Yes, another train mix. They are just too intriguing and cinematic to pass up. This one come from friend of the blog, Paul Asbury Seaman. Paul has given us some excellent train mixes in the past and this one continues that tradition. This one clocks in at just a bit under 100 minutes! So much great music in one mix.

• https://sijmusic.bandcamp.com/album/from-inkerman-to-sevastopol

• 00:00    SiJ - Inkerman - Sevastopol #1 (From Inkerman To Sevastopol)

About a month ago I presented a guest mix of sleep music from Brian Bieniowski, whom I knew from the heyday of the Hypnos Records forum in the mid 2000s. "That Beautiful Land of Nod" is indeed a beautiful sleep mix. 

Thankfully, back in 2007 Brian created two Land of Nod mixes. So here is volume 2 for your listening and sleeping pleasure.

Here is what Brian said about the Land of Nod mixes back in 2007:

"It wasn't until the early nineties when I discovered real ambient music suited for the purpose of lying down and listening. It felt finally natural to take to my bed after starting the CD player and allowing the soft music to carry my mind forth for a while until sleep took hold. This mix, That Beautiful Land of Nod, is the product of over twelve years of "field research" in ambient sleep music. All of the selections, new and old, on these two discs, are pieces of music I have personally played in the times before and during sleep. Each track is special to me, these soothing zones, as they have not only brought me hours of comforted sleep, but also tantalizing, never-lasting minutes of wild and wonderful imagery in those moments before unconsciousness occurs. Each track maps a route across my consciousness over twelve years of sleep listening. It is my honest hope that this becomes the mix you never fully listen to—if you are at all like me, you'll be asleep by track five or six every time. So, please, draw the shades, relax, pleasant dreams...."

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Jochem Paap - Dx-Snth (Vrs-Mbnt-Pcs 9598 2)

Peter van Cooten runs the excellent Ambientblog website which has great reviews and, of course, wonderful mixes. Anytime Peter reaches out with a mix idea or a a set he'd like to cross-post on both of our platforms, I will always jump at the chance.

As I said on Peter's last guest mix, his sets are different from mine in that they are more intricate. He does not use full tracks, instead opting for excerpts and samples piled on each other, sometimes 2, 3, or 4 tracks play simultaneously, to create a new sound collage.

Here's what Peter says about this mix:

"Apart from its opening sample – ‘It is time to stop seeing. It is time to stop speaking. It is time to listen’, from David Cronenberg’s Crimes Of the Future – this mix has no central theme or story. It’s up to you, the listener to take the time to listen and go with the flow. Let your fantasy tell you the story. And, after you did, I’d love to hear what you heard.

This mix is created using many fragments and samples from longer pieces of music, often presented in multiple layers. Check the original compositions using the tracklist below."

Here's a map of the mix, layer upon layer of the 31 tracks used in the collage.

Check out Peter's work here:

https://www.ambientblog.net/blog/  He also does surround sound mixes, which you can find here: https://www.ambientblog.net/blog/the-surround-mix-versions/

And Peter is on Mixcloud - https://www.mixcloud.com/ambientblog/

It was a little more than ten years ago that I posted my first Sunday Morning Music mix. I had not intended on making it a regular series but the mix did very well on Mixcloud and is partially responsible for starting the explosion of followers the Low Light Mixes feed got in the following years. So I've been creating roughly two per years for 10 years. Yikes! It's kind of crazy to think about how long I've been making these mixes.

This one follows the same formula - some ambient cuts, some jazzy tracks, a few vocal tunes, all resulting in a mellow vibe perfect for sipping coffee on a Sunday morning.

Here are links to all the music used in this mix in the order in which they appear:

• https://timerival.bandcamp.com/album/fell

• 00:00    Time Rival - Breakfast with Birdsong (Fell 2020)

Set the wayback machine to 2007.

I started creating ambient mixes back in the mid-2000s. Those were the days before social media had taken over our lives, before Bandcamp was such a great resource for ambient music.  Back then I spent a lot of time on the Hypnos Records forum. There, a bunch of like-mined music nerds shared comments about new recordings, gear, movies, books, tv, music trends, etc. 

We also shared mixes. That was one of the first places I tried to promote my mixes online. Back in 2007 fellow forum member, Brian Bieniowski, created a couple mixes under the Asphalt Eden moniker. These mixes, The Beautiful Land of Nod 1 & 2, are some of my all-time favorites and I've used them as sleep soundtracks for years.

With that as background, a few weeks ago a loyal listener reached out with this request - "Could you post some of the Asphalt Eden super-classics like The Beautiful Land of Nod I and II to your Mixcloud as guest mixes/classics in the field/inspirations to your mixes please? I think your fans would be overjoyed by this, and it would be sheer cultural maintenance."

I contacted Brian and he was kind enough to give the thumbs up to posting these classic mixes. He did not have the original tracklists but somehow was able to reconstruct them by listening to each set. Impressive! Thanks Brian for the mixes and for your memory. Here's a link to his website - https://www.handsometechnologies.com/

So kickback and remember a time before credit default swaps almost cratered the economy, before a reality show host became president, before a coronavirus swept around the globe, before....ugh...I'll stop now. Just sit back and drift away to The Beautiful Land of Nod 1.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• Robert Rich -Seascape (Trances/Drones)

I made the first Guitarissimo mix 5 years ago. I followed it up a year or so later. But then for some reason it took me 4 years to get to volume 3.

