favorite ambient albums

About a year ago I did a mix of my favorite ambient artists of all time.  I have been meaning to do a mix of my favorite ambient albums ever since.  And now here it is.

I did not go back and look at my favorite artist list.  I sorted through my ambient collection and came up with my fav albums.  Then I compared the two lists and not surprisingly they are almost identical.  Basically I substituted Scott Solter for Alio Die when I made the fav album list.  At least I didn't repeat any tunes from one mix to the next.

Choosing a favorite album from some of these artists was difficult.  Steve Roach has some many recordings that it was tough to know where to start but I kept coming back to the one that gets the most play and that is "The Dream Circle."  I wonder how many other folks like this album as much as I do.  I'm not e really sure why I like it more than his other releases, it definitely sounds similar to a lot of his other output.  I guess over the years it's become like a comfy sweatshirt.

Stars of the Lid & Eno were both hard to choose a favorite as well.  With SOTL I ended up going with the album that I first discovered them with.  In choosing "On Land" from Eno I really could have just flipped a coin to choose between it and "Music for Airports," "Apollo" and "Music for Films."  

The one favorite that probably doesn't make a lot of lists is "One River" by Scott Solter.  Using mostly processed guitars this album ebbs & flows beautifully from one tracks to the next. You can find it HERE.  

Enjoy.


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T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Scott Solter - Cypress Road from One River
• 04:38    Stars of the Lid - Dust Breeding from Avec Laudenum
• 11:45    Maps & Diagrams - Honeycomb Archipelago from Get Lost
• 14:45    Brian Eno - Unfamiliar Wind(leeks hills) from On Land
• 19:25    Loscil - Lucy Dub from First Narrows
• 25:25    Sonmi451 - Orange from Spectrum
• 31:00    Steve Roach - The Dream Circle from The Dream Circle
• 40:45    Kyle Bobby Dunn - Empty Gazing from A Young Person's Guide to
• 46:35    Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Against the Sky from The Pearl
• 50:00    William Basinski - 1.2 from The Disintegration Loops
• 1:01:00    end

Favorite ambient albums of all time by Low Light Mixes on Mixcloud

distant crossroads

As I have said many times before on this blog, a new mix is very often born when a track or two inspires me to create something new.  In this case it was the new album by Esmerine called "Dalmak."

The group recorded the new tracks in Instanbul and the whole album definitely has the texture and feel that one would associate with Turkish music.  The Constellation Records website describes it perfectly... 

"As a title for Esmerine's new album, "dalmak" refers in a literal sense to immersion in the culture and music of Istanbul but also appropriately evokes the range of music that emerged from this immersion: a collection of songs that shift between meditative pulsing and enveloping restraint to headlong flights into rhythm and groove."

With Esmerine as I starting point I went to some familiar sources.  One being the wonderful recordings of Myke Dodge Weiskopf. I excerpted part of his Field Recordings & Global Ambience mix and also used a cut from his latest release - "The Muezzins of Mali."

I also worked in some Byrne & Eno early mixes from the "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" sessions.  As well as some early mixes and extracts from Peter Gabriel's "Passion."

I enjoy these musical treks, I hope you do too.



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 T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Esmerine - Lost River Blues I
• 07:30    Isnaj Dui - Quarter Wave
• 11:55    David Byrne & Brian Eno - Breathing Once a Minute
• 15:00    Myke Dodge Weiskopf - Evening Call to Prayer 11 August 2010 - Draginovo, Bulgaria
• 15:25    Peter Gabriel - Passion extras #3
• 17:15    Saltland - But It Was All of Us
• 21:30    Penjaga Insaf - Keinsafan
• 24:20    The Guo Brothers & Shung Tıan - Soldiers of the Long March
• 26:15    Rapoon - Dream Dance
• 28:55    Huren - The Shroud
• 30:30    Chronomad - se
• 34:00    Bielka Nemirovski - Akh Ti Notchenka
• 39:00    The Rustavi Choir - Orovela(with Peter Gabriel mixed under)
• 43:55    Rapoon - Hey...Drifting
• 48:30    David Bryne & Brian Eno - Shaking With My Voice
• 50:50    Jon Hassel - Map of Dusk
• 52:30    Myke Dodge Weiskopf - The Muezzins of Mali - San - Adhan al-Fajr
• 55:25    Ry Cooder & Ronu Majumbar - Hollow Bamboo
• 1:00:20    Peter Gabriel - Unlocking the Door
• 1:02:22    end

Distant crossroads by Lowlight on Mixcloud

Tumblr

Low Light Mixes now has a Tumblr blog.  You can find it here...

low light on Tumblr

I plan on using for more frequent posts.  The main blog here on blogspot will remain for posting mixes & the occasional shout out to good music.  But with the Tumblr blog I'd like to post random msuic clips, some video, some pix, basically anything that interests me.  That way I don't pollute the main Low Light blog with a bunch of other random stuff.

So head on over to the Tumblr site & hang out, comment, reblog, tell me to take a hike.

Cheers

Sunday Morning Music vol. 7 - The Sun King

I found a cool clip on YouTube from the Beatles Abbey Road album.  It is the 16 minute medley that closes the album but it's only the vocals.  It's fascinating to listen to familiar vocals in a new way.  Here's a link to the YouTube clip... Abbey Road vocals.

The vocals for "The Sun King" caught my attention and I thought they'd make a nice start to a new Sunday morning mix.  I couldn't resist messing with the track a little bit so I slowed it down and mixed part of that slowed down track under the normal one  I like the way the sowed track fills the space between vocals.  Then I brought the slow track up full to finish off The Sun King.  It's really kind of amazing how beautiful the track still sounds even when slowed way down.

As I was adding tracks to the mix I stumbled upon the Sun Kil Moon song "Sunshine in Chicago" and it hit me that the mix should revolve around the sun.  So every song on the tracklist has "sun" in the title.

I love using a keyword to narrow a musical search because it always turns up cuts I had completely forgotten about.  In this case I was very excited to have dug up "Eternity's Sunrise" from the "Children of Men" score.  I'm pretty happy with how this "sunny" mix turned out.

Enjoy.


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T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    The Beatles - The Sun King(vocals only)
• 01:51    Lights Out Asia - Birds Sing Sun-Rising Hymns
• 04:55    Jon Hopkins - Sun Harmonics
• 12:10    Phosphorescent - Sun, Arise
• 15:05    Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Painted Sun in Abstract
• 18:00    Boards of Canada - Turquoise Hexagon Sun
• 23:00    Popol Vuh - Morning Sun
• 26:17    Alexi Murdoch - Towards the Sun
• 30:25    Ben Howard - Under the Same Sun
• 32:45    M. Ostermeier - Sunlight on My Desk
• 35:15    Underworld - capa meets the sun
• 37:00    Max Richter - Sunlight
• 42:28    Jon Hopkins - The Wider Sun
• 44:48    John Tavener - Eternity's Sunrise
• 47:10    Vir Unis - Infinite Sun
• 50:20    David Sylvian - Sunlight seen through towering trees
• 52:55    The Seven Fields Of Aphelion - Sunburst Chemicals
• 55:33    Sun Kil Moon - Sunshine in Chicago
• 57:55    The Beatles - The Sun King
• 1:00:20    end

Sunday Morning Music vol. 7 - The Sun King by Lowlight on Mixcloud

dub transmissions

I happened to come across a new tune from Moritz Von Oswald Trio.  The song, Blue Dub, has this great, slow, sparse dub thing going on that I love.  I knew as soon as I heard it that I'd have to make a new mix of dub related tunes.

So, "dub transmissions" is, duh, is mix of dub tunes.  I've done them before & this one is similar to the others.  I think the previous ones have had parts that are a little noisier & spacier than this mix.  Most of these tunes have a beat, although that beat can be very laid back and muffled.  

Enjoy.


