The first time I used a track from Altus in a mix was 10 years ago. I've been a fan ever since. Altus is Mike Carss, who also records as Loneward. Between those two musical personas, I've used Mike's music in 10 mixes. https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/music-for-a-mars-landing/ https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/deep-sky-time-music-for-stargazing-2013/ https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/eight-days-in-july-the-journey-of-apollo-11/ https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/almost-home/ https://www.mixcloud...
Mar 06, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 206
Ugh, the world sure could use a time out and some meditation to bring the temperature down a notch. So here's a collection of calming tracks for meditation, reading, a bubble bath or just staring off into space for an hour. Here are links to the albums used in this mix in the order in which they appear: https://auralcanyonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/listening-sky https://jonhopkins.bandcamp.com/album/meditations https://summerrecreationcamp.bandcamp.com/album/liquid-rhythm https://ctatsu.bandcamp.c...
Feb 27, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 205
I am a lucky guy. Lucky, because I get to present a second guest in as many weeks. Lucky, because I was able to discover new artists in this excellent mix. And lucky because I am also lazy and these guest mixes allow me to put some beautiful music out there with the heavy lifting done by someone else. This mix comes to us from J. Gorecki who records as Fragile X, a musician/producer from Glasgow and the founder of the Bricolage record label: - https://bricolageglasgow.bandcamp.com/ Fragile X als...
Feb 20, 2022•58 min•Ep. 204
Friend of the show, Michael McGarrity, offered to create a guest mix and, of course, I jumped at the chance because Michael has been cranking out excellent mixes for several years. You can find his stuff here: https://www.friskyradio.com/show/wander/ https://www.mixcloud.com/michaelmcguk/ Here's what Michael has to say about this mix: "I made this mix to help remember those long summer days and nights which feel so far away in February. It was a particularly rainy Saturday when I put this togeth...
Feb 13, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 203
In April of 2020 I posted "Of Reed and Breath" which is an ambient sax mix. You can find that mix here: http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2020/04/of-reed-and-breath.html https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/of-reed-and-breath/ When I created that one I wasn't sure how it would work. Turns out, ambient sax is a great theme to build a mix on. I've been planning on a follow up for a long time and it's finally here. Since that first mix two years ago I have totally bought into wind instruments in ambie...
Jan 30, 2022•59 min•Ep. 202
A million miles from Earth, the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at it's parking spot at Lagrange Point #2, the perfect place to search the heavens for faint light from the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe. This mix tells the story of the Webb observatory as it seeks to "Unfold the Universe." The telescope, like its mission, is big. When expanded to full size, it can’t fit into the nose cone of any available launch vehicle. One of Webb’s main components, sunshield, is...
Jan 23, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 201
This is a great way to start off 2022. We have an excellent guest mix from Kevin, the man responsible for "Cello Mood Swings" and "Not Seeing a Flower" which you can find here... https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/cello-mood-swings/ http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2021/07/cello-mood-swings.html https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/not-seeing-is-a-flower/ http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2020/07/not-seeing-is-flower.html For this mix Kevin collected a bunch of vocal and choral tracks & I mixed...
Jan 16, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 200
I don't do these year-end jazz mixes every year. Most of the time I'm just too lazy. I don't keep close track of what came out and what I liked. At some point this year I started tossing individual tracks into a playlist and that helped me remember what I enjoyed in 2021. So here's my Jazz 2021 mix. It is by no means a "Best of" mix. It's merely a collection of jazz-ish tracks from albums I liked this year. And of course some of the tunes lean a bit toward ambient. Cheers! T R A C K L I S T : 00...
Jan 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 199
A few things I noticed from my year-end list - no berlin-school music, very little what I would call 'space' music, a fair amount of dusty, loop music like Maps & Diagrams or Tapes & Topographies, several guitar based albums like Dave Depper, Dave Nelson, SUSS, and Devendra Banhart, and lastly, a lot of modern classical/modern composition albums from Mastrokristo & Alapastel to Max Richter and Viktor Orri Árnason and Glåsbird. That collection of favorites is nothing new for me. I've ...
Jan 02, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 198
These year-end lists seem to be getting harder and harder to curate. The sheer number of releases makes it nearly impossible to keep up and listen to all the music. Through Spotify and Bandcamp most of this music is available immediately, which is great, but it can also foster a severe case of FOMO, fear of missing out. Whether it's ambient music or indie rock/pop I am on a constant prowl for new music, sometimes at the disservice of current music which I have not given time to sink in. A list l...
