This last mix of 2010 is a mix that I did for Headphone Commute about 3 months ago. They were kind enough to ask for a mix & I was honored to add it to their great collection of mixes they post at their own site & at their Mixcloud site.
I realized that if I was going to post this piano mix I'd better do it now because the title is "pno 2010" so I need to squeeze it into 2010 before it's gone.
This mix starts with John Cage – “On a Landscape”, which is appropriate, because that tune is the reason I did this piano mix. I’d never heard “In a Landscape” when a friend linked to it on youtube. What a great piece of music. So I decided to build a piano mix with that as the jumping off point.
The other unusual piece in this mix is Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou – “Golgotha” by an Ethiopian nun living in Jerusalem. Her music is unique, it filters the traditional Ethiopian pentatonic scale through classical technique– in the end sounding like impressionistic jazz. Wonderful music.
[ 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] John Cage – In a Landscape
- [04:15] Kyo Ichinose – Engine #5
- [05:20] Worrytrain – Hospitalized
- [06:45] Max Richter – Infra #6
- [09:35] Nest – The Twelve
- [14:00] Tanner Menard – Laws of Attraction
- [19:50] Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou – Golgotha
- [24:27] Craig Armstrong – Gentle Piece
- [27:10] Ben Woods – Stare Out in Silence
- [32:25] Gavin Bryars – My First Homage
- [38:10] Kyo Ichinose – Lontano #0
- [40:00] Chris Abrams – Christmas Island
- [44:45] Arovane – Tokyo Ghost Stories
- [49:50] Christian Fennesz & Ryuichi Sakamoto – Kokoro
- [53:15] Andrey Kiritchenko – Agravic Illusion
.
Here's a couple more year-end lists & thoughts.
My 5 favorite Low Light Mixes of 2010:- In Foreign Lands
- Footsteps
- Left in the Desert
- A Canticle Unfolds
- Beneath the Surface
Other fav mixes from around the web:
- :papercutz - Dream Scores - a Headphone Commute mix
- Subheim - Headphone Commute mix
- Invisible Ink - An Ambientblog mix
- Everything Old - a Quiet Sounds podcast
- echochorus - chiekurspace mix
- Marooned - a Harry Towell mix
Other favorites things in 2010 :- Tiny Desk Concerts - this is a series of very intimate concerts over at NPR Music. Whether it's Olaf Arnalds, The Tom Tom Club, Black Dub or The Red River, the concerts are always entertaining. There is video of each & the audio is downloadable.
- Slaapwel Records - a small label that specializes in music to fall asleep to. All their recordings are excellent. I eagerly await each new release.
- Filmography 2010 - one of my favorite online videos from the past year. The editor took clips from 270 films of 2010 & cut them to great music with great results. The first minute, where she remixes "Nostrand" by Ratatat with "Power" by Kanye West & audio from films clips, is brilliant!
- Wixel - 12 Records in 12 Months - Wixel is Wim Maesschalck, who also runs Slaapwell. He set out on a crazy project back in 2009, to release 12 records in 12 months. He does a nice job of keeping the quality high & changes things up enough to make all the releases interesting. Not really a best of 2010 entry, but I discovered it this year & wanted to draw attention to an outstanding project.
Yesterday I posted my favorites ambient releases of 2010. Today it's a few other year end lists.
I spend most of my time listening to ambient/electronic music but enough"normal" music sneaks in there that I thought I'd do a top ten list for pop albums. I'll also list a few recordings that don't fit into either ambient or pop.
First up, my top ten pop albums:- 1. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - the vs. ep
- 2. Efterklang - magic chairs
- 3. Vampire Weekend - Contra
- 4. Ra Ra Riot - Orchard
- 5. lost in the trees - all alone in an empty house
- 6. Neil Young - Le Noise
- 7. The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra
- 8. Sun Kil Moon - admiral fell promises
- 9. Horse Feathers - thistled spring
- 10. Matt & Kim - sidewalks
- 11. Damien Jurado - saint bartlett
- 12. Black Dub - black dub
Some favorite single pop songs from 2010:- 1. Paul Simon - Getting Ready for Christmas Day
- 2. Kanye West - Power
- 3. Janelle Monáe - Tightrope
- 4. Vampire Weekend - Cousins
- 5. Damien Jurado - Cloudy Shoes
- 6. Matisyahu - One Day
- 7. New Pornographers - Crash Years
- 8. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More & Winter Winds
- 9. Jon Hopkins - Monsters Theme
- 10. Peter Gabriel - Flume
- 11. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Life is Cinema
Some other favorites recordings that didn't fit into pop or ambient categories:- Steve Reich - double sextet 2x5 [Nonesuch]
- Michael Daugherty - metropolis symphony & deus ex machina [Naxos]
- Max Richter - infra [fat cat]
- Maya Beiser - provenance [innova]
- Dakota Suite -vallisa [glitterhouse]
- Steve Tibbetts - natural causes [ecm]
.
