As usual with these mixes there is one song in particular that gets the ball rolling and in this case it's the title track from the album The Thompson Fields by the Maria Schneider Orchestra.  The whole album is wonderful collection open, airy jazz tracks and the title song is just stunning.  Definitely one of the most beautiful songs released this year, second only to Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell.

The rest of the mix is your standard Sunday morning mix.  Maybe a bit more jazz in this one.  Other than the Davis Sylvian tune most of the cuts are fairly new.

Enjoy

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00David Sylvian - September

The

• 00:00 Nathan Amundson - More Horses

The title of this one pretty much says it all.

So download the mix, grab some bourbon, a blanket and head outside to witness the 2015 version of the Perseid meteor shower.

Enjoy

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00         Moesko - Stargazer

At the end of May I posted an excellent mix from Mike G of the Ambient Music Guide.  We agreed to do guest mixes for each other and that the starting point would be a title that each of us would give the other.  We sent each other a few title ideas, we each chose one and got to work.

Mike chose "Lapse into Reverie" and the result was his beautiful mix that you can find here...

http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2015/05/lapse-into-reverie-complied-mixed-by.html

And here...

https://www.mixcloud.com/lowlight/lapse-into-reverie-compiled-mixed-by-mike-g-of-ambient-music-guide/

Mike gave me about 4 or 5 title ideas and my attention was immediately drawn to one in particular... "Ghosts of the Future."

The first thing that comes to mind is the film "Interstellar", which I had just re-watched right before this project.  With its time dilation and Murph's "ghost" communicating from the future, the soundtrack is the perfect launching point for this mix.  I like soundtracks but Hans Zimmer usually isn't a favorite.  However with this film he strikes a perfect balance.  At times the music has a Philip Glass feel to it.

I also thought of snippets of voices as ghosts and so I worked in some spoken word excerpts here & there, as well as using tracks that had voices or vocoder. Overall I hope the mix conveys a strange, otherworldly feel to it.

Thanks again to Mike G for doing the mix swap with me and thanks for a great mix title.

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Ian William Craig - Before Meaning Comes

Here's the latest Sunday Morning Music installment. The mix starts with cuts from two of my fav albums of 2015 by Aero Flynn & Sufjan Stevens. 

Aero Flynn is fronted by Josh Scott, a product of the same Eau Claire, Wisconsin music scene that gave us Justin Vernon(Bon Iver).  Scott was in a band called Amateur Love that shared a couple of members with a band that Vernon was in, DeYarmond Edison.  According to Chris Porterfield, who was in DeYarmond & would later form Field Report, Josh Scott was the most talented guy in that scene.

Just as Amateur Love was about to break Josh Scott got spooked and broke up the band and fled to Chicago.  Since then he has flirted with comebacks but mental and physical illness always got in the way.

Now he is back with a fantastic new album released this past spring.  The record was recorded in Justin Vernon's Eau Claire studio and was produced by Vernon.  The sound is very different from Amateur Love, more electronics involved, the vocals more ethereal.  The best way to describe the music is a cross between Radiohead & Bon Iver.

The Amateur Love album was re-released in 2012 by Vernon.  He started his own record company just so he could release that album.  And it's a wonderful recording, so full of promise.  I wish there had been more.

Here are some links related to the Aero Flynn story...

http://aeroflynn.org/

Listen to all 9 Aero Flynn tracks

Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell on Amazon

Excellent Pitchfork interview with Sufjan

After those opening cuts it's all downhill. Haha.  Actually there is much more good music in the rest of the mix.  Most of it is new & it fits with the laid back Sunday morning feel of past mixes.

Enjoy

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00Aero Flynn - Moonbeams

I have a confession to make.  Back in the 80s & early 90s I used to listen to a lot of New Age music.  Stuff like Enya, Andreas Vollenweider, anything on Windham Hill, etc.  Even though much of the general public thinks of ambient music as new age music, real ambient fans know the difference.  It can be difficult to articulate that difference.  I use a "I know it when I hear it" approach.  I guess I'm still wary of the new age label so that's why I called the mix "Music for Meditation."

Even though I moved away from new age music long ago, I still have a soft spot for certain sounds that can be considered new age staples.  Two of my favs are Tibetan singing bowls & the Fender Rhodes keyboard.  Actually anything with a bell-like sonic signature usually gets me.

Last year I came across the re-release of an album called "Gymnosphere, Song of the Rose" by Jordan De La Sierra.  It was recorded in 1977.  It has been called a long lost new age masterpiece.  I guess it is sort of new age-ish, although I think it has more in common with Brian Eno, Terry Riley & Steve Reich than Yanni or Steven Halpern.  It's a fine album and it got me thinking about new age music and the parts that I still enjoy.  Find out more here...

https://numerogroup.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/announcing-jordan-de-la-sierras-gymnosphere-song-of-the-rose-2cd2lp/

Once I decided to do this mix I knew for sure that Steven Halpern would make the final cut.  I remember buying a cassette of his album "Spectrum Suite" from a shop in Madison, WI that had floatation tanks.  I booked a half hour in one of the tanks and played that music while I floated around, literally & figuratively. 

The Harold Budd track that follows Halpern, I have always thought sounded very new agey.  But I have always loved it.  I like that the mix has both old and new cuts in it.  I think it does a good job giving off a meditation vibe without being too sickly sweet.  Good for meditation or sleeping.

Enjoy

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Somni451 - Yellow

• 00:00    David Parsons - Himalaya(edit)

Benoît Pioulard has two new albums out & they are both wonderful.  It was after hearing "Sonnet" that I decided to make a mix that featured the same sort of dusty, slightly noisy ambient tunes.

You can find his album "Sonnet" on Amazon here...

SONNET

And his latest, "Stanza" here...

https://pioulard.bandcamp.com/album/stanza

Stanza is a companion piece to Sonnet.  I didn't even know about it until I went looking for links for this post.  I'm so glad that I found it but I wish I'd found it sooner, then I could have worked a track from it into this mix.

Basically the mix is a collection of tunes that falls in line with the sound of those two Benoît Pioulard albums - kind of hazy and dusty.

Enjoy.

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Benoit Pioulard - Shut-ins on Sunday See

Every mix has it's own unique starting point.  And this mix definitely started in a unique place - my dishwasher.

One

Dishwasher Drone - stretched version

Dishwasher original sound

I've used Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch in mixes before and it's a fun little program for non-musicians like me.

I

I

Here's the Hypnos forum dishwasher thread... HYPNOS

We

I started the mix with the original sound and let it morph into the different versions.  They all flow together very well.

Here are the links to each individual piece used in the mix in order of appearance...

https://soundcloud.com/low-light-mixes/dishwasher-original

https://soundcloud.com/low-light-mixes/dishwasher-drone

https://soundcloud.com/forrest-fang/daves-dishwasher-zen-cycle-021815

https://soundcloud.com/low-light-mixes/dishwasher-drone-axx-rework

https://soundcloud.com/igneous-flame/chthonic-cycles

https://castleview.bandcamp.com/track/cavewasher

https://soundcloud.com/dataobscurarecords/the-circular-ruins-over-daves-dishwasher

https://serenffordd.bandcamp.com/track/rin-se

T R A C K L I S T :

• 00:00    Dishwasher original sound