Jan 01, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 197
Between work and Thanksgiving I didn't have time to put together a new mix this week. But then I remembered I had another in the "simply ambient" series waiting in the wings. So here it is - "absolutely ambient." Like the the others in this series there is no overall theme other than a nice collection of excellent ambient music. With so much new music being released every week it's difficult to keep up and difficult to get it all into mixes. This series allows me to get some of that new music ou...
Nov 28, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 196
I kind of overdosed on Native American flute music back in my new age days in the late 80s and 90s. So I don't listen to this style very often. But Paul has pulled me back in with his excellent collection of tracks. It starts off with new music from Sherry Finzer so I'm in automatically. From there Paul uses a variety of artists and styles to carry us through the hour-long mix. Here's what Paul says about this mix: “The Native American flute is one of those instruments that instantly has cultura...
Nov 21, 2021•59 min•Ep. 195
Anyone who regularly follows this podcast and my mixes knows that I am a science fiction dork. So it should come as no surprise that I saw Dune on opening weekend. I loved the film and have been thinking about an alternative soundtrack mix ever since. There's not much to say other than this mix is a collection of tracks that remind me of the film. Most of the tracks are fairly new but a few older ones sneak in there, such as the one from Robert Rich & Lustmord, which goes back to 1995. The o...
Nov 14, 2021•57 min•Ep. 194
I have done several train mixes over the years. They basically come about because I hear a tune and think - Hey, that would be great in a train mix. So it was with this one. I heard the track "A.O.E." by Portico Quartet and I knew immediately that I need to build a mix around it. This mix differs from most of my other train mix(except one) because it's mostly a jazz influenced mix. Berlin-school sequencers have been replaced by a drum kit and synth washes are now horns. I folded in some recordin...
Nov 07, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 193
This is mix #3 in the "simply ambient" series. It started with "simply ambient" then "purely ambient" and now "always ambient." I listen to a ton of new music every month and this series gives me a chance to get some of that new music into mixes without having to wait for an appropriate theme. It's just straightforward ambient tracks, no theme, no big concept no story to tell - just excellent ambient music, always. Music used in the mix: https://vaagner.bandcamp.com/album/when-the-night-ends htt...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 192
I'm getting this mix up & running just in time for Halloween. This one, while it does have a bit of a nighttime feel to it, is a little less creepy than some past Halloween mixes. For this collection I looked for titles that fit the theme of night to day. The mix moves chronologically from sunset to night to moonrise and set to darkness to dreaming and finally to light and dawn. Grab a pumpkin spice beer and...UGH, no don't do that! Grab a normal beer, like a refreshing Hamm's, and sit on th...
Oct 29, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 191
WORLDS COLLIDE! In this mix I combine my love for new indie music with my love for all things quiet. The third installment of the Quiet Indie Songs series is here. All tracks are from 2021 and it features artists like Jose Gonzalez, Billy Bragg, Matt Maltese, Cassandra Jenkins, Big Red Machine, Big Thief and more. Go for a nice walk in the woods while listening to some quiet indie songs. Cheers! T R A C K L I S T : 00:00 Jose Gonzalez - Swing 03:25 Chorusing - Watching the Beams 06:43 Art School...
Oct 24, 2021•57 min•Ep. 190
Eight years ago I did a mix with covers of Eno tunes - UNDER ENO'S COVERS Since then I've collected a few more that I was planning to use for a follow up. I found the most covered Eno album is Music for Airports. So I decided to recreate the album with covers. Hence the title of the mix - Music for Covered airports. The tracks follow the same order as the original album - 1/1, 2/1, 1/2, 2/2. I made the first track with two covers because each was relatively short so I just combined them into one...
Oct 17, 2021•49 min•Ep. 189
This mix started with one album - Goats & Distortions 5 by Dictaphone . It's one of my 2021 favorites. I began a new mix project with one song from that album as the starter, not knowing where it would go but the vibe was off-kilter. Then I heard a new album on Lost Tribe Sound, Departures by mastroKristo , and I knew where the mix would go. This mix features a lot of wind instruments, although I'm not sure exactly what any of them are - clarinet, sax, soprano sax, oboe? A lot of the tracks ...
Oct 03, 2021•59 min•Ep. 188
Autumn seems perfectly suited to ambient music, especially ambient with a tinge of melancholy. I was thinking about doing an fall-themed mix when Paul approached me with his fully curated mix for autumn. Perfect! Here's what Paul says about this mix: “Dedicating this one to my sister, Miriam Walter, professor of nursing at Chico State University in Northern California. Her birthday is today, September 19th. This turned out to be mostly guitar and piano, although I always (and still) intended it ...