Here is the obligatory top ten list for the end of the year. I might do a quick mix before the end of the year to highlight some of the releases on the list.
It was another good year for music, although nothing stood out as a new trend or a ground breaking recording. Alio Die put out a bunch of excellent recordings that I'm just trying to keep up with. Under the Spire & Low Point each had 3 recordings make the list, all of them are excellent. It was nice to see Hypnos back on the list with their wonderful release, Herion - Out & About.
Another label worth mentioning is Audio Gourmet, a new netlabel that produces a ton of quality releases. Label owner, Harry Towell, also made the list with his own release, Spheruleus - Frozen Quarters.
The ambient best of list is a bit long so I'm not going to make comments about each release, I'm getting lazy as I get older. Feel free to add your own lists in the comments.Top Ambient Releases of 2010:
The term "dubscapes" in the title of the mix pretty much says it all. This is dub mix. I've used dubby style songs in mixes before but never did a whole dub mix.
Of course after setting out to do an all dub mix, I veered off course pretty quickly by including a cover of the Twin Peaks theme & track from Vangelis. I'd been looking for a way to work those two tunes into a mix & they seem to fit pretty well here.
The Twin Peaks cover is by Talvihorros. He has an excellent recording out on Hibernate called "Music in Four Movements". After buying the albumBen Chatwin(Talvihorros) was kind enough to send me a copy of his version of the Twin Peaks theme. I liked this version immediately & knew I had to find a home for it in a mix.
One track in the mix is from an album that will end up in my top ten list this year. The album is Deepchord presents Echospace - Liumin/Liumin Reduced. It's a double album with the first being great ambient dub/techno and the second an album of field recorded treatments made by Rod Modell in Tokyo. An immersive record that I highly recommend.
The dub used in this mix is fairly ambient, especially towards the end where the ambient drones & washes come in & the beats slow way down.
Download (right click/save as) : 71mb, 51:20
subatomic dubscapes
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Fluxion - Field
- 03:25 Polmo Polpo - Rottura
- 08:55 Marconi Union - Temperature Drop
- 13:28 Talvihorros - Twin Peaks Theme
- 17:55 Deepchord presents Echospace - In Echospace
- 21:30 Vangelis - Antartica
- 26:30 The Orb - Slug Dub
- 31:25 Rod Modell - Mars Oil
- 36:16 Fluxion - Plain
- 38:50 Mokira - Lord, Am I Going Down
- 42:00 Wixel - You're Inside Your Own shadow
- 44:45 Sval - Valldal
- 51:20 end
I have always loved the sound of Djivan Gasparyan's music. He plays the duduk, a double reed instrument related to the oboe. It's got a great melancholy, other-worldy feel to it.
I took the "other-wordly" idea to make a mix of music that is vaguely foreign sounding, at least foreign to my American ears. The music is Middle Eastern, Asian, African, Eastern European and Indian.
I go back to a familiar source for some of the sounds, the Shortwave Music blog of Myke Weiskopf. Whether it's the night call to prayer in Bulgaria or Qur’an recitation from BSKSA Saudi Arabia, Myke has great recordings that everyone should take the time to investigate.
The times in the tracklist are rough. Sometimes there are two or three tracks playing at once & not all are listed in the tracklist. I also messed with a few tracks, adding stretched audio as a backing track or adding reverb.
At various times haunting, beautiful, calming or hypnotic, the music in this mix will hopefully stir your imagination.
Download (right click/save as) : 51:14, 74mb
in foreign lands
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Djivan Gasparyan - You have to come back to me
- 02:22 Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook - Night Song
- 06:20 Hildegard Westerkamp - Gently Penetrating
- 07:00 Night call to prayer in Draginovo, Bulgaria
- 09:20 Peter Nooten & Michael Brook - Suddenly II
- 10:25 Maya Beiser - I was there
- 15:00 harmonic fx
- 15:50 Gamelan Madu Sari - thinly roundly
- 18:15 Ayub Ogada - Kothbiro
- 22:00 Jon Hassell - Frontiera
- 22:30 Hildegard Westerkamp - Into the labyrinth
- 22:55 Geir Jenssen - Camp 2, world music on the radio
- 23:30 Gamelan Madu Sari - Dreams he is a ball of fire or a hummingbird
- 26:30 Peter Gabriel - Wall of Breath
- 28:15 Galata Mevlevi - Nay Taksim
- 29:40 Hildegard Westerkamp - Soundscape of cities, Delhi
- 30:10 Forrest Fang - Garuda
- 31:15 Jon Hassell - Tramonto
- 33:00 Qur’an recitation from BSKSA Saudi Arabia
- 34:20 Lamp of the Universe - Heru, part 1
- 36:55 U Srinivas & Michael Brook - Think
- 41:30 Anouar Brahem - L'oiseau
- 45:45 Djivan Gasparyan - dle vaman
- 49:30 Peter Gabriel - A sense of home
- 51:14 end
As most readers of this blog probably know, I cross-post these mixes over at Mixcloud. Recently I got a request from listener, TikTaalik. This is part of his post, "I was wondering if you could compile a mix that is optimistic throughout. The sort of ambience that I tend only to hear once or twice in a set. Can you get a solid hour of calm ambient music with a euphoric undertone?"
At Low Light Mixes we give the people what they want, so here it is...Positively Ambient. I'm not sure if all of the music qualifies as "optimistic" or "euphoric" but it is all calm & beautiful. I start things off with Eno's "An Ending(ascent)" because I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. Although it may work better as "an ending" than as a beginning, I wanted it up front so everyone that plays the mix is guaranteed to hear it.
I hope the rest of the mix doesn't get too sweet or too pretty sounding. I don't want it to dissolve into new age crapola. I dug into the archives for some of the tunes like James Johnson's "Entering Twilight" from 2000, Jim Cole from 2002, Diatonis from 2003, Fox & Budd from 2003, Jeff Pearce from 1999 and Stephen Bacchus from 1998.
The feel of this mix is definitely soothing, no dissonant chords to be found. It works well as sleep music, meditation music, , etc. Just good 'ole traditional ambient music.
Download (right click/save as) : 83mb, 57:30
positively ambient
T R A C K L I S T :
00:00 Brian Eno - An Ending(ascent)
04:00 Arc of Doves - Reverie
09:00 James Johnson - Entering Twilight
14:45 Diatonis - Winding Road
18:00 Hammock - Maybe they will sing for us tomorrow
23:10 Stephen Bacchus - The Returning
30:25 John Foxx & Harold Budd - A Delicate Romance
36:45 Jim Cole - Light Shines in Your Heart
43:10 Jeff Pearce - Daylight Slowly
44:45 Hammock - Three Sisters
48:50 d_rradio - Into the Morning
54:05 Quosp - Quosp
57:30 end
Picture yourself floating in space. Whether you like to think of it as drifting alone, in a spacesuit, looking out at the stars all around. Or instead imagine yourself as Bowie said "Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the moon." Either way, the music in this mix should make you feel "far from home".
I like to envision a small craft in the middle of nowhere, drifting...waiting. Waiting for rescue? Waiting for contact? Waiting for main power to come back online? Hopefully the music will generate a feeling of weightlessness, of drifting in the vast expanse of space, without being too dark or dissonant.
I did not pick the tunes based on titles. I just did a quick sampling of some of my ambient collection to come up with possible tracks. But it's interesting how many of the song titles fit right in with the "outer space" theme. Titles like Meissa, Deep Sky Time, 1st Lite & Asteroid Dawn work perfectly for this motif.
