:30    Shirk - Mocked
• 27:45    Fabio Orsi - Pure Love
• 31:40    The Lullaby League - Cantus
• 38:00    Disturbede Earth - Butterfly
• 44:30    Hakobune - Melting Reminiscence
• 47:00    The Fun Years - Garbage Man, Poet
• 50:30    David Tagg - Stele 

sustain and decay

The idea for this mix came from frequent low light mixes downloader/listener, Ron Sylvester.  He sent me some mix cd's he had done, all of which are fantastic & intriguing.

One idea in particular interested me.  Ron downloaded some recordings of old 78rpm records from archive.org.  The thought of old, scratchy opera recordings was too much to resist. 

So that's where this mix started.  I had intended it to be similar to my shortwave mixes but it didn't exactly end up that way.  Part of the reason is my own impatience, I wanted to get a new mix posted but didn't want to take weeks to sort through the tons of possibilities presented by archive.org & other sites.  

So I collected some pieces, ripped off several other tracks from some of Ron's various mixtapes and grabbed some newly purchased & downloaded music and set off to mix it up.

I found that the perfect compliment to the old 78's is music from The Caretaker.  His music was inspired by the ballroom scene from "The Shining".  From the Caretaker website..."The first release played and extended this theme of altering 1920's and 1930's ballroom music creating an eerie and haunted soundworld. Subsequently the sound has become darker and often more abstract over time, moving away from the initial idea of a haunted ballroom into territories involving the mind and its abilities to recall memories."   You can download some of the full albums here...Caretaker Releases.  I have 3 Caretaker tracks in the mix, which is more of one artist than I usually put in one mix but I think these cuts work very well.  

The mix sort of veers away from the old & scratchy theme about two-thirds of the way through.  It just sort of morphed on it's own as I pulled tracks.  Mixes can be funny that way, developing their own path. 

I'd like to thank Ron for the ideas & for the tunes in his mixtapes that I ripped off for this mix.

Download (right-click/save as) 115mb, 60 min. :

sustain and decay

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    intro
• 00:25    Caretaker - False Memory Syndrome
• 03:15    Belong - Girl from New York
• 04:47    Ave Maria remix
• 05:50    Still - futility
• 08:35    Ólafur Arnalds - Haust
• 13:30    Caretaker - Rosy Retrospection
• 18:00    Fabio Orsi - North of Me(at midday)
• 21:35    Josef Hollman - traumerei (op. 15, no. 7)
• 25:05    Eleni Karaindrou - litany: variation i
• 27:50    SzilagyiImreZenekara - Kranzna
• 29:50    The Winterhouse - Lost
• 39:10    Caretaker - Past Life Regression
• 42:35    Julien Neto - from cover to cover
• 47:00    Vikki Jackman - The Snow Queen
• 51:15     Fax - caldera i
• 55:30    Andrew Deutsch - untitled #1(from The Sun)

nothing from something - an ambient video

This is a a first for Low Light Mixes…an ambient video. Most ambient videos are fairly boring and this one most definitely is as well. It’s more of an experiment than entertainment.

The volume is fairly low so you may need to crank it up a bit.

Several years ago I made a short ambient video from shots of dust floating in a beam of sunlight in a dark room. I made the video black & white & slo mo, so that it looked at times like stars. It was very cool, most viewers had no idea they were looking at shots of dust.

I’ve always wanted to repeat that experiment and this is the result. I could have gone out shot tons of video and sorted through it looking for interesting shots. I could have planned out shoots & locations & themes. But that would require time & effort, so instead I kept it simple. It can be interesting, creatively, to limit your choices. Like an ambient musician limiting the sound source to only guitar or only using acoustic instruments.

As in the dust video, the source is one location, all shots of basically the same thing. I shot with my son’s camcorder in about an hour one afternoon. I then edited at at work using an Avid Newscutter editing system. The contrast, brightness & saturation have been changed on every clip and fx have been added in few cases. The finished product is interesting, to me anyway. I’m not sure how many other people will find it so.

It was fun to start with a limited number of clips, all of essentially the same thing & try to make something out of it. Although, I was actually trying to make nothing from something - take what would have been recognizable video & turn it into a psychedelic, ambient experiment, where the original source is obscured & unimportant.

The music is from two Infraction Records artists, Adam Pacione & Northern. I hope you find it interesting at some level.

sea of stars

This is a mix from our annual trip to the Wisconsin Northwoods. As the title suggests it's a mix for stargazing.

I limited myself to fairly new music, stuff I have been listening to a lot lately. I knew I wanted to include new music from Area C - Sea of Rains. It was commissioned by the NASA RI Space Grant Consortium and the Museum of Natural History in Providence, RI as an original score for their "Mission Moon: past, present, future" exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. It has some Nasa recordings mixed in with the music so it was natural for this mix.

After that the other tracks are just tunes that are kind of new, sound a bit spacey, and flow well together.

