After six months of travel from Earth, NASA's InSight spacecraft is on a precise trajectory to land on Mars. If all goes well it should be touching down on the surface of the red planet about 6 hours after this mix is initially posted.

The tracks for this mix have all been selected to tell the story of InSight and its journey to Mars. The track titles take us chronologically from Farewell, O Earth to Between Two Worlds to Arrival to Descent to Landing to Sunrise on Mars.

Godspeed InSight!

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Murcof & Vanessa Wagner - Farewell, O World, O Earth

I work in TV news so as you can imagine with the midterm elections, wildfires, mass shootings, presidential tweets, etc., things can get pretty crazy. Sometimes you need to step back and take a breath. That's where this new mix comes in.

This collection is called "Breathe Deep" because all the tunes have a pace to them that sort of mimics breathing. In and out, back and forth, ebb and flow. It's similar to three other mixes I've done that follow the same path. This works very well as a sleep mix because it follows the slow breathing of a sleepy human(and dog).

Breathe deeeeeep.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Helios - Mulier

I have collaborated with Paul Asbury Seaman and several mixes and I look forward each and every one. Paul's mixes tend to be more ethereal, spiritual than mine and that's why I enjoy them so much. they take me on journeys I would go on otherwise.

They way Paul and I work on these mixes is he sends me his well thought out tracklist in order. Then I just mix them together so they flow well. Essentially, Paul does all the heavy lifting.

So here is our latest collab - Shimmering Land. Paul had this to say about it:

"Meg Bowles is one of the few (prominent) female artists working in the ambient/electronic genre. She has only released five albums, including Evensong earlier this year, seven years after her last one, so there’s cause for celebration. All her albums are top-notch ethereal/soothing journeys similar to the tracks by other artists featured here. This mix includes a beautiful piece by Deborah Martin from her recent compilation."

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Meg Bowles - Into the Gloaming (The Shimmering Land 2013)

I stumbled upon the song "Was The Singing Bellowing" by Eli Keszler while listening to Spotify at work and I immediately knew I wanted to make a Halloween mix. The tune creates this great odd feeling without being too dark.

As I have stated here before, I'm not a fan of dark ambient. Especially the dissonant, droney kind of dark ambient. So when I've made Halloween/dark mixes before they have tended to be more off kilter than straight up dark. This mix leans more towards acoustic arrangements than electronic. It also leans heavily on new music with all but 3 or 4 songs having been released in 2018.

Grab a bowl of candy, a Dead Guy Ale and sit on the front porch with this mix blaring from the speakers as you wait for the trick-or-treaters to show up.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Eli Keszler - Was The Singing Bellowing

My hometown baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers, had a fantastic finish to close the regular season. They captured the central division title and are now in the playoffs. I am loving every minute of it but it's also stressful as heck! I am definitely too old for this kind of roller coaster ride.

I went to the first two games of the playoffs and between standing for half the game, clapping on every pitch, screaming my head off and the adrenaline rush of close games, I am exhausted! I don't know if I'll last the whole post-season.

So I figured I needed a little "mental medication" and came up with this mix. It's even more soothing than my normal ambient mix. This is music for meditation. Music for contemplation. Music for concentrating...on destroying the Dodgers. Oops! See that's exactly why I need this mix. Haha! This mix actually is a meditative type of mix that you could almost play in a spa. If that spa was way cooler than a normal spa and it played good music.

Cheers and Go Brewers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Sonmi451 - Angel

• 00:00    Andrew Sherwell - And the Smoke of the Incense(2018)

T R AC K L I S T :

• 00:00    Damien Jurado - Over Rainbows & Rainier

Earlier this year I was asked by the folks at Lifted Icons to do a guest mix. It was a unique mix because I did two 20 minute sets that were then incorporated into a larger nearly 2-hour mix.

The parameters for my mixes were as follows:

1. A lonely, melancholic wander through the void between stars

2. A triumphant end for our struggle to the stars

You can find the 2-hour mix at Lifted Icons here... https://www.mixcloud.com/LiftedIcons/cartographer/

I liked how everything turned out. It was especially fun to cut the 2nd mix as it had a few louder tunes that I normally might not use. I was too lazy to put together a totally new mix so I decided to put my two parts of the Lifted Icons mix into one new mix. 

After I put them together I started tinkering. I added a few tunes to make it longer. And then I changed a lot of the first part but kept the same "drifting in the void" feel. The transition from melancholic wander to triumphant return starts at the 22:28 mark with the Underworld tune. The title for the mix comes from a track I used by the same name from Tony Anderson. It fit perfectly with the journey from part one to part two.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Lunar Testing Lab - Space Traffic Control(& added Nasa quindar Tones)

Ambient dub is one of my favorite sub-genres. I've done several "dubby & dreamy" mixes over the years. Such as:

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/09/dubby-rainy.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2016/05/dubscapes-seacapes.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2013/01/dubscapes-dreamscapes.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/02/dubby-noisy.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2013/08/dub-transmissions.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2010/12/subatomic-dubscapes.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2008/12/motion-for-relief.html

There could be a couple more mixes floating out there but those are the ones that I could recall.

This new mix follows in that same dubby/dreamy mode that I love. Also I have found that these ambient dub mixes work well as stargazing companions. So the timing for this one is good as the Perseid meteor shower is at it's peak tonight & tomorrow night.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Halftribe - Balm

Welcome to another great collaboration with my cosmic friend, Paul Asbury Seaman. The term "collaboration" gives me too much credit because Paul does the heavy lifting of finding the tunes and deciding on a sequence. I just mix them together.

This is another mix with a train-like propulsive feel but this one also has more space travel vibe. I like this mix more and more with each listen.  Here's what Paul has to say about it:

Like with Dave, my mixes often build on a single track (or title) I like, in this case a piece of artwork by Jon Lomberg, going back several decades, that was used to illustrate one of the chapters of Carl Sagan’s first book, THE COSMIC CONNECTION: “The Night Freight to the Stars.” 

This is an interstellar tribal/trance mix, with the emphasis not on nostalgia but a forward-looking magical realism. The ASC piece reflects an adrenaline-infused take-off (after Jon Serrie sets the space-travel motif and Adam Fielding sets the train motif). But then things settle down for the long haul between stars…

• 00:00    Jonn Serrie - The Sentinel(The Sentinel)