Download (right click/save as) : 86mb, 60min.
far from home
T R A C K L I S T : - 00:00 Lunar Testing Lab - Space Traffic Control
- 01:00 Brian Eno - Asteroid Dawn
- 04:40 A Produce - The Big Sleep
- 09:40 Harmonia - Weird Dream
- 11:10 Wouter Veldhuis - 1st Lite
- 18:30 Steve Roach - Deep sky Time
- 24:40 Austere - Lid
- 28:00 Mike Griffin & A Produce - Altara
- 31:45 Lunar Testing Lab - Paaliaq
- 33:05 Sonmi451 - Orange
- 38:45 Thomas Fehlman - in the wind
- 43:10 Spheruleus - Disintegrate
- 48:30 Fripp & Eno - Meissa
- 55:30 Sonmi451 - Blue
- 1:00:00 end
I was playing some Boards of Canada recently & came across the song "In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country." I love the use of the vocoder in that tune. Being a sci-fi geek & an electronic music dork, it makes sense that I would like songs with vocoders. So I set out to find enough vocoder tunes for a mix. The result is "Vox Electronix".
The vocoder is is an analysis/synthesis system, developed in the 1930's, that dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. Because much info was lost in the encoding & decoding process, the voice ended up sounding "dehumanized" or robot-like. Eventually changes were made by people like Wendy Carlos & Robert Moog, that made the vocoder a musical device, used most prominently by artists like Kraftwerk.
The vocoder is used in many of the tracks in this mix, but I'm not exactly sure which ones are vocoder & which ones are auto-tune and which ones are just clever vocal manipulation. So don't everyone go crazy saying "hey that's not a flippin' vocoder!", I was just going for a certain sound, a certain feel.
It was cool discovering tunes I'd either never heard of or forgotten about. Thanks to Judd at the Hypnos forum for recommending the tune by Tonto's Expanding Head Band & for reminding me about the track from the U2/Eno collaboration, Passengers. Also thanks to Tobias(False Mirror) on the Hypnos forum for the heads up on the Robert Rich song. That's one of those that I think is some form of auto-tune versus a vocoder, but a great song. The mix opens with a cool bit of audio which was recorded at Bell Labs in 1936.
This was a fun mix to put together, discovering new tunes & revisiting old favorites(O Superman). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Download (right click/save as) : 86mb, 63min
vox electronix
T R A C K L I S T : - 00:00 Bell Labs 1936 - Voice of Power
- 00:23 Tonto's Expanding Head Band - Riversong
- 03:33 Brian Eno - And then so clear
- 08:15 Boards of Canada - In a beautiful place out in the country
- 12:30 Air - le soleil est pres de moi
- 16:30 Apples in Stereo - Vocoder ba ba
- 16:45 Bjork - Possible Maybe(Lucy mix)
- 19:30 Passengers - A different kind of blue
- 21:10 Robert Rich - Premonition of circular clouds
- 28:25 Laurie Anderson - O Superman
- 35:40 Ricardo Villalobos - Easy Lee
- 39:45 Trans Am - Futureworld
- 42:33 Air - Sexy Boy
- 47:30 Peter Baumann - This This Day
- 51:54 Apples in Stereo - Hello Lola
- 52:10 Black Moth Super Rainbow - Twins of Myself
- 55:15 Holger Czukay - Ode to Perfume
- 59:15 Brian Eno - Bottomliners
- 03:04 end
These are songs that conjure up images of wind blown landscapes, tumbleweeds, sunbleached rocks, dusty roads and heat waves rising off the ground. Of course most of the music in this mix has an ambient/atmospheric feel.
I remember the first time I heard Daniel Lanois' use of slide guitar on "Apollo - Atmospheres & Soundtracks", I hated it. I guess I thought of the slide guitar as too close to "country music" which I definitely hated.
Well over the years I've come around on the slide guitar, I love it now. I'm still not a big country music fan, though I do have a ton of Johnny Cash recordings. I've come to appreciate the lonely, melancholy feel that can be expressed through twangy, dusty western music.
Of course the ultimate in great ambient twang is Ry Cooder's "Paris, TX" soundtrack. That makes an appearance in this mix along with standbys like Lanois, Steve Roach & A Small Good Thing. I was happy to sneak in a piano tune, "Alice & twins" by Japancakes. It just sort of fit with the overall feel & then the slide guitar comes in to make it even more "dusty".
Whether it's the twang of an acoustic guitar, the wail of a harmonica or the ethereal sound of a slide guitar, this mix will drop you off on an abandoned rail line in the middle of nowhere.
