Being a science fiction & electronic music geek, it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of the soundtrack for the original Blade Runner film.  When I heard that they'd tabbed Johann Johannsson to do the score for the 2049 film I was very excited.  But then he was pulled from the project & replaced with Hans Zimmer.  While I've actually liked a few of Zimmer's recent scores, I wasn't overly impressed with his music for 2049.  It wasn't that I disliked it.  I think I was just disappointed that it wasn't Johannsson.

My son, however, liked the soundtrack much more than I did.  So much in fact that he went home after seeing the film, created his own track in the 2049 style and sent it to me the next day.  I was impressed with the track and immediately made plans for a Blade Runner mix.

The music here is a collection of tunes that sounds like it fit perfectly in Blade Runner 2049.  In searching for music I was happy to have rediscovered Xerrox, Vol. 2 by Alva Noto, such a great album.  I was also excited to find music and artists I'd not heard before like Ital Tek, Floating Machine & Island People.

Here's a link to my son's track which appears in the mix as track #3 - "Blade Running" by just a human.

https://soundcloud.com/axxmusic/blade-running-master/s-recEt 

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Alva Noto - Xerrox Moonphaser 2

This mix was inspired by a couple of new releases from Benoit Pioulard.  Both recordings are hazy, dusty, blurry ambient beauty. 

Benoit Pioulard on Bandcamp

The rest of this mix all fits in with that dusty, softly granular feel.  It's dreamy and hazy without being too annoyingly noisey.

Cheers! 

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Huerco S. - A Sea of Love

For this Sunday Morning Music installment I used almost all brand new music.  16 of the 19 tracks are from 2017 & most of those are from the last two months.  Two cuts are from 2016.  

One outlier is from all the way back in 1999.  That track is October Sky by Mark Isham.  As I was putting the mix together I came up with the title of vol. 15 - October Sky(cuz it's October) and thought that it sounded familiar.  I searched my hard drive and sure enough I found October Sky is a soundtrack by Mark Isham from 1999.  BTW, it's an excellent movie.  So I had to include that one old track in with all the new ones.

Also sorry for this not being uploaded on a Sunday morning.  Brunch with the kids took priority, then football, the nap.  So here it is on Sunday evening.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00   Joseph Shabason - Tite Cycle(Aytche 2017)

Who remembers what a big thing tribal ambient was for awhile back in the 90s?  The first time I heard "Fearless" from the album Strata by Steve Roach & Robert Rich I was hooked.  There were many Roach albums from that time period that drew on the tribal ambient sound - World's Edge, On This Planet, Soma, Australia: Sound of the Earth, Forgotten Gods, Cavern of Sirens, Earth Island, Well of Souls, The Serpent's Lair,   - oh heck there's too many to keep track of!

I loved that sound.  But as so often happens I grew tired of it.  Part of that was just me overdosing on that style and part of it was as the style proliferated we ended up with crappy new age versions of tribal ambient.  So I stayed away for a long time while still revisiting the classic Roach recordings occasionally.  

Earlier this year I discovered the music of Al Gromer Khan, thanks to Paul Asbury Seaman.  I was listening to a few cuts from Lexus and I enjoyed the tribal sound and realized that I hadn't listened that style very much lately.  But those tracks got me going and the next thing you know, I'm collecting tacks for a mix.

The tracks in this mix are a good sampling of new cuts, older cuts from the tribal heyday and a few really old cuts from the early 80s.  The tracks are also a mix instrumentation from drum sounds to gamelan to marimba.  I love how this turned out and hope you do too.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Al Gromer Khan - Air Wave(Lexus 2002)

As I said a few posts back, I am a huge space science dork.  My top 5 favorite NASA probes are:

1. Voyager

2. Cassini

3. Viking

4. Galileo

5. Spirit & Opportunity

Number two on that list disintegrated in the atmosphere of Saturn today.  Cassini was in orbit around Saturn for 7 years and made some of the most fantastic encounters of any planetary mission.  The most amazing discovery concerns a little moon called Enceladus.  Through Cassini, scientists have determined that Enceladus has a global subsurface saltwater ocean that might host hydrothermal vents.  It's probably our best bet for finding life in our solar system.

