drowsy

I recently had surgery on a broken collarbone & had to spend a fair amount of time laying around, recuperating, sleeping.  So I decided to make a mix that would work well with Percocet & Vicodin.

I've produced other sleep mixes before, "I fell asleep at my desk making this mix", "slo mo", "slow & sleepy", and have often relied on them for nighttime listening.  Of course most of the mixes found here could work as "sleep" mixes. 

This new mix, "drowsy", fits right in with those others.  It's a soothing mix of drones & synth washes that will put anyone to sleep.

[ 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    Benoît Pioulard - Drowsy
• 04:15    Ex Confusion - Bloom
• 09:45    Peter James & Disturbed Earth - A Descending Calm
• 13:45    Steve Roach - Slow Heat (excerpt)
• 21:05    Aglaia - Milosis
• 30:45    David Tagg - Wolf Suite II
• 34:40    Alio Die - Innamorato
• 42:35    Kyle Bobby Dunn - New Pures
• 45:35    Loscil - Stave Peak
• 51:15    Nest - Koretz's Meteor
• 55:55    Ursula - Un final decepcionante
• 01:01:01    end
• 
  

Drowsy by Lowlight on Mixcloud

silent sorrow in empty boats

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.

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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

driftage

Drifting...floating...coasting...gliding...swimming...

Whatever word you choose, all would describe this mix perfectly. It's just a nice collection of mostly new tunes, all with a drifting, floating feel.

This mix works great for sleeping, enjoy.

D o w n l o a d (right click/save as) : 79mb, 57:00
driftage


T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Moustache Mountain - poisonoussnake
• 05:50 Ben Fleury Steiner - Purple as the Dawn
• 09:45 Pausal - Midshipman
• 12:40 Back to Comm - Hotel Freund
• 16:00 Aglaia - A Boat Hunted the Edge of the Sea
• 22:40 Dirk Serries - microphonics v
• 28:35 Windy & Carl - I Have Been Waiting to Hear from You
• 34:40 Fabio Orsi - part 2 from Winterreise
• 40:15 Hildur Gudnadottir - Iridescence
• 49:15 m. ostermeier - Lost Weekend
• 53:00 Spheruleus - Orchid
• 57:00 end

landing dust

 The year was 1982.  I was a student at UW-Madison and very much into ambient music.  Eno had released the 4 ambient albums along with others like Music for Films, Discreet Music, Evening Star, No Pussyfooting and I had them all.

I don’t play any instruments but I enjoy playing with anything musical.  My roommate had a Teac reel-to-reel tape machine that I loved to play with.  Through Fripp & Eno I had learned to feed the output of the play head back though to the rec input to create a nice loop/echo effect.  I’d sit & play with it for hours.  I made recordings as I strung rubber bands on the legs of the coffee table, poured water into metal bowls, beat coffee cans with pencils, created feedback by dropping the mic into various containers and so on.

One of my favorite things to record was my cheap little Casio keyboard, the kind with only four voices…piano, flute, violin and organ.  Eventually I figured out how to get the system to create nice drones & feedback loops.  This track is the result of that experimentation.  There is little or no musicianship involved.  It was improvised live to tape using the Casio keyboard & the Teac reel-to-reel.

At least I think it was live, there might have been some drone recorded in the first pass then played back on some crappy cassette deck while more loopy feedback was played along with it.  Either way, I was just making it up & twiddling knobs as I went along.

It brings back a lot of memories of messing around with any sort of audio gear I could get my hands on as I was growing up.  Walking through the neighborhood with a recorder & headphones on, sitting in my parents basement til 2am trying to get some Jean Michel Jarre sounds out of an old synth, laying in bed at night trying to tune in a barely-working shortwave radio, wiring old car speakers to the furniture in my bedroom when I was 14.

I actually like this track, “Landing Dust”, that came from that reel-to-reel experimentation.  It’s definitely the only thing close to musical or ambient I’ve ever recorded.  I have no idea if anyone else will find this listenable.  But I wanted to throw it out there anyway.

Download :   49mb,   20:26

Landing Dust

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