Download (right click/save as) : 77mb, 41:45left in the desert
T R A C K L I S T : - 00:00 Earth - left in the desert
- 00:45 George Winston - Farewell
- 01:50 Ry Cooder - nothing out there
- 03:00 Chas Smith - an hour out of desert center
- 03:50 Bill Frisell - lonely man
- 04:52 p.g. six - 6 for wire, strung harp with slide, with Steve Roach buried underneath
- 06:15 A Small Good Thing - drowning light
- 09:00 Daniel Lanois - Asylum
- 11:30 Steve Roach & Roger King - rain & creosote
- 15:30 Six Organs of Admittance - oak path
- 18:50 Balmorhea - Palestrina
- 20:10 Steve Tibbetts - kili-ki drok
- 21:10 Balmorhea - on the weight of the night
- 25:00 Esmerine - There Were No Footprints In The Dust Behind Them
- 27:35 Badgerlore - goodnight, sweet rabbits
- 29:20 Chronomad - aksak
- 33:50 Ennio Morricone - man with a harmonica
- 34:10 Japancakes - Alice & twins
- 37:50 Steve Roach - new moon at forbidden mesa
- 38:20 Loren Mazzacane Connors - lullaby (the 1st)
- 40:10 July Skies - branch line summers fade
- 41:45 end
I have always loved a little known Genesis tune called "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats". The last song on the end of side three(vinyl), it's a 3 minute instrumental that is more ambient than old prog rock.
I remember a thread at the Hypnos forum, a long time ago, that was asking for a list of the best ambient tracks by non-ambient artists. I can't find the list or the thread but I think I added artists like Radiohead, Daryl Hall, Peter Gabriel, etc. I think "Silent Sorrow" may be the best ambient track by a non-ambient artist.
I'm working on a mellow prog rock mix that I'm sure will include this Genesis tune as well.
Anyway, I've always wanted to use it in a mix so here it is. I used the track as the title for this mix but the music doesn't necessarily take on the sorrowful feel that the title suggests. I can personally attest to the fact that this mix works very for sleeping. Enjoy.
Download (right click/save as) : 84mb, 60:46
silent sorrow in empty boats
T R A C K L I S T :- 00:00 Genesis - Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
- 02:45 Slow Dancing Society - and to the dust shall we return
- 08:45 Alio Die - In the Labyrinth Garden
- 15:00 Christopher Willits - Flowers into Stardust
- 19:45 Pulusha - Isolation, pt. 1
- 29:25 Christopher Hipgrave - Time & Distance
- 30:45 Tim Hecker - Incurably Optimistic
- 35:45 36 - Lightout
- 37:35 Deepchord presents Echospace - untitled #5
- 40:15 John Foxx & Harold Budd - Raindust
- 45:25 Celer - A Lifetime of Wasted Breaths
- 49:45 Gareth Hardwick - 5 points
- 59:36 Genesis - reprise of Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
- 1:00:46 end
One of my favorites albums this year isThe Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra . What first got my attention was Isabella Rossellini reciting the words of the late author Laura Huxley, widow of Aldous Huxley, on the first track - LookListenFeel. I've always had a thing for Isabella Rossellini so I gave the track a listen...and loved it.
I've been playing this album a lot and I wanted to feature it in a mix but the music wouldn't fit with my normal ambient mixes so I decided to a beat mix.
As with many mixes, this one took twists & turns I hadn't quite expected. It started off sort of psychedelic then quickly veered into something sort of funky, sort of jazzy. I love the detour it took to Dorothy Ashby. I discovered her 1968 album Afro-Harping at NPR music. I had already finished the mix when I heard the song "Soul Vibrations" and just knew I had to use it. It fits in very nicely. Somehow U2 & Dave Brubeck get squeezed in here as well. It finishes off where it began with The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra.
I really enjoyed making this mix & even though it's a bit different for normal low light fare, I hope you enjoy it too.
Download (right click/save as) : 92mb, 48:09
footsteps
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra - LookListenFeel
- 03:30 DJ Cam - Gantsa Shit
- 07:15 Polyoctopus - One Less Thing
- 10:20 Dorothy Ashby - Soul Vibrations
- 13:25 Conelrad - Charger Paris Mirage
- 16:55 U2 - Numb(gimme some more dignity remix)
- 19:35 The New Mastersounds - Drop It Down(b remix)
- 22:51 Dorothy Ashby - Afro-Harping
- 25:25 Chronomad - Dore Hindi
- 29:00 Terminal Sound System - Duchamp Falls
- 32:40 Dave Brubeck - Take Five
- 37:40 Hidden Orchestra - Footsteps
- 40"00 Halma - Hektopascal
- 42:35 Eliot Lipp - Real Tragic
- 46:00 The Maple Mountain Sunburst Triolian Orchestra - A Beautiful Walk in the Country
- 48:10 end
I wanted to do a new mix but had no new ideas. I was staring at my computer monitor with it's big folder full of ambient music, all of it in alphabetical order. Then it hit me, I'll just do a nice, simple A to Z mix of a variety of ambient tunes.
It was fun because I ended up using some tracks & artists that I've never put in a mix before, such as Eberhard Schoener, Christopher Short, Nelson Foltz & Tom Lynn, Quosp, Ulf Lohman. Of course I also worked in old standbys like Basinski, Goldmund, Loscil, and Yagya.
I had to split the mix into two separate tracks to keep it from being 2 hours long. So part 1 is A thru M & part 2 is N thru Z.
If any readers/listeners have ideas for mixes please let me know. A few ideas in the early stages are and ambient vocal mix &/or slow/quiet vocal tunes, alien landscapes, slow beats, sleep tunes, progressive rock vol. 2. Anyway, any ideas would be appreciated. In the meantime, enjoy A to M (N to Z will be the next post).
Download (right click/save as) : 72mb, 57:00
A to M
N to Z
T R A C K L I S T S :
vol. 1 - A to M
- 00:00 A Produce - I Woke Up Dreaming
- 06:20 Bass Communion - Ghosts on Magnetic Tape II
- 09:50 Christopher Short - Twilight
- 12:30 David Sylvian - The Beekeepers Apprentice
- 16:15 Eberhard Schoener - Meditation part 1
- 22:10 Fabio Orsi - Lost Love
- 23:15 Goldmund - 25 thousand miles away
- 26:40 Hakobune - Melting Reminiscence
- 30:15 Irezumi - Endurance III
- 37:50 Jeff Greinke - Rolling Black Clouds
- 41:00 Loscil - Rorschach
- 48:00 Marconi Union - Debris
- 51:15 Manual - Last Light
- 57:04 end
vol. 2 - N to Z
- 00:00 Nelson Foltz & Tom Lynn - Still Life Vol. 3
- 05:00 O Yuki Conjugate - track 6 from Euphoria of Disobedience
- 08:30 Pan American - Lights of Little Towns
- 15:30 Quosp - Beechwood
- 21:50 Robin Guthrie - Harold Budd - a minute, a day, no more
- 26:45 Solyaris - Night’s Waltzloop
- 29:30 Tom Heasley - Western Sky
- 36:15 Ulf Lohman - untitled #11
- 40:10 Vir Unis & Christopher Short - On the Threshold of Eternity
- 43:40 Williams Basinski - Disintegration Loops 2.1
- 48:00 Xela - Her Eyes Sparkled and She Walked Away
- 53:30 Yagya - Snowflake 10
- 57:00 Zero Ohms - Unafraid of the Impending Silence
- 00:00 end
I ran into the track "The Last Message" by John Murphy on a mix at A Strangely Isolated Place, and it got me thingking about doing another classical-ish mix.
The Murphy track is in there, along with new tunes(Maya Beiser, Max Richter, Nils Frahm, etc) and old tunes(Steve Reich, Peter Gabriel, Gavin Bryars, etc).
There's really not much more to say except that I hope you enjoy this collection of ambient, soundtrack, minimal & neo-classical tunes.
Download (right click/save as) : 54:55, 75mb
a vibration of strings
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 David Byrne - The Lodger
- 04:15 Maya Beiser - Memories
- 08:45 Max Richter - The Haunted Ocean 2
- 09:05 Nils Frahm & Anne Müller - Reminds to Teeth
- 13:15 Olan Mill - Country
- 16:30 John Murphy - The Last Message
- 18:00 Chihei Hatakeyama - Light Drizzle
- 20:30 Hummingbird - Starfish Seastar
- 22:30 Tarwater - Clock
- 23:30 Terry Riley - is in c in f (r. luke dubois remix)
- 25:30 Steve Reich - Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices & organ
- 34:50 Sufjan Stevens - Movement III - Linear Tableau With Intersecting Surprise
- 39:15 Max Richter - Infra 2
- 40:50 Kyle Bobby Dunn - The Tributary (for voices lost)
- 46:20 P Jorgensen - Palimpsest II
- 48:15 Gavin Bryars - Epilogue from Wonder Lawn
- 52:20 Peter Gabriel - The Nest that Sailed the Sky
- 54:55 end
Breathing is a rhythmic process of expansion and contraction, in & out, inhale & exhale. Breathing is one example of the cycles we see in nature such as night and day, wake and sleep, seasonal growth and decay, tides going in & out. And like waves in the tides, the rhythmic nature of breathing can be very calming.