Sep 19, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 187
This mix is pretty much what the title says - a collection of quiet/ambient tracks featuring the beautiful sounds of the pedal steel guitar. I did another pedal mix two years and since then it seems to be easier to find practitioners of the ambient steel guitar sound. Only one artist, Chuck Johnson, is repeated from that mix in this one. Here's the first mix: http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2019/09/ambient-twang.html All that's left to say is go relax with some steel guitar & maybe a good ...
Sep 05, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 186
I love guest mixes because they expose me to tracks I might have otherwise missed in the monthly deluge of new releases. This new mix comes to us from Michael Southard(Time Rival) of Triplicate Records. I've included a few Time Rival tracks in mixes over the years so I was excited when Michael agreed to put together a mix of some of the best his label has to offer. Here's a blurb from Michael about this guest mix: Triplicate Records is an artist run independent record label founded in 2018 by Mi...
Aug 29, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 185
I recently stumbled upon a post or tweet that mentioned Moteer, a UK record label active in the 2000s. I was like - oh man, I haven't listened to that stuff in a while, time to give some a spin. It was fun going back into that world of clicks, loops, vinyl records pops, and glitchy ambience. So I decided to make a mix. Moteer released music from 2003 to 2011. It was run by Andrew Johnson and Craig Tattersall, who record as The Remote Viewer. The label specialized in, as Harry Towell, founder of ...
Aug 15, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 184
Last year at this time I did a mix called " simply ambient " which was a nice, straightforward mix of ambient tracks. This mix is a sort of follow up titled "purely ambient." There is no theme, no story being told by the music, no big concepts. Just ambient music, pure and simple. This might be the start of a series of mixes - utterly ambient, perfectly ambient, naturally ambient, totally ambient, etc. This would be allow me to get some of the tons of new music that I listen to every month into ...
Aug 08, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 183
I few weeks ago the good folks over at The Slow Music Movement sent me a couple tracks by Wiki Chaves. After listening I immediately knew I had to construct a mix around the laid back guitar style. A style The Slow Music Movement calls - "Perfect for all your beach lying, garden barbecuing, hammock slouching, sunbathing, holiday taking soundtrack needs." Here's a link to the latest Wiki Chaves release: https://wikichaves.bandcamp.com/ From there I listened to guitar music for a couple of weeks, ...
Aug 01, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 182
"Then he leaves the platform/For the sleeping car that's warm You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter And it comes to you, he never was a stranger" - Leonard Cohen, "The Stranger Song" I have been lucky to have a bunch of excellent guest mixes this year. After this one there are 2 more coming soon. But let's talk about this one first. This is another great collection from the mind of Paul Asbury Seaman. It's appropriate that "Mystical" is in the title as his mixes generally are more ...
Jul 25, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 181
I have been lucky to have had some awesome guest mixes this year. The streak continues with this excellent modern classical mix called "Cello Mood Swings." It's an excellent collection of music that features the cello. Duh! This tracklist comes from loyal listener, Kevin, who was also responsible for last year's Japan themed mix - "Not Seeing is a Flower" Which you can find here - http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2020/07/not-seeing-is-flower.html Kevin collected a bunch of great tracks and I pu...
Jul 18, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 180
The track, "I Will Not Be Sad In This World", is one of the most beautiful recordings ever made. It is hard not to be sad, however, upon hearing the news of the passing of Djivan Gasparyan. I will forever be grateful to him for introducing me to the wonderful sounds of the duduk, an Armenian double reed woodwind instrument made of apricot wood. Despite it's single-octave range, Gasparyan was able to coax a wide range of emotion from the duduk. This mix is a tribute to Djivan's wonderful music. I...
Jul 08, 2021•56 min•Ep. 179
One of my favorite new indie albums of 2021 is An Overview on Phenomenal Nature by Cassandra Jenkins. It's a mostly fairly quiet, folky album. Except for the last cut which is instrumental with a kind of jazzy/ambient vibe. I knew immediately that I wanted to use it in a Sunday morning mix. Then I realized that it had been more than a year since I'd done a Sunday mix. So here it is - Sunday Morning Music Vol. 21 - Dreamland. It sounds just like the Cassandra Jenkins I described above - jazzy/amb...
Jul 04, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 178
Last year we lost Harold Budd. And now, just six months later, we lose another icon in Jon Hassell. It's nearly impossible to overstate his importance in shaping an entirely new sound, what he would call Fourth World music. His music has influenced scores of musicians and listeners. I've included a lot of Hassell's music in mixes over the years. And, considering he just released a fine album last year, I expected to be featuring his music in mixes for many more years. This mix is not an overview...
Jun 30, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 177