This version is similar to the others the vibe is a bit spaghetti western and dusty, moody, twangy with a little Latin feel. But of course much of it has an ambient vibe.

One of my favorite discoveries while making this mix was Hermanos Gutiérrez. As the name implies the band is brothers - Alejandro and Estevan Gutiérrez. They create beautiful Latin landscapes with their guitars. Check out their stuff here - https://hermanosgutierrez.bandcamp.com/

Here are links to the two previous Guitarissimo mixes:

• https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/guitarissimo/

Links to the albums used in this mix in order of appearance:

• https://panamerican.bandcamp.com/album/a-son

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Pan American - Sleepwalk Guitars (A Son 2019)

I've been a fan of the Deutsche Grammophon label for a long time, ever since I got this Steve Reich box set back in the early 80s in college.

I've collected quite a few DG recordings over the years. Over the last 5 years or so I've noticed them branching out and releasing music by a wider variety of artists and music that isn't strictly classical. From Moby to Christian Löffler to Olafur Arnalds to Brian Eno to Clark, the music is surprising for DG but also seems to fit well. After a lot of listening to Parallels by Christian Löffler, I decided to do a mix of recent DG favs. I hope you enjoy it.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Peter Gregson - Opening (Blackbird 2020)

I am always pleased to present a new mix from Paul Asbury Seaman and this one is no exception. It's a great collection of sequencer tracks that hits the ideal vibe. Coming on the heels of my Stranger Synths mix, I was still in a electronic, sequencer mood and this mix kept me in that zone perfectly.

Here's what Paul says about this mix:

“For a lot of people, the term ‘electronic music’ still brings to mind the chaotic synthesizer experiments of its early years, highly abstract and moody ‘space music,’ or the techno dance music that grew out of a merger of ‘70s disco with ‘80s pop. Or the characteristically propulsive textures associated with em godfathers Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, where a simple sequence of repeating notes provided both rhythm and melody. But some artists (including the aforementioned two) are able to infuse their beeping machines with warm emotions and heartfelt melodies, as presented here—a softer side of the electronic universe. If you like a steady, waterwheel flow and bell-like tones, this one’s for you.”

Paul mentions Klaus Schulze which is appropriate because we timed this mix to be posted just days after the release of the final Klaus Schulze album. I grabbed the last track from that album and made it the final track in this mix as one last tribute to Klaus.

Links to the albums used in this mix in the order in which they appear:

• https://andypickford1.bandcamp.com/album/radiosilence-objective-linearity-general-release-version

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Andy Pickford - Temple of the Wonklord (RadioSilence: Objective Linearity 2022)

For a while now I've been planning on a drum/percussion mix similar to A Distant Pulse - https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/a-distant-pulse/  and A Rhythmic Passage - https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/a-rhythmic-passage/ 

In my search for tracks I came across a track by Vidna Obmana called "The Transcending Quest." It made me nostalgic for the heyday of tribal ambient in the 1990s with artists like Vidna Obana, Steve Roach, O Yuki Conjugate and Thom Brennan. So I decided to make this whole mix a trip back to the 90s for some hang drum and rain stick sounds.

The first thing you may notice is that not all the tunes are from the 1990s. Two are from 2001 and one is from 1989. I say close enough. 

The other thing you may hear as you listen is that the tracks all definitely sound very similar. That was purposeful. I wanted the whole set to have a trance-like feel to it. 

Sitting right in the middle of all this is one of my favorite ambient tracks of all time - "The Path Not Taken" by Thom Brennan from 1995. When I looked for a Bandcamp link I found he had an entire album by that name and it's only $4. An edited version of part is what was released in 1995 and the whole album remained unreleased until 2019. You can find it here... https://thombrennan.bandcamp.com/album/the-path-not-taken

Links to all the albums used in this mix in the order in which they appear:

• https://cosmicguitartronics.bandcamp.com/album/seed

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Ma Ja Le & James Johnson - Yaquona(Part 2) (Seed 2001)

It's been three years since the last season of Netflix's Stranger Things. Now with the 4th season upon us it must be time for a new mix - Stranger Synths 2022. Similar to previous version of Stranger Synths, this takes the retro vibe of the show's soundtrack and collects tracks that sound like they would fit perfectly in the TV series.

I wasn't planning on doing a mix this time around until I stumbled on the opening track Cybernaut by Jonny Fallout. The track can be found on a compilation from Triplicate Records called "Protozoa." As soon as I heard the track I was hit with a great Stranger Things vibe so I knew I had to gather more tracks and put together another mix. 

I ended up going back to Triplicate Records three more times for this mix, using tracks from Hverheij, BVSMV, and Willebrant. Check the links below for these artists' album and bandcamp pages.

Here are links to the albums used in this mix in the order in which they appear:

• https://triplicaterecords.bandcamp.com/album/protozoa

• https://jonnyfallout.bandcamp.com/

Well, I guess I should go start season 4. Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Jonny Fallout - Cybernaut (Protozoa 2021)