Some of my favorite sleep music has this cyclic, breathing quality to it. I made my first breathing mix almost three years ago. Wow! Has it really been that long? I can't believe I've been posting these mixes for 4 years. Anyway, back to this mix, I had a few breathing tunes that I'd been meaning to use, some old some new, and the result is "breathe in, breathe out".
On many of these mixes, there are sections where two or more pieces are playing simultaneously. But this one may have the longest section of combined playing. At about 4:30 into the mix, Bang on a Can's version of Music for Airports 1-2 comes in over the peter Broderick piece. The two continue playing at the same time until somewhere around 10:00, when Airports fades out and the Broderick cut goes solo for a minute or two. I wasn't planning on doing it that way, the two tracks just blended nicely.
There's a track from Foci's Left in the middle of the mix that is from a new netlabel, Audio Gourmet. The label has been running for less than two months but already they have 7 fine releases. Definitely take some time & download some these excellent EPs.
Download (right click/save as) : 87mb, 60min
breathe in, breathe outT R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Peter Broderick - Music for a sleeping sculpture of Peter Broderick
- 04:30 Bang on a Can - Music for Airports 1-2
- 10:00ish Music for a sleeping sculpture comes back to the fore
- 11:45 Panoptique Electrical - Glacier Show 1
- 20:00 Porzellan - Rosen
- 25:45 Lucette Bourdin - Through Empty Heaven
- 31:00 Robert Rich - Never Alone
- 35:40 Foci's Left - Regurgitated Impulses(David Tagg remix)
- 37:10 Olan Mill - Country
- 40:30 St. Kilda - You are in Every Dream
- 43:20 Language of Landscape - Contemplating Departure In Wake of Clear Light
- 47:45 Austere - Lid
- 54:40 Lexithimie - Another Minute for a Never Ending
- 1:00:00 end
What the heck? Two sea/water mixes in a row? I didn't plan it this way. It just sort of happened that I collected a few sea songs, then the library/soundtrack mix got done, then I found a few more sea songs and this mix happened.
"lost at sea" is very similar to "a solitary sea" from last year. Some nice drifting, flowing tunes with a definite sea/ocean feel to them. And of course all the tunes have the word "sea" in the title. The mix works really well on foggy mornings, standing out on the deck letting the music flow all around you.
There's not much else to say except that I hope you enjoy this latest collection.
Download (right click/save as) : 75mb, 54:30
lost at sea
T R A C K L I S T :- 00:00 Milieu - the singing waters of an endless sea
- 07:30 Aless - inborn sea flowing
- 12:30 offthesky - sea ghosts
- 17:50 Jonsi & Alex - Daniell in the sea
- 25:40 Duncan 'O Ceallaigh - the sea and the sand
- 27:35 The Humble Bee - a century of sea stories
- 29:20 Sawako - april from sea shell
- 32:10 Arovane - seaside
- 35:30 Aglaia - the sea hides his secret selves
- 45:00 Seas - blue dub
- 53:15 Milieu - seashell breeze
- 54:30 end
Right off the bat, I have to come clean. I stole something. I stole the idea for this mix. But I'm glad I did because I'm very excited to post this new track.Over at SoundCloud I ran into some mixes by Astromatt. He uses sounds from music libraries and soundtracks of '60's and '70's to create great underwater themed mixes. I love the sound of these old tracks & how they work together in a mix.
Who knew that these old library albums even existed?! After some research & digging, I decided to try my hand at a similar mix. With a lot of this music, it's very easy to cross the line into cheesy/kitchy territory. I tried to find tunes that had that old 70's undersea soundtrack feel but were still listenable by today's ambient standards. I think it works pretty well as an ambient mix, very relaxing, with a cool watery vibe.