But Cassini was running out of fuel and rather than risk crashing into a moon and contaminating it, the folks at NASA decided to plunge the spacecraft into Saturn.  Cassini will dive into the planet's atmosphere, sending science data for as long as its small thrusters can keep the spacecraft's antenna pointed at Earth. Soon after, Cassini will burn up and disintegrate like a meteor.

This mix is a Requiem for Cassini.  Rather than an electronic, space music feel I went with all neo-classical and soundtrack cuts. The track titles tell the story.

Thanks to NASA and everyone on the Cassini team.

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    David Sylvian - Preparations for a Journey

Here is another fantastic mix curated by Paul Asbury Seaman. His earlier mixes are "Floating Through Moonlight" and "The Memory of Trains."

I'm listening to it as I type this and it's another wonderful collection. Here's what Paul has to say about it:

“I’m no fan of winter, but I love the visual patterns created by ice. And I’ve always loved the bell-like sounds sometimes used in electronic/ambient music and featured prominently in the works of Rudy Adrian. The idea for this mix started with a rather dark compilation by Hypnos Records called Message from a Subatomic World, from which I got the title track here, and ended with my recent (and joyous) discovery of a stunning artist working with gamelan bells, Gordon Pigeon, which opens this set. The full piece from his album Acoustic Fireflies is more than 30 minutes long.”

Thanks Paul!

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00 Gordon Pigeon - Lamasaerie vesperale(Lucioles acoustiques 2016)

With all the space themed mixes I've done over the years, there was no way I was going to miss making one for this solar eclipse.  So here it is - In The Shadow Of The Moon.

This mix is similar to the Juno mix in that it moves chronologically from sun to total eclipse back to sun.  The titles of the tracks describe the journey.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Arp - The Rising Sun

This mix is a sort of follow up to the train mix of a couple of months ago.  I had a song or two that I hadn't used and then I stumbled upon the album "Simultonality" by Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society. The track, Sideways Fall, has this great repetitive train-like feel to it.  I knew immediately that I needed to make another train mix to fit with that tune.

The three 2017 releases in this mix are a few of my favorite discoveries this year.  Check them out.

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society - Simultonality

Daniel Brandt - Eternal Something

Quatuor Ebene & Michel Portal - Eternal Stories

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Chris Watson - Veracruz(El Tren Fantasma 2011)

My musical friend, Paul Asbury Seaman, has given us another gift in this beautiful collection.  Paul picked out the tunes and the order & I stitched them together to form the mix.  It was a joy to assemble.

Here's what Paul had to say about the mix:

"This is another bedtime, dreaming, unwinding, floating-away-on-an-interior-journey mix. The starting inspiration came from Michael DeMaria’s piece, “Moonlight” from his 2004 album The River.  I was so struck by how precisely the music evoked the image of moonlight on water. I have always been drawn to rivers and from the early days of ambient/electronic music more than forty years ago, with the likes of Kitaro and Tangerine Dream, I have described this genre as “journey music”—Silk Road journeys, interstellar journeys and journeys down a moonlit river."

Thanks to Paul for another Stellar collection of tunes.

Cheers!

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Byron Metcalf - As Clouds Dance(Inner Rhythm Meditations

I'm a space science dork.  I have NASA t-shirts, a large print of the moon in my office, read sci-fi and I make space/science themed music mixes.  Here are links to a few that I've done in the past:

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-god-particle.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2011/11/launch-of-curiosity.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2012/08/music-for-mars-landing-curiosity-edl.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2013/12/deep-sky-time-music-for-stargazing-2013.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2008/09/sea-of-stars.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-stars-my-destination.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2006/03/

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2017/01/sci-fi-soundtracks.html

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/08/music-for-perseid-meteor-shower.html

Yikes, that was more than I thought and I may have missed a few.

This new mix fits right in with my love of all things NASA and my love of electronic music.  What sets this one apart is the sequencing of the tracks.  The titles of the tracks take you on the Juno mission from start to finish.  Going from "We Launch Tonight" to "Arrival" to "Ganymede" to "Cloud Shaping" to "The Last Message."

The Juno Spacecraft was launched in 2011 and arrived at Jupiter in 2016.  It's been taking amazing pics and gathering data while in orbit.

• 00:00    Saul Stokes - We Launch Tonight