This past Saturday NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory known as "Curiosity" on a 9 month journey to the planet Mars. As I was watching video of the launch, I was thinking about music that would work well with a launch & space voyage. I quickly collected some appropriate tune & cranked out this mix at escape velocity speed. The tracks are all electronic/electronica cuts that I thought seem to fit the theme. As it turns out, many of the tunes have titles that are perfect for a mix li...
Nov 28, 2011•59 min
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....
Nov 23, 2011•1 hr 1 min
A friend of mine made an excellent Spotify playlist called "Atmospheric Songs for Travelers" which had some great music from John Martyn, Nick Drake, Wilco & more.(I saved it as my own playlist which is why name is on it if you click the link.) Listening to that collection made me want put together my own mix of vocal music. I don't do vocal mixes very often but I thought it'd be nice to do one now while all that music is swimming around in my head. The songs are very laid back. Most are aco...
Nov 13, 2011•1 hr
Josh, from Nocturne Records , requested a Halloween mix. At first I was reluctant because I'm not a big fan of dark ambient. I've never really cared for Lustmord records, although I do have "The Place Where Black Stars Hang." While I do have a fair amount of drone music I don't like dissonant drones. When I set out to do this mix I wasn't sure what direction it would take. Would it be noisy, scary ambient drones? As I was looking through my music I came across "The Twin Peaks Archive" by David L...
Oct 26, 2011•59 min
It hasn't felt much like autumn around here, with temps in the 70's & 80's the last week or two. But the leaves are still falling and before you know it we'll have snow flying. So I figured now is as good a time as any to publish this new mix, "Autumn in Slow Motion." This is a fairly straight forward mix with a nice blend of old & new tracks. As you can tell all the tracks have the word "autumn" or " leaves" in the title. I'm pretty sure I've used the track by Eluder, "Autmun Hips", bef...
Oct 13, 2011•58 min
I guess you could call this mix "Televison Sky #2". It's a continuation of the sounds found in that mix. This has more beats than a normal low light mix, more of an electronica sound. I think it has a nice mix of old & new material. The oldest cuts are from Can, Eno & Earthstar, 1973, 1975 & 1981 respectively. In the middle we have the Casino Versus Japan cut from 1999 & the Aspen track from 2000. Then there are a few newer tunes like the ones from Tobacco & Maps & Diagra...
Sep 12, 2011•56 min
"Several times I've seen the evening slide away. Watching the signs taking over from the fading day." - Brian Eno from Golden Hours This is music for sitting on the porch in the evening, as the day slips into night. The sounds of traffic, lawn mowers & kids fade away as the first stars come out. I stole the title from a recording by Fognode, which you can find here... Fognode - Porch Music . Brian Siskind is Fognode & he has some fantastic albums that have been released over the years. D...
Aug 20, 2011•59 min
"Music is the space between notes." - Claude Debussy I found a couple of tunes recently that exemplify that Debussy quote. So I looked for more tracks that had definite valleys between the peaks of synth washes or long pauses between piano chords and then I let the mix take off from there. The result is similar to the "breathing" mixes I've done before with the lulling ebb & flow that I like so much. This mix differs in it's use of piano & guitar tracks. There is a section in the middle ...
Jul 28, 2011•57 min
"The loneliness you get by the sea is personal and alive. It doesn't subdue you and make you feel abject. It's stimulating loneliness." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh So much of ambient music has a beautiful ebb & flow that lends itself perfectly to sea metaphors. Whether its bobbing up & down on the surface or plumbing the depths, ambient music music seems to fit well with imagery of the sea. I could crank out sea mixes just using tunes with water, ocean or sea references in the track titles. ...
May 24, 2011•55 min
"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." -- Plato (427-347 B.C.) I realized that I hadn't done a stargazing mix in quite awhile and with the weather getting warmer & spending more time outside, I figured a new star mix was in order. So here it is... T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Sonmi451 - Cumulonimbus 05:30 Manual - As the moon Spins Around 09:35 Cyber Zen Sound Engine & Matt Borghi - Mars Infers 15:40 Robert Davies - Beneath Strange Stars 24:55 ...
May 13, 2011•1 hr 3 min
On the heals of the last mix, which was sort of modern classical, comes another neo-classical type mix. I started collecting tunes for this mix after I heard Alva Noto's "Argonaut Version" in a Quiet Sounds mix. I like that song & wanted it to find a home in a mix. Speaking of Quiet Sounds , there are some excellent mixes available for download there. I wish Brian would crank them out more often. I stole the title for this mix from a song by The Tumbled Sea, which is next to last in the mix....