It was a lot of fun discovering some of these old albums & I'm sure I'll visit them again.Download (right click/save as) : 53mb, 36:53
beneath the surface
T R A C K L I S T : - 00:13 Amedeo Tommasi - Acque Tranquille
- 02:20 Eugene Thomass - Magic World of the Sea
- 04:50 Michel Redolfi - Music for Fresh Water
- 08:40 Franco Tamponi - Submarino
- 10:35 Gaston Borreani - Cirrus
- 13:40 Gaston Borreani - Entrelacs
- 17:16 Franco Tamponi - Stelle Marina
- 20:05 Amedeo Tommasi - Correnti Sottomarine
- 21:45 Piero Umiliani - Eliogabalus
- 24:00 Gaston Borreani - Rave Abyssal
- 26:10 Patchwork Orchestra - Brumes sur Mars
- 28:00 Franco Tamponi - Profundita
- 30:05 Fabor - Angelo di Mare
- 33:25 Gaston Borreani - Port Cross
- 36:53 end
Modern-classical, neo-classical, acousmatic, electro-acoustic, ...whatever you want to call the genre, I think this mix fits.
You'll hear lots of strings, some piano, some beats and more strings. It has a vague sort of chamber music feel to it. The mix takes a detour about halfway through with the Pjusk track. It's a good tune but doesn't necessarily fit the modern classical theme of the mix. But I think it flows well with the other tracks around it.
A lot of music I have been listening to sort of falls into this neo-classical/acoustic category so this was just a chance to get some of it out there in a mix.
Enjoy.
Download (right click/save as) : 80mb, 58:06Concerto for this & that
T R A C K L I S T :- 00:00 Panoptique Electrical - Framed by Clouds
- 07:23 Bersarin Quartet - Was uns Bleibt
- 10:45 Murcof - Rios
- 18:40 Olan Mill - Flume
- 21:00 Talvihorros - Thoughts of Violence
- 24:45 M. Ostermeier - Competing Memories, Both Correct
- 30:00 Part Timer - Orchard (scrumped)
- 31:00 Pjusk - Sus
- 35:25 M. Ostermeier - September Again
- 39:20 Danny Norbury - Speak, Memory
- 44:00 Panoptique Electrical - The Free Form
- 50:40 Loscil - Endless Falls
- 58:06 end
I've been listening to a lot of older music lately. Been on a big progressive rock kick, King Crimson, Steve Hackett, Willowglass, Pink floyd, Phil Manzanera, Strawbs, etc. This lead me to dig up some older ambient tunes, which lead to this mix.Listening to Michael Brook's "Hybrid" from 1985 brought back memories of how wonderful that album is. So I grabbed other ambient recordings from around the same time period and the result is the new mix, "always returning". I stole the title from the Eno tune which finishes the mix. It's appropriate because this is music that I will return to often.
Most of the recordings are from the 1980's, with two fo them from '77 & '78. There's a fair amount of Eno in here, whether it's his own tracks or his production. I guess that appropriate because in the '80's, Eno was an ambient god.
I hope you enjoy this quick bit of time traveling.
Download (right click/save as) : 73mb, 53:19
always returning
T R A C K L I S T :- 00:00 Michael Brook - Distant Village 1985
- 04:00 Jon Hassell - darbari extension 1 1983
- 08:15 Penguin Cafe Orchestra - numbers 1 - 4 1981
- 13:40 Bill Nelson - Ringing True 1989
- 15:00 Harold Budd - Bismillahi Rrahmani Rrahim 1978
- 22:40 Laraaji - Essence 1988
- 28:20 David Sylvian - The Wooden Cross 1986
- 31:45 Cluster & Eno - Fur Luise 1977
- 36:30 Bill Nelson - Almost Unchanging 1989
- 38:00 Peter Gabriel - Slow Water 1985
- 40:00 Brian Eno - Unfamilar Wind (leeks hills) 1982
- 44:30 Michael Brook - Ocean Motion 1985
- 49:30 Brian Eno - Always Returing 1983
- 53:19 end
This last mix of 2010 is a mix that I did for Headphone Commute about 3 months ago. They were kind enough to ask for a mix & I was honored to add it to their great collection of mixes they post at their own site & at their Mixcloud site.