Download (right click/save as) :
sea of stars

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 bvdub - You'll miss me when I'm gone
• 06:19 Area C - Mare Imbrium
• 11:30 Kyle Bobby Dunn - Furthest From It
• 18:10 Emmanuel Errante - Radio Hopes
• 23:40 Parks - Trains
• 29:50 Kode - Movements #6
• 35:30 Shirk - Itchytime
• 38:55 Deaf Center - Close
• 40:55 The Caretaker - Lacuna Amnesia
• 44:05 Area C - Sea of Clouds
• 51:15 Kabana - dubru
• 56:15 Shirk - Riesal
• 00:09 Le Chat Blanc Orchestra - She Left This Morning

Clouds in my Coffee

I made this latest mix for our annual trip to northern Wisconsin. I usually try to make one stargazing mix & one morning mix. The stargazing mix will be posted soon. This is the morning mix, to be listened to while drinking Intelligentsia coffee & reading the morning paper.

At our northern cabin we didn't have daily newspapers so I made due with coffee, crossword puzzles & science fiction. To go with the morning coffee & sunlight reflecting off the calm lake waters, this music is suitably light.

The majority of the tunes are new, most are from 2008. Some old favorites with new music make the mix, including Max Ritcher, Yellow 6, Marconi Union, Milieu & Goldmund. New discoveries include Shirk, bvdub & Segue.

So grab a cup, put your feet up & enjoy.

Download (right click/save as) :
clouds in my coffee 107mb 58:28

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Bersarin Quartet - nachtblind
• 03:50 Jacaszek - rytm to niesmiertelnosc
• 08:30 Jonathan Hughes - monoline
• 11:41 Shirk - stupid dick
• 12:50 Segue - a glass darkly
• 16:20 Max Ritcher - found song for P
• 18:20 Yellow 6 - kulterhuset
• 26:25 Goldmund - clement danes
• 30:20 Milieu - mirage
• 32:05 bvdub - different place different time
• 38:40 Planivaar - adrift
• 43:30 Bersarin Quartet - geschichten von interesse
• 48:05 Marconi Union - buildings without people
• 51:31 Koda - the tension was beautiful
• 55:18 Library Tapes - fragment V

Even more mixes

Here are some more mixes & links that I think everyone will enjoy.

First up is some more ambient dub goodness. From Alan Lockett comes nowthatswhaticallmnmlambidubtechno! vol.1 - a self-assembled continuous minimal ambient dub techno mix. Excellent mix that lead me discovering bvdub, which was the subject of the previous post. Alan write reviews for several zines & really knows his stuff.

Alan recommended this compilation from the cism netlabel. The V/A comp is called Cismarine, a wonderful collection of ambient/techno/dub tracks. Here's the direct link to the zip download... http://www.cismsound.net/cism_5/cism_5.zip

Here are links to radio shows & mixes by severence... http://www.severence.net/index.html http://www.severence.net/sound.html More excellent mixes with the recent radio shows featuring more of the ambient dub sound I've been yacking about.

Play My Tape has a ton of guest mixtapes/podcasts for download. Have fun browsing.

The Quiet Sounds is another great source of music. The most recent podcasts are straight mixes. While some of the older ones have Brian B. introducing the tracks & enlightening the listeners along the way.

That should be enough to keep everyone busy for now.

Post any other mixes you've found in the comments sections.

Wonderful Mixes

Just thought I'd let everyone know about some mixes I found. I have been listening to a lot of ambient-dub lately and was recently turned on to the music of bvdub. Really excellent minimal/dub/techno/ambient music.

Anyway, Brock Van Wey alias bvdub has a page full of his own mixes that most Low Light listeners would really enjoy. I'm spinning "9900 sorrows | ambient guitar drone" right now. A great mix I wish I'd done myself.

Here's the link to the bvdub mix page...

bvdub mixes

a scattering of ashes

There is no clever theme to this new mix. I noticed a similar feel to much of the new music I was listening to so I decided to cobble it together in a mix.

All of the music in this mix is new, either 2007 or 2008, except for the Andrew Deutsch cut which is from 2005(although it is new to me).

The music in this mix has a sort of subdued, orchestral fell to it. I started thinking about this mix listening to the new Deaf Center release. Layers of strings create a beautiful, melancholy experience. That pretty much describes the rest of the music in this mix.

Download(right click/save as) :
a scattering of ashes 109mg, 59:53

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Emanuele Errante - leaves
01:25 Deaf Center - Vintage Well
06:10 Bersarin Quartet - es kann nicht ewig winter sein
09:45 mwvm - context where
17:50 Andrew Deutsch - untilted #1(from cd "The Sun")
26:00 Svarte Greiner - kobbergruve....
29:20 Jasper, TX - things could stay
37:30 Emanuele Errante - lucus
49:10 Deaf Center - ashes
50:30 Stars of the Lid - slight on the childproof
55:00 Bersarin Quartet - Inversion

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