Apr 19, 2011•54 min
I love soundtracks. And if you look at the tracklist for this mix, you'll see that I have a few favorite composers. At the top of that list are Clint Mansell & Cliff Martinez. They are responsible for two of my favorite soundtracks, The Fountain & Solaris . Jon Hopkins, a new composer on the soundtrack scene, could soon join those two as a favorite. His soundtrack for the movie Monsters , got a lot of play here. I ended up using three tracks from that album in this mix, I just couldn't r...
Apr 02, 2011•36 min
As the days get longer, I am able to enjoy a bit of sunlight when I get home from work. There have been a few days recently where I stopped during a walk to gaze at the evening sky as the color deepens to indigo & the stars first start appearing. Being a music geek, I can't help but think of tunes that would make a nice soundtrack for that scene. So while listening to music the last couple of weeks, if I came across a cut that made me think of those walks & the sky, I'd throw them into a...
Mar 25, 2011•1 hr
I am very excited to present this next mix. It's a guest mix by longtime listener/downloader, Ron Sylvester. Ron was the inspiration for a couple of my mixes that used old 78rpm recordings as a basis for the mixes "Sustain & Decay" and "Revenants of the Past". Ron sent me some mix cd's which I really enjoyed & I told him he really should do a proper mix someday. Well I am delighted that Ron has allowed me to present his first mix here for everyone to enjoy. I'll let Ron describe the mix....
Mar 11, 2011•1 hr
"Distant transmissions flicker and fade, there's a drift on the signal, a ghost in the phase."I've had that phrase on my blog profile for a long time. I've used different parts of it as titles for my series of 'shortwave' mixes(drift on the signal, ghost in the phase, flicker & fade).With this mix I've completely tapped out that slogan because the new mix is called "distant transmissions."I'm not really sure exactly how I came up with that line. I remember going through shortwave terms looki...
Mar 05, 2011•43 min
No pretense of ambience in this mix, just straight forward jazz. I came across an interesting list here... Quintessential Jazz Songs. The Jazz 100 is a list compiled by listeners of jazz24.org & NPR Music. It's kinda fun to read some of the comments because the listeners get very passionate about the list. Much of the list is very recognizable & some of the tracks I'd never heard before, so it was great to dig in & discover music I probably should have known about for a long time. So...
Feb 27, 2011•1 hr 2 min
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." > _ William Gibson, Neuromacer I love that line from "Neuromancer" & it's the jumping off point for this mix. Now if I was going to do a true Neuromancder mix I'd use stuff like Autechre & other noisy, abrasive electronica. But this isn't really a Neuro mix, I'm not a big fan of later Autechre & music that gets so noisy as to be annoying. In addition to that line, some new music I discovered at the end ...
Feb 20, 2011•59 min
Yah! A new mix finally! I've been ridiculously busy lately(10 days at the Super Bowl) so haven't been able to do much mixing. Hopefully that will change. This is another mix where the title says it all...slow & sleepy. Pretty straight forward ambient with long, stretched out chords, slow motion sounds to suspend consciousness. Many of the tracks used here are new or fairly new. A lot of good music has been released in the last few months. I'll have to dive in & come up with some new mixe...
Feb 14, 2011•1 hr
"The passage of time is flickering dimly upon the screen." I've called this mix "Obscured by Time" because it has that grainy, blurry feel to it, like looking through gauze. The once distinct events in our memories melt together like the washes of sound in this mix. This collection was inspired by the two 2010 releases by 36, " Memories in Widescreen " & " Hollow ". A pair of great releases that are at times haunting & beautiful. As described at 3six.net , some of the tracks "use turbule...
Jan 07, 2011•53 min
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 t...
Dec 31, 2010•1 hr
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 H...
Dec 12, 2010•51 min
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 ...
Dec 04, 2010•51 min
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 t...
Nov 15, 2010•58 min
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 wil...
Oct 28, 2010•1 hr
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, f...
Oct 08, 2010•1 hr 3 min
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, ...
Sep 29, 2010•42 min
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...
Sep 13, 2010•1 hr 1 min
One of my favorites albums this year is The 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...
Sep 06, 2010•48 min
Here is vol. 2 in the A to Z ambient mix. This one will take you from N thru Z. Enjoy. T R A C K L I S T I N G : -----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 & Chri...
Jul 31, 2010•1 hr
I usually try to have some sort of theme for each mix. But lately my creativity has dried up. 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 &...
Jul 31, 2010•57 min
