Lonesome Traveler

This is the third installment of the Lost Lake Stories cycle. This mixup was inspired by the movie Paris, Texas featuring an awesome soundtrack score by Ry Cooder. The movie opens with a man walking alone in the desert with nothing but the wind and sun for company. I took this image and decided to create my own soundtrack of a solitary lonesome man traveling in an empty quiet western landscape through deserts and small backwater towns…towns that whisper instead of shout. Keeping with the literary theme of the previous two mixes, the title comes from a book by Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler, about his hobo-like wanderings through 1950’s America and Mexico. The mix has a decidedly twangy western feel to compliment Ry Cooder’s amazing slide guitar while keeping a slow, quiet ambient progression. The jpeg “score” for this mix is included in the Cover Art and Score Zip file below. Also, right below is the “soundword” description for the mix I did again trying to use a Kerouac-like automatic writing style. I hope you enjoy this new mixup. And remember, I like comments!

L o s t L a k e S t o r i e s C h a p t e r 3: LONESOME TRAVELER

Lonesome Traveler walks through ghosttown dreams and desert sandsky searching for slow memories of a brightskip life. Sunheat washes over lazy landscapes shimmering slitscan in still life. Warm wind blows guitarsong for lonely days of heathaze lands and moonsurf nights. Timetrip towns in oldtime, lost among backwater roads and black and white Kodaks. Shining stargazes of forevernever hope. Lone footfalls on sand and sidewalk spying distant boys on bikes and sundress breezeflutters against softblue sunwashed skies. A storyneverending journeysearch for sunmelted ice cream cones and porchcold lemonade laughter mixed with quiet smiles and warm words from melted hearts and clouddrift minds. He walks between seconds of memorytime.

A boxgathering rises in the farscape edge of the sky. Yearning feet turn on the brightmelted blackribbonhighway. Alonetown echos emptynothing sounds as Traveler passes through on silent strings of memories. Alone.

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MP3 [67:48m] (93 mb) (192k)

Cover Art & Score (Zip)

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T R A C K L I S T I N G

1. Various Soundfiles – Little Children Movie
2. Ry Cooder - Paris, Texas
3. Steve Roach and Roger King - A Bigger Sky
4. Ry Cooder - Brothers
5. Loren Connors - Whispers
6. Steve Roach and Roger King - First Sunrise
7. Yuichiro Fujimoto - Listen to November Steps
8. Yellow 6 - Summersend
9. Robin Guthrie - Pale
10. Ry Cooder - Nothing Out There
11. John Fahey - Finale
12. Loren Connors - Lullaby (the 1st)
13. Steve Roach and Roger King - Rain and Creosote
14. Handsome Family - Last Night I Went Out Walking
15. Daniel Lanois - Carla
16. Yuichiro Fujimoto - Handwritten Map to Sea
17. Grails - Canyon Hymn
18. James Blackshaw - Granite and Wineglass
19. Ry Cooder - No Safety Zone
20. Ry Cooder - Cancion Mixteca
21. John Fahey - View (East from...Riggs Road B & O Trestle)
22. Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd - Goodbye to Wendy
23. Hammock - The Silence
24. Loren Connors - Grandmother
25. Ess - Gee-gem
26. Steve Roach and Roger King - Ghost Train
27. Ramblin' Thomas - Poor Boy Blues
28. Deaf Center - Lobby
29. Loren Connors - Jesuits
30. Loren Connors Voice of the Ocean, Despair Not!
31. Yuichiro Fujimoto - History of Dreams
32. Ry Cooder - Dark Was the Night

A New "e" in Cafe

Not that anyone cares or will notice but I changed my blog title. I took the accent off the "e" in cafe. It seems it was screwing up search engines and making trouble for feeds.

New Low Light Mixes

It's been a busy last couple of months but I am finally getting back to the Café! I'll be posting a new mix shortly...Chapter 3 of the Lost Lake Stories cycle...Lonesome Traveler.

My friend Dave over at Low Light Mixes has recently posted two excellent mixes, "Autumn MIx" and "String Theory". Go check them out, they're great!

Book of Dreams

Here is the second installment from the Lost Lake Stories collection of mixups previously posted at Low Light Mixes. The title, Book of Dreams, is taken from a book by Jack Kerouac (as will the next several in the Lost Lake Stories collection). I tried to make this mix dream-like, having pieces of music float from one into another and fade out then back in again later as often happens with dreams. The music overall is very quiet with both ambient and acoustic elements present with a heavy reliance on strings (violin, cello). There is multi-level mixing and several field recordings, both Quiet American and a couple of my own, that whisper and play in the background like voices and distant sounds in dreams. The jpeg “score” (see post below) for this mix is included in the Cover Art and Score Zip file below. Also, right below is the “soundword” description for the mix I did trying to use a Kerouac-like automatic writing style. It turned out kind of crap new-agey, but what the hell! Remember--I like comments! I hope you like the Book of Dreams…

L o s t L a k e S t o r i e s C h a p t e r 2: BOOK OF DREAMS

The Book of Dreams, washed up on the misty fractal shore of Lost Lake, lightcracks a door to a universe of one. A keybook to an endless flight of moonkissed waters and sunREM skies. Nocturnal tripscan reflections of lucid life and silent sound. Joyflight voices soar over sepia mountains of suspended memory. Starlost cafes serve cups of liquid mind and plates of drifting Bohdi clouds. Lazy days of passing suns shadowcast effervescent trancelight. An endless rain of warm melted thoughts drip from the petals of lifeflowers. Metashapes combine under the brighthaze of Hypnos creating transparent particle cities. Heavenly boats slip dreamsoft through carpets of stars tranceguided by the steering hand of Morpheus. Guided through the middle path between lightdark lands and remembering the nevertruth.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 [67:38m] (95 mb)

Cover Art & Score (zip)

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T R A C K L I S T I N G

1. Peter Gabriel - The Nest That Sailed the Sky
2. Talkdemonic - Verite
3. RF - Ladder in Place
4. Roger Eno & Plumbline - With Insight
5. Voices of Alex
6. Eluvium - All The Sails
7. Stars Of The Lid - The Artificial Pine Arch Song
8. Biosphere - Dissolving Clouds
9. nrvnet Field Recording
10. Various Quiet American Field Recordings
11. Underworld - Please Help Me
12. Solyaris - IPromisethatOneDayEverything
13. Vir Unis & Chris Short - Monastery of The South
14. Sylvain Chauveau - Ocre
15. Cepia - Malcesine
16. Alio Die - Suspended Feathers
17. 12 Monkeys OST - Dreamers Awake
18. Philip Glass & Foday Musa Suso -Prison Song
19. Sylvain Chauveau - Le brasier de tristesse
20. Slowbow - Elegy
21. Mountains - Hundred Acre
22. Sydney M - Chords Echo 2
23. Mountains - Paper Windmill
24. Vidna Obmana - Float through Nights
25. Francesco Paladino & Opium - Me, the Sky Sleeping
26. Alio Die - Ruins Garden Drones
27. A Produce - The Far Shore
28. Clickits - Nibblah
29. RF - On the Bus That I Had Chosen
30. David Byrne - Canal Life
31. Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd - Neil's Theme2
32. Lisa Gerrard - Empty Water
33. Peter Gabriel - The Nest That Sailed the Sky

Music Mix Scores

Jim Cole (from Spectral Voices) e-mailed me to suggest that I put time codes in the tracklisting for Tea Time at Brian Eno’s House and The Stars My Destination so people could tell where pieces start and end. I wrote back to explain that my “mixups” truly mix songs up with pieces starting and stopping in the middle of the song and sometimes starting again. Others may start in the middle and sometimes there are several layers of things being played simultaneously. So, putting in exact timecodes would be difficult.

Instead I decided to do a screen capture of the “score” of those two mixes. I use Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer to do most of my mixes which allows multi-tack mixing and the adjustment of volume levels within tracks. On the top of the score you will see the timeline. The rectangles are the music tracks. The “line graphs” within each piece show the sound levels as the piece progresses. So, by viewing the capture you should be able to see what is playing at various points in the mix. I’ll try and publish the scores with future mixes as well. I hope they are helpful. I have jpegs of the scores available for download below.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

Tea Time at Brian Eno’s House Score

The Stars My Destination Score

The Stars My Destination

L o s t L a k e S t o r i e s 2 0 0 6

This 2006 collection of Nrv Net mixups was inspired by the writings of Jack Kerouac (who could have guessed?). After having read several of his books over the past year I decided to use a literary theme as a central core for these four mixes. The titles come from three Kerouac novels and a book by Alfred Bester. The mixes themselves range from straightforward linear mixes to multi-level mixups, with sometimes as many as six different sound files being played simultaneously. Each mix has a story accompanying it that gives a “soundword” description of the mix. I tried to channel Kerouc in the writing style. The first mixup, The Stars My Destination, is an ambient drift mix meant to be played while stargazing. There is more multi-level mixing going on in this one. With apologies and respect to Jack Kerouac I hope you enjoy the Lost Lake Stories...

L o s t L a k e S t o r i e s C h a p t e r 1: The Stars My Destination

Countdown to celestial fireburn in soulburst flight and the Stars My Destination. Blue move streak melts into inkblack veil of infinity. Starshine in a speck of life absorbs all that was the memorycore being. Mind dissolves, touching gravity wells of mechanical move. Chromosphere dreams float past ecliptic worlds of heliocentric desire. Lightyears pass in glistening spikeshards of spacetime. Softspun cores of hydrogen cloudlight move past binary bursts of quasar prominence. Redshift suns stream, holding a billion thoughts of singular sound vibrating through the silent expanse of zodiac radiance. Arms of sparkling starlight stretch toward the singularity of firelife. Traveling through the infinite core of drifting starsound, eyes open to see a sea of lights against darkblack sky as galactic whispers fade into endless night.

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MP3 [68:55m] (95 mb)

Cover Art (zip)

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T R A C K L I S T I N G

1. August Stars – The Twilight Turns From Amethyst to Deep and Deeper Blue
2. Steve Roach and Loren Nerell - Ecopoiesis
3. Various Apollo Sound Files
4. Manual - September Swell
5. Amir Baghiri - Triton
6. Loscil - Windless
7. Diatonis - Corona
8. James Johnson - Ma Ja Le - Methane Sea
9. Diatonis - Clouds and Mirrors
10. Milieu - Lazy Days on our Hillside
11. Amir Baghiri - Sleep Well (Part Six)
12. Oophoi - Hymns to a Silent Sky
13. August Stars - Reflection of the Bridge of Sighs
14. Cliff Martinez - We Don't Have To Think Like That Anymore
15. Manual - Bajamar
16. Milieu - Inside the Majestic Hand of God
17. Manual - Reminiscence
18. Oophoi - Ism-el Azam (Birth and Death of Sound)
19. Steve Roach - Truth in Passing
20. Jim Cole and Spectral Voices - Celestial Tides
21. Dialogue from 2001: A Space Odyssey
22. Gyorgi Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
23. Genesis - Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
24. Jon Jenkins – Calling
25. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Loom
26. August Stars - Two Queerly Placed Melancholy Windows
27. Hammock - You May Emerge From This More Dead Than Alive
28. Milieu - Parasol
29. Milieu - Lazy Days on our Hillside
30. Chase Smith - A Curse of Beauty
31. Dean de Benedictis - The Mocking of Consequence
32. James Johnson - Drift
33. Steve Roach - The Passing Time
34. Harold Budd & Brian Eno - An Echo of Night

A Perfect Rainy Day Thinking of Old Memories

Here is a straightforward mix I did last year. Something to listen to on rainy days...

And what does the rain say at night in a small town, what does the rain have to say? Who walks beneath dripping melancholy branches listening to the rain?
-Jack Kerouac

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MP3 [73:54m] (102 mb)

Cover Art (zip)

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T R A C K L I S T I N G

1. INTERLUDE 1 Rain (0:14)
2. Sigur Ros – Untitled (2:45)
3. Trembling Blue Stars – The Far Too Simple Beauty (3:29)
4. World Standard – Snowflakes (7:49)
5. Goldmund – Pahelia (6:04)
6. Sylvian Chauveau – Minéral (2:56)
7. Idaho – Levitate Pt. 2 (4:21)
8. Harold Budd – Avalon Sutra (3:37)
9. INTERLUDE 2 Rain (0:30)
10. RF – Spring (7:59)
11. Goldmund – Anomolie Loop (1960 – 1969) (6:59)
12. Sigur Ros – Untitled (2:34)
13. Helios – Sunes Christmas (3:57)
14. George Winston – Black Stallion (3:48)
15. Broken Social Scene – Guilty Cubicles (3:02)
16. Talk Talk – I Believe In You (6:15)
17. Muse – Blackout (4:17)
18. INTERLUDE 3 Rain (0:15)
19. Vangelis – Tears In Rain (2:51)

Tea Time at Brian Eno's House

Here is the very first true "mixup" I did last year and previously posted on Low Light Mixes. Tea Time at Brian Eno's House is based on an idea of being invited to tea at Brian Eno's house and what one might hear from his in-house sound installation. I tried to approach the mix in an “Eno-esque” fashion, building track upon track. The foundation of the mix is made up of long-form Eno cuts (Neroli, Thursday Afternoon, etc.) that play at very low levels throughout the mix. On top of that are Quiet American field recordings that fade in and out. On top of that are various Eno and other artist tracks mixed end to end and sometimes together. So, at any point in the mix, there are 2-5 things playing at the same time.

The Eno speaking parts are from a long interview with him. I cut 2-10 second pieces at random from the track. I then assembled bunches of those pieces together, somewhat at random, at various points throughout the mix. So, you get Eno speaking in “nonsense words” that weirdly make sense in a way. I hope you enjoy it.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 [79:53m] (192k) (109 mb)

Cover Art (zip)

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T R A C K L I S T I N G

1. An interview with Brian Eno - Eno Speaks
2. Brian Eno - Neroli
3. The Golden Oaks - Candles Dangling from Boxwood Branches
4. The Quiet American - 3 Trains
5. Helios - Easy Days
6. Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon
7. John Fox, Harold Budd - Adult
8. Robert Rich - Weightless Morning
9. Brian Eno - IKEBUKURO
10. The Quiet American - Short Train
11. Shuttle358 - Chessa
12. Clickits - Weirdloop
13. Kiln - Season
14. Brian Eno - Chamber Lightness
15. Clickits - