I am very excited to present this next mix. It's a guest mix by longtime listener/downloader, Ron Sylvester.

Ron was the inspiration for a couple of my mixes that used old 78rpm recordings as a basis for the mixes "Sustain & Decay" and "Revenants of the Past". Ron sent me some mix cd's which I really enjoyed & I told him he really should do a proper mix someday.

Well I am delighted that Ron has allowed me to present his first mix here for everyone to enjoy. I'll let Ron describe the mix...

"A week or so ago I stumbled upon the album Salicornie Areavirus by Enrico Coniglio; his website says the album is meant to be a sort of ‘collection of "sound tales" dedicated to Venice’. I thought I recognized his name from somewhere, and back-tracked it to a Lost Children netlabel release featuring Italian artists entitled Underwater Noises, which had been curated by Coniglio. Two other Lost Children Releases featuring Italian artists, Con Fuoco d'Occhi un Nostalgico Lupo volumes I and II, gave me most of what I needed to complete the mix. I finished it off with work by Ulises Conti, Lodovico Einaudi, Paolo Fresu, a Sub Rosa compilation of ritual music entitled Illuminated, and a handful of ambience from Soundtransit and the storehouse of opera 78s at archive.org.

Anyhow, for me this mix is simply entitled Venice, though the musicians are not necessarily from Venice, nor are the field recordings strictly from Venice. Apart from Nguen Le, who is playing with Paolo Fresu (who is Sardinian), I think all the artists or field recording locales are at least Italian. Actually, now that I think of it, the recordings from Illuminated are not necessarily Italian. Catholic, though; that’s something. At any rate, and as usual, the mix is more about a sort of Venetian feeling: canals, Carnevale, the Grand Lagoon, a certain slow sinking. I’ve never been to Venice, though, so what do I know about it?

I was really taken by Enrico Coniglio’s album and it sort of got this mix started. Here’s his website, but as in all things ambient, you are probably way ahead of me on this:

http://www.enricoconiglio.com/

Here are the links for the Lost Children compilations:

http://www.archive.org/details/Lc-eph01UnderwaterNoises

http://www.archive.org/details/TheSilentBallet-ItalianCompilation-ConFuocoDocchiUnNostalgico

http://www.archive.org/details/TheSilentBallet-ItalianCompilation-ConFuocoDocchiUnNostalgico_90

Ron says "The track list is as follows; some editing of tracks has been done in the mix, and I processed the bejeezus out of La Traviata. There’s a lot of overlap in this mix."

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