Arriving at part five of a 9+ hour ambient mix by Roel Funcken, I am exactly with it as intended. This is a continuous ambient journey, serving as a bridge between fragmented times, uniting days and months into a single voyage. For a while, I’ve had an image in my mind as if we all move in a circle, approaching seasons in their respective physical locations (winter is on top), traversing time as we rotate on the perimeter. I wonder where it’s from? Perhaps they showed me that in elementary school, and it stuck. Do you, as well, have that peculiar perception? But what if we stand still and time moves through us like a tape? An endless river of events arrives from the unknown into the present and finally recedes into the past. And we are nothing but observers… You can find the previous four parts right here. I’ll see you on the other side!

We’re almost halfway through the series, and today, I’m publishing the fourth instalment of this 6-part mix by Roel Funcken. How are you getting on with it? Don’t forget that I’ll share the full, uninterrupted, 9+ hour continuous journey once this podcast series is completed. I can tell you that I’ve personally listened more than a couple of times to each entry, noticing the tiny nuances that are the handiwork of Funcken, who is not only the selector but also the navigator of this trip but is also a bit of a producer behind the transitions – not only using volume to fade in and out but also a few time-based effects here and there (delay, reverb, etc.) to create seamless transitions between each piece. It’s not something you usually notice in mixes, but I can tell you that Funcken has consistently been doing that in his. If you’re new to this series, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

September’s upon us, and just as predicted, this third part of the 9+ hour Gorreliann Plasebant mix by Roel Funcken serves as a type of bond, creating continuation in a somewhat fragmented turn of events. As if on cue, the temperature dropped, and the weather has changed, and the sunshine and warmth are somewhere in the memory, recalled through some words and, of course, through this music. There are lots of great pieces on here as well, painting the Autumn sky with the colours of sound, and as usual with these travels, I should let all these tracks do the talking instead. Once again, the azure gorgeous sphere is courtesy of the original artwork created by Funcking with acrylic paint. And yes, once I finish the series, I will share the mix in its entirety. Enjoy!

It is Tuesday morning, and perhaps you’re on your way to work. Or maybe you’re already in front of the computer reading through those emails that can surely ruin your day. Or perhaps you’re just waking up to all the possibilities this day may come to offer. Being open to the “good” and the “bad” without colouring these with your expectations and simply watching things unfold — the way a flower would without judgment. To help you onboarding for your day (even if you’re not listening to this on another Tuesday morning), I’ve got a second part of Roel Funcken‘s Gorreliann Plasebant mix, which I am publishing in six parts over the upcoming weeks, as we transition into another season. Once again, I want to point your eye to the beautiful original artwork created by Funcken himself using acrylic paint and point your ear to his skill at seamlessly transitioning between the selected pieces, taking us on a gorgeous journey through another Tuesday morning. Enjoy!

Summer is almost over. I just took some time to travel a bit again, and as usual, when I return, it’s always difficult to get back into the swing of things. Thankfully, I have an easy task ahead of me today because Roel Funcken has done all the work for me. If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed that today I’m only publishing the first section of a 6-part (9+ hours!) Gorreliann Plasebant mix, which I will link to in its entirety at the end of this series, in which Roel traverses some of his favourite ambient and contemporary classical pieces of the day. I love every minute of it and look forward to revealing each part every week, seamlessly taking us from the end of summer into the beginning of fall. Let’s hope that I can keep this going through September! But for now, enough words! Enjoy the music! And don’t forget to check out Funcken’s latest output as part of Funckarma and Legiac, which you can find on his Bandcamp. Oh, and all artwork is taken from Roel’s original acrylic paintings!

I think I met Joseph sometime in 2008 when he was running his Solipsistic Nation podcast. We shared the same taste in electronic music, and in 2010 I prepared a mix called “DSM-IV-TR“. This seems to be a long time ago now, but Joseph and I still keep in touch. So when he asked me to follow up with another instalment, I gladly pulled out my latest favourite pieces to prepare this mix. These days his show is called Soundwave, where he continues to showcase some of the best artists on the scene, including many of my favourites like zakè, Billow Observatory, and Mike Cadoo, as well as co-conspirators in writing, like Peter van Cooten of Ambientblog, and many other eclectic artists, who are new to my ears and are always a pleasure to discover! My original mix premiered as episode #163 in July of this year, and today I am happily republishing it here for syndication. I think this music needs more ears, and I hope you enjoy the journey!

In this mix, I focused on exploring the very edges of the sonic landscape, where beauty and destruction lie on opposite sides of the dynamic spectrum. Between them, one can hear the transmutation between organic and synthetic, fragile and brutal, beauty and fright. I really love the distorted build-ups originating in the gentle and soothing melodies, climaxing to their concerted peaks and then collapsing into beauty once again. It’s in this contrast that we find ourselves forever bouncing between the darkness and the light, only to accept that there is no middle ground and that this journey.

Fields We Found is the moniker of an artist and the newly-launched quiet details label founder, bathing our ears with ambient bliss. In the last few years, we were gifted with deep-evolving soundscapes appearing on Ambientologist, Seil Records, and Handstiched Recordings, with the most recent album, Paths, “… exploring the routes we all choose and where they take us” on Facture. Late in 2022, Alex also put out music on the beloved Home Normal, run with tremendous devotion by the one and only Ian Hawgood. Today’s mix on Headphone Commute Podcast is essentially a love letter to our mutually adored ambient imprint, showcasing a lot of the beautiful music appearing on the label. Please support the label, check out the full tracklisting and more words from Alex on the mix directly on the site: https://hcdi.gs/trees

Sofia Nystrand is a Stockholm-based composer with an anticipated new album M​å​nens Hav, due out on June 2nd, 2023, via the German LEITER imprint. This follow-up to her 2019 record Hav, is deeply influenced by her childhood experiences growing up in the Swedish archipelago of Roslagen. With her music, she explores the duality of beauty and brutality in nature, “awe and fear, magic and sorcery,” and how it shapes our emotions and creative expressions. For this Headphone Commute Mix, Sofia compiles a selection of pieces that she listened to while composing her album. Here, we can find all of our favourites, from Grouper to Nils Frahm, from Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres to Tim Linghaus and his collaboration with Nystrand as Vargkvint. Sprinkle in a bit of This Mortal Coil, and you will get a sense of the influencing themes that permeated the music on her upcoming release, which in Swedish means “Oceans of the Moon”.

I am always happy to bring new sounds to your ears [and mine!], and today I’ve got a mix showcasing some special selections from the upcoming boutique music festival named Q3Ambientfest, which will take place this year in June. Creating a perfect balance between some established and emerging artists of various genres and diverse origins, this event showcases a wide range and reach of the music scene. The festival [and this mix] is curated by Brueder Selke, East Berlin-born, Potsdam-based, multi-instrumental composers Sebastian and Daniel Selke, who are also known under their pseudonym CEEYS. “Each year, Brueder Selke invite like-minded friends and renowned artists to meet on a common, physical stage, and, with performances that range between academic avant-garde and accessible pop, develop a kind of cinematic music that holds a mirror up to and makes audible the eclectic architecture of the world-famous Filmstadt Potsdam, with its neoclassical palaces and socialist brutalism.” For this hour-long showcase, they have selected many pieces traversing the roster, including music by Jakob Lindhagen, Vargkvint, Mabe Fratti, Julia Reidy, Yair Elazar Glotman, their very own Brueder Selke project, and many more.

You can find more details on the festival here : www.bruederselke.com/happenings/kuration

I've got an exceptional podcast for you today, folks. It's not a mix but rather a continuous, single, long-playing track composed by Fields We Found. I'm sharing this fantastic music as an opening to an introduction to a brand new label, quiet details, which I will be profiling this week. Founded this year by the artist behind this piece, the imprint focuses on each artist's interpretation of the phrase after which the label is named. Spanning multiple genres, the upcoming releases explore this idea in each artist's unique way, with the catalogue and upcoming schedule including names such as the humble bee, Fields Line Cartographer, Luke Sanger, bvdub, zakè, and many others [with nearly two years of releases planned already!], whom I'm sure we'll find on these pages. Each release will be accompanied by handmade artwork, with the music and each artist's intuition as a guide to the palette and structure, available as a physical item with bespoke packaging and individual prints. It's a wonderful series to follow from the very beginning, and I am honoured to be a part of this introduction to you. I'll be back with more words on the label later this week, but for now, please enjoy this beautiful piece titled "chroma".

Make sure to visit quietdetails.bandcamp.com for more!