"Another smorgasbord of what the electronic music scene has to offer these days and another invitation for space travelling! It's an extra long mix given my incapacity to choose from the wide offer of sublime tracks and albums that were released in 2025.

The diversity in styles within this music category is remarkable; synth pop, retro, contemporary and progressive Berlin School, cosmic sound tapestries, contemplative/meditative/emotional (drone) ambient and a lengthy deep house track.

Special mention for two female electronic music artists Andrea Cichecki and Lisa Bella Donna. Unfortunately, women are rare in this line of music, but these ladies more than deserve their place in this mix with thrilling evocative compositions. Check it out & enjoy your trip!"

Happy New Year to everyone and here's to 2026 being another fantastic year of music.

Cheers!

Not much to say in this post other than here is part two of my favorite ambient albums of 2025. I'll also repost the full list here with links.

Alexander Knaifel - Chapter Eight

Almost An Island - Almost An Island

Andrew Heath - Signals and Codes

Anthéne & Simon McCorry - Wellspring

Bill Brennan and Andy McNeill - Dreaming In Gamelan

Byron Metcalf - Spiral Exchange

Clarice Jensen - In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness

Dictaphone - Unstable

Emily A. Sprague - Cloud Time

Erik M - Soft Wish

Florian TM Zeisig - A New Life

Lab's Cloud and Flavio Salvaje - Kalima

Loneward - Musings of a Painted Sky

M. Sage - Tender / Wading

Martin Stürtzer - Nexus-6

offthesky - form.radio

offthesky - Nocturnas

Peter Gregson - Peter Gregson

Rod Modell - Northern Michigan Snowstorms

Seabuckthorn - A Path Within A Path

Six Missing - Without Mind

Steve Roach - The Reverent Sky

Taylor Deupree & Zimoun - Wind Dynamic Organ, Deviations

Xu - Murmurs of the Machine

Yorkshire Modular Society + Peter Digby Lee - Beneath the Hanging Sky

zakè - Silentium

When end-of-the-year list season began I wasn't sure if I was going to do a favorite ambient albums list. I wasn't as locked into ambient as much this year as in the past. I spent most of my listening time in indie, jazz, and berlin-school. I had several ambient albums that would for sure make my list so I started with those and the next thing I knew - I had a list of 26 albums that are my 2025 favorites.

Here are my favorite ambient albums of 2025, in alphabetical order:

I made two mixes so it will be a little easier to digest. This post is for part one. I hope you enjoy this look back at 2025.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

This is a mix I originally created back in December of 2006, during my first year of posting mixes online. This one never made its way to Mixcloud so I figured, with all the cold and snow I'm getting in my neck of the woods, now would be a good time to resurrect this set. The original post here on the blog has a bad link to the mp3 so I wanted to post it her as well.

It's interesting to see the artists that I was listening to at the time. Such as Freescha, Svalastog, Yellow 6, Klimek, and the track by Clint Mansell from the soundtrack to The Fountain, which I was absolutely obsessed with for a few years.

Every tune has one of these words...snow, winter, cold, frozen, ice, or freezing, in the title. Btw, the pic is my mom, taken in the mid 1970s. :-) 

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

00:00 Scott Solter - The Great Cold

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2024/10/a-moon-full-of-stars-and-astral-cars-by.html

https://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2025/01/we-did-it-again-by-andy-mcneillmaple.html

Andy has a new album out, under his own name, that is a little different from his other recordings. That new album is the inspiration for this new mix which is really something special. I'll let Andy tell you about it:

Between Erwin Broers & Paul Asbury Seaman I have been exposed to a ton of excellent berlin-school music over the last couple years. Erwin continues his great string of mixes with this new one featuring the music of Wolfram Spyra. I was totally unfamiliar with this music before hearing this mix and now I'm thankful for the introduction.

Here's what Erwin says about this mix:

"In the mid-1990s, when interest for 'Kosmische Musik' (German)/'Cosmic Music' (English) regained, some Electronic Music artists chose to dig deeper into that first highly creative era, hence starting the 'Retro Berlin School' subgenre. Other artists merely borrowed certain elements (multi-facetted sequencing, layered soundscapes, space fx, Mellotron choirs,...) and then added their own spices to the sauce. 

One of the artists that managed to create his own style of contemporary "Berlin School Electronic Music" is the German Fine Arts student (then), and musician, inventor and sound designer (now, dixit his own website) Wolfram Spyra (Kassel, 1964), aka "Der Spyra" or simply "Spyra". His style is somewhere between floating, rhythmic, meditative, downtempo and groovy, yes almost danceable. A very interesting blend of old skool and modern electronic ingredients!

This mix is a chronological overview of 20 years of releases from 1997 till 2018."

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

This is a perfect mix for floating in a floatation tank, drifting off to sleep, or viewing the northern lights(which we've had several nights of this year). All the music is from this year, much of it from the last few months. There's not much else to say other than kick your feet up, relax and float away.

LINKS TO ALL THE MUSIC USED IN THIS MIX:

https://altusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/musings-of-a-painted-sky

https://whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/album/partial-holograms

https://rohsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/gray

https://brianweza.bandcamp.com/album/fizzles-2

https://purl.bandcamp.com/album/a-quiet-awakening-ii

https://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/water-planets

https://brannanlane.bandcamp.com/album/under-the-moonlight-collaborations-vol-1

https://theliftedindex.bandcamp.com/album/agonist

https://laaps.bandcamp.com/album/nocturnas

https://buriedmarie.bandcamp.com/album/the-ghost-you-will-be

https://laaps.bandcamp.com/album/anti-atlas

https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/album/a-new-life

Cheers!

My love for tribal ambient music, of course, starts with Steve Roach. Going back to Dreamtime Return, Desert Solitaire, Western Spaces, Origins, Strata, On This Planet, and The Dream Circle, just to name a few. I go through phases where I may tire of the style but I always come back to it, usually when a new record reminds me of how much I love the genre.

In this case that new album is "A Path Within A Path" by Seabuckthorn. I always enjoy Seabuckthorn music so I dove into the new album and discovered a few tracks with an excellent, organic percussion sound that I love. The entire album is great. Once I latched onto those rhythmic tracks I knew I had to compile a few more for a new tribal ambient mix.

Surprisingly there are no Steve Roach tracks in the mix. Although there's a great track from one of his frequent collaborators, Byron Metcalf, from his lates album - Spiral Exchange. I've created several tribal mixes over the years and I hope you enjoy this and the others as much as I do.

LINKS TO ALL THE MUSIC USED IN THIS MIX:

https://seabuckthorn.bandcamp.com/album/a-path-within-a-path

https://byronmetcalf.bandcamp.com/album/spiral-exchange

https://rainforestspiritualenslavement.bandcamp.com/album/killer-whale-atmospheres

https://marcoshuttle.bandcamp.com/album/cobalt-desert-oasis

https://hubertdupont.bandcamp.com/album/trio-kosmos-3

https://laurencepike.bandcamp.com/album/the-undreamt-of-centre

https://frore-shanemorris.bandcamp.com/album/ochre

https://orenambarchi.bandcamp.com/album/kind-regards

https://craigleon.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-interplanetary-folk-music-vol-2-the-canon

https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/theme

https://jfoersternkramer.bandcamp.com/album/habitat

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

The guest mix hit parade continues! Right on the heels of his last train mix Paul gives another train-themed set. This is one more in line with many of Paul's other train mixes in that it's main genre is berlin-school. I have been on a berlin-school bender all year so I am excited for this one.

Here's what Paul says about the mix:

"You’re sitting on a grassy slope above the cottage, looking out across the landscape below. It’s night and soft dots of light here and there indicate other houses, groups of houses, a road. In the distance you can see the black edge of a ruler, marking the gap between carriages and a bright bar of light moving left in front of it. Like happens in dreams, you are watching the scene and then you are in it, your seat tipped back, not quite asleep, you’re looking out the window. It’s a modern train. Gone is the classic click-click, click-click, but you can still feel the subtle rocking back and forth as the train hurtles silently forward. Under the stars. The cacophony of a station stop, made eerie in the wee hours of the morning. Or memory stirring up a previous adventure then returning you to your current tranquility."

Thanks, Paul, for another excellent entry in your continuing train series.

LINKS TO ALL THE MUSIC USED IN THIS MIX:

Cheers!

 T R A C K L I S T :

Yorgos Dousos is a multi-instrumentalist and composer located in Athens. He plays flute and clarinet to combine Greek music tradition, European jazz, and ambient electronic into an inspired musical experience. I got to hear an advance copy of his latest album - LUPUS, Love Under Pain, Upon Suffering - I knew immediately that I had to reach out to Yorgos about a guest mix. And here it is!

Here's what Yorgos has to say about this set:

“Late Night” is a small map of where my head has been living while finishing my new record. It’s the hour when things get quieter, when the room feels bigger than it is and every sound has more weight. I wanted this mix to sit in that space where breath, memory, and repetition start to blur.

It opens with my own pieces (“Marisha” and “Breath” from "LUPUS, Love Under Pain, Upon Suffering") because that’s the emotional ground I’m working from lately. All of the tracks orbit the same questions I’m dealing with on the album: what it means for sound to feel physical and intimate but also distant and ghosted; how much you can say emotionally with or without melody; and where the human breath sits inside electronics and processing.

Thanks, Yorgos, for this excellent mix!

LINKS TO ALL THE MUSIC USED IN THIS MIX:

https://yorgosdousos.bandcamp.com/album/lupus-love-under-pain-upon-suffering

https://johnalsobennett.bandcamp.com/album/ston-elai-na

https://mastrokristo.bandcamp.com/album/passage

https://kalimalone.bandcamp.com/album/the-sacrificial-code-2019-edition

https://colinstetson.bandcamp.com/album/all-this-i-do-for-glory

https://christinavantzou.bandcamp.com/album/no-1

https://haniarani.bandcamp.com/album/on-giacometti

https://aphextwin.bandcamp.com/album/i-care-because-you-do

https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/shards

https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/album/original-spirit

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :