This mix is a rare treat. It's a guest mix from Chris Fraley. I know Chris through correspondence and postings at the Hypnos Forum.
I've been a member of the forum for a long time and I really enjoy the community there. In this time of social networks and twitter it's nice to see that a classic forum still survives and thrives, mainly because of a shared love of ambient music. Activity there ebbs and flows but there's always interesting topics and people hanging out.
As I said, I know Chris through the forum and as the two of us have similar tastes, I offered him the opportunity to do a mix for the blog. He was hesitant at first because he'd never done something like this before. But he decided to give it a shot and I'm very glad he did.
Chris said he "ended up making a mix based on some of the recent (2012 or later) neo-classical
music that embodies the spirit of ambient and experimental acoustics." The result is perfect.
I hope this is just the first of more guest mixes we may see from Chris.
Enjoy
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T R A C K L I S T:
It is freakin' cold here in Wisconsin right now. It's going to be -20f below zero tonight and the high temp on Monday didn't get much above -10f. Frigid temps like that call for a mix.
It's perfect timing for a freezing mix because a recent purchase was the album arctic conditions by stormloop. With song titles like "Ice Wind," "In The Frozen Morning Light" and "Arctic Conditions," it was a perfect starting point for this mix.
Make some hot cocoa, sit back and try to stay warm. Of course for listeners like Charles Glaspole in Australia, it's summer. I guess you'll have to use your imagination.
Enjoy.
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T R A C K L I S T:
- 00:00 Wind and walking in snow
- 00:30 Terje Isungset - Go North
- 01:36 stormloop - ice wind
- 05:45 Marcus Fischer - Arctic 1
- 10:10 Panoptique Electrical - Glacier Show I
- 16:35 Ulf Lohmann - On Frozen Fields
- 18:45 Blamstrain - Tundra V
- 24:05 offthesky - beneath the ice shelf
- 26:50 Harold Budd - Ice Floes in Eden
- 29:15 stormloop - arctic conditions
- 33:55 Good Weather For An Airstrike - Frozen In Thought
- 37:25 Kiln - The Ice Floes
- 38:40 Forrest Fang & Carl Weingarten - Freezing Days
- 41:10 David Tagg - Arctic Reflection
- 50:10 Brian Eno - Fields Of Ice
- 58:00 Segue - A View of the Frozen Lake
- 1:01:40 stormloop - in the frozen morning light
- 1:08:00 end
The title of this mix pretty much says it all. This is a collection of tunes that works well at night.
I didn't want the mix to be dark & depressing or dark and scary, just something that feels more at home at night. It's sort of the opposite of the Sunday morning mixes. Although a few tunes could go either way.
I didn't start out making a "night" mix, it just sort of happened on it's own after the first few cuts. The mix opens with a fantastic remix of Bowie's Sound & Vision. This cut isn't necessarily a "night" tune but I just had to use it. The next three cuts are what took the mix in the nightside direction.
I labeled the mix "Vol. 1" because I'd like to turn this into a series just like the Sunday morning mixes. So look for more in 2014. But there's still one more mix on it's way in 2013.
Enjoy.
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T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 David Bowie - Sound and Vision(Sonjay Prabhakar remix)
- 02:50 Arve Henriksen - Shelter From The Storm
- 06:00 Mark Kozelek & Jimmy LaValle - By The Time That I Awoke
- 10:00 Moritz von Oswald & Nils Petter Molvaer - Step by Step
- 15:45 Justin Walter - The Way Of Five
- 20:10 A.A. Bondy - Mightiest Of Guns
- 23:22 Loren Connors - Shadows
- 26:30 Labradford - By Chris Johnston, Craig Markva, Jamie Evans
- 31:00 Public Service Broadcasting - Late Night Final
- 36:30 Jon Hassell - Amsterdam Blue
- 44:30 The National - Hard To Find
- 48:25 Jonathan Boulet - Cent Voix
- 52:55 Ghosting Season - Lie
- 56:00 Mirroring - Mirror Of Our Sleeping
- 59:30 Loren Connors - Night In Vain
- 1:01:45 Grace Cathedral Park - Hey Pretty, Could You Stay Awhile
- 1:11:28 end
Another year, another best of list.
This is my list of my favorite "normal" music of the year. Indie, alternative, rock, Americana, whatever you want to call it - this is not the ambient music which goes into most of my mixes.
Over the last 3 or 4 years I've been listening to more and more "normal" music. It's hard to keep up with the pace of new releases, new bands, new artists. One can develop a sort of obsessive disorder where you consume more and more music, ever worried that you'll miss something.
My Spotify playlist of 2013 music has nearly 3000 tracks and that doesn't really include much of the ambient stuff I listen to. That's a lot of music to wade through in a year. Spotify and other streaming services are changing the way we consume music and the way we think about music. It's difficult to say whether that change is for the better.
I do know that I love having so much music available all the time. I love sampling new stuff, testing it out to see if it will have the staying power to make to the end of the year. I like having a friend send me recommendations, being able to listen to the entire album instantly and sending a reaction or new suggestion back the other way.
At this time of year, with all the best of lists, I have added about 20 albums to that Spotify playlist just in the last week or so. Which of course just puts me further behind. But I LOVE IT!
And now here they are, my favorite albums of 2013. What are yours?
1. Blaudzun - Heavy Flowers
2. John Vanderslice- Dagger Beach
3. Volcano Choir - Repave
4. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
5. Phosphorescent - Muchacho
6. Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer Different Park
7. The National - Trouble Will Find Me
8. John Vanderslice - Diamond Dogs
"A Better Whirlpool"
9. Mikal Cronin - MCII
10. Darkside - Psychic
11. Jon Hopkins - Immunity
12. Vic & Gab - Love of Mine
13. Elvis Costello & The Roots - Wise Up Ghost
14. Boards of Canada - tomorrow's harvest
15. The Flaming Lips - Peace Sword ep
16. Wavves - Afraid of Heights
17. Rhye - Woman
18. Daughter - If You Leave
19. Public Service Broadcasting - inform - educate - entertain
20. San Fermin - San Fermin
I love dubby ambient. I think this is my third dub mix this year. I'm sure I'll grow tired of this style of music but for now I'm soaking it in. It was snowing while I made this mix & the music just seemed to fit the winter mood. Hence the name "A Winter's Dub."
Many of the tracks in this mix came from Bandcamp. As a matter of fact, all the links in the tracklist are to Bandcamp pages. I love Bandcamp. So easy & convenient. And great for discovering new music. I bought a bunch of stuff this year by following other folks & sampling we they buy.
Here is my Bandcamp collection for anyone that's interested.
Enjoy the dub!
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T R A C K L I S T
I know this is not the best time of year for sitting out side and stargazing. At least not here in Wisconsin. But I haven't done a stargazing mix in a long time so i thought I'd throw this out there.
The piece that got me started on this mix isn't an actual song. It's NASA's Voyager spacecraft recording the sound of interstellar space. Voyager's plasma wave instrument detected the vibrations of dense
interstellar plasma, or ionized gas, from October to November 2012 and
April to May 2013. You can find the recording here... Voyager.
I couldn't resist using that sound as a launch pad for this mix. The rest is pretty straight forward ambient/space music. For some strange reason I felt compelled to make this mix nearly 2 hours long. If you want to lay outside for two hours & gaze at the night sky in the middle of December, better bring some scotch & an electric blanket. ;)
Enjoy.
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T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 NASA Voyager recording of interstellar space
- 00:40 Loscil - Second Narrows Specta Ciera Version
- 03:30 Ishq - Globular Cluster
- 07:30 Harmony & Decay - Hypnotic Sequence
- 12:40 Eluder - The Event Horizon
- 14:50 Marsen Jules - A Room Full of History
- 19:15 Marconi Union - Always Numb
- 23:40 Porzellan - Floating Reception
- 24:30 Sonmi451 - Omicron Ceti
- 29:30 Loscil - ss1.2 unit circle
- 32:50 Wouter Veldhuis - Blue Forest I
- 36:00 Variant - Thru the Cosmos(ison + spica)
- 43:33 Brian Eno - Surf Birds
- 46:10 Mark Rownd - Place of Grace
- 52:20 Kissy Suzuki - rubbish & Beauties part 1
- 56:30 Altus - Floating Free
- 1:00:40 Diatonis - Whiring Above Our Heads
- 1:04:15 A Produce - Inner Sanctum
- 1:12:00 Aglaia - Dust Across the Border
- 1:15:30 Christopher Short - Unknown Constellation #2
- 1:22:30 Fripp & Eno - Meissa
- 1:29:10 Ithaca Trio - Catching Monkeys
- 1:34:00 Steve Roach - Deep Sky Time
- 1:41:10 Sylken - Sleepless
- 1:50:10 Deepchord - Driftwood
- 1:51:10 Vidna Obmana - Night Blooming
- 1:57:49 end
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
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
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