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T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Moritz Von Oswald Trio - Blue Dub
• 05:30    The Black Dog - Sleep Deprivation 1
• 09:30    krill.minima - Kalypso
• 12:50    Holger Flinsch - Navigator
• 19:10    Massive Attack - Cool Monsoon
• 23:00    Deepcord - Theme From Silent World
• 32:20    Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - The Spirit Wore the Shoes of the Boy
• 37:10    Iminazole - Sunny
• 41:20    The Green Kingdom - dustloop4
• 44:05    Deadbeat - Portable Memory
• 47:30    As If - Crumble to Dust
• 54:30    Pablo Bolivar - Walk Man Fever
• 05:05    As If - To Be Ground
• 09:30    Bjorn Rohde - Forest of Forgotten Hearts
• 15:35    end

Dub transmissions by Lowlight on Mixcloud

A glitch in time

Sometime around 2001 I discovered the album Tides by Arovane.  I'm not sure if it qualifies as "post-digital" or "blip hop" or "micro" music but it was through that album that I began a brief love affair with the style of music known as "glitch."

I have always loved electronic & ambient music but at the end of the 1990s I had lost interest in berlin style electronics and mostly listened to straight ambient.  But with the emergence of glitch, and it's use of complicated beats, noise and samples, I found a new rhythmic electronic music to dive into.

The biggest purveyor of glitch music back then was the Mille Plateaux label.  With their Click & Cuts series they introduced me to a whole new range of sound in music.  There is definitely a lot of music from that time period that, while interesting, could become annoying as well.  I'm not a fan of loud and aggressive glitch.  I definitely am more in tune with the sort of stuff put out by 12k.

Over time I grew tired of much of the glitch scene and the never ending little pops & clicks & wee little sounds intruding on the music.  Although I still enjoy much of 12k music.

Recently I was organizing some of my collection & revisited some old glitch material.  I found that I am still very fond of some of it.  I started collecting tracks for this mix and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

So this mix is a little step back in time to the early 2000s.  A small glitch in the passing of time to when glitch ruled, for me anyway.

Btw, I made the clock gif myself!  Woo hoo!  Can't wait to try more.

Enjoy.


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T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Arovane - Tides (2000)
• 04:45    Carpet Musics - Phone Lines (2001)
• 08:24    Clickits - No Clickedy (2003)
• 11:35    Xela - Impulsive Behavior (2002)
• 15:30    offthesky - Down the Stream (2005)
• 20:50    Shuttle358 - I'm Not Afraid (2003)
• 25:05    Twerk - From Brown to Green (2003)
• 29:55    Jan Jelinek - Facelift (2003)
• 34:55    Bexar Bexar - Kt (2002)
• 38:30    Christopher Willits - The Seaweed Machine (2003)
• 40:45    Christian Kleine - Several (2002)
• 47:15    Arovane - Ambelio (1999)
• 52:20    Shuttle358 - Calty (2000)
• 57:11    end

A glitch in time by Lowlight on Mixcloud

Movement & Location - music for biking

This mix is completely different from anything that I've posted here.  It's not ambient, or electronic or Sunday morning jazz.  This is music for motion.

This is a mix I made last summer to listen to while biking.  I liked it so much that I added some new tunes this year and made it longer.  All of the songs have a propulsive, forward-moving feel to them.  There are some oddball choices in there but generally most of the music would fall under the heading of indie rock.  Artists include Yacht, Vampire Weekend, Japandroids, Lord Huron, Rural Alberta Advantage, Jonathan Boulet, Underworld, Shearwater, Givers, etc.

I like the fact that it's 2 hours long so I can go out on an hour long ride and still have enough left for the next ride.  The mix also works well on a treadmill.  I wanted to post this before now so anyone who downloads it hopefully can make good use of it before summer disappears.

Enjoy.


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T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Patrick Watson - Blackwind
• 03:45    Punch Brothers - Movement & Location
• 06:45    Willy Porter - Breathe
• 10:15    Mumford & Sons - Little Lion Man
• 14:09    Givers - Up up up
• 18:30    Jinja Safari - Mermaids
• 22:22    Benny Goodman - Sing, Sing, Sing
• 27:20    Mother Falcon - Dirt Summer
• 30:35    The Killers - Human
• 34:30    Yacht - Utopia
• 37:30    Shearwater - Animal Life
• 40:55    The Rural Alberta Advantage - Tornado '87
• 44:32    Matt & Kim - Don't Slow Down
• 47:33    The Boxer Rebellion - Organ Song
• 50:50    Lord Huron - Time to Run
• 55:20    Underworld - Dark & Long
• 1:02:15    Tilly And The Wall - Heavy Mood
• 1:05:20    Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Can't Hold Us
• 1:09:35    Vampire Weekend - Unbelievers
• 01:12:55    Jonathan Boulet - You're a Animal
• 01:16:20    Underworld - Downpipe
• 01:23:30    Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself
• 01:27:10    Kate Bush - Cloudbusting
• 01:32:10    Jon Hopkins - Open Eye Signal
• 01:39:52    Avett Brothers - Kick Drum Heart
• 01:42:30    Jonathan Boulet - Mangle Trang
• 01:45: 55   Japandroids - The House that Heaven Built
• 01:50:35    The Rural Alberta Advantage - Barnes' Yard
• 01:52:48    Vampire Weekend - A Punk
• 01:55:00    Andrew Bird - Fitz and the Dizzyspells
• 01:58:20    faltyDL - She Sleeps
• 02:02:38    Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place
• 02:07:31  end

Under Eno's Covers

At the suggestion of a listener/downloader I set out to do a mix of ambient covers.  Not so easy.

But I did find a bunch of Brian Eno cover tunes.  Some I was familiar with, Bang on a Can & Sakamoto, but many of the others were new discoveries made by cruising the web. 

The mix starts with probably the most covered Eno tune - An Ending (Ascent), from Apollo.  The cover of that song comes from a new album by Icebreaker & BJ Cole which covers the entire Apollo album.  It's excellent and any Eno fan will definitely enjoy it.

About a third of the way through the mix, the tunes shift to a few vocal songs. I wasn't sure at first if I wanted go this route but the more I listened to these vocal covers the more I liked them.  From there we switch back into ambient mode.

I think this turned out pretty well and makes for a nice change of pace in the land of Low Light Mixes.

Enjoy.


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T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Icebreaker & BJ Cole - an ending (ascent) ii
• 03:50    Teen Daze - Always Returning
• 07:55    Dan Piccolo - Music for Airports 1.1
• 13:30    Bang On A Can - Music for Airports 2.1
• 17:30    Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto - By This River
• 21:15    Ida - Golden Hours
• 25:35    Irene Coco & Giovanni Sala - And Then So Clear
• 29:00    St. Vincent - Some of Them are Old
• 31:55    Unknown - Spider & I (ona banjo ukulele)
• 33:15    Band On A Can - Music for Airports 2.2
• 38:00    Doron Diamond - Music for Airports 1.1 (acoustic)
• 41:15    AcousticLabs - And Ending (Ascent) (solo guitar)
• 45:00    Icebreaker & BJ Cole - Drift
• 47:45    Nathan Fake - Music for Airports 1.1
• 53:00    Ryosuke Tomita - Becalmed (acoustic)
• 56:52    end

Under Eno's covers by Lowlight on Mixcloud

New Marconi Union

I love Marconi Union.  I have ever since their first album , Under Wires and Searchlights.  So I like to notify folks any time they have a new release.

Their new record is Anomic, which they recorded with Jah Wobble.  As with all MU music this is another fine album.  I stink at reviewing music so I'll just let the sample below speak for itself.

You can buy it here...
30hertz records

Marconi Union website here...
MU

BTW, a couple new mixes coming very soon.

Fixed links

Just a quick note to say that I fixed a bunch of bad links to old mixes.

Anything earlier than Feb of 2009 was questionable.  So I went back & re-linked the mp3s.  Hopefully everything is in place.

Some of the really old files are hosted on Mediafire & hopefully those are still good.  If not please let me know so I can correct it.  Someday I'll replace all those old mediafire links with podbean links.

I've started using cinemagraphs for the pix on some posts.  I love the look of a good, subtle cinemagraph.  Do they work?  I know sometimes certain browsers don't load animated gifs well.  So if they don't work I'll stop using them.  Maybe I'll try to make my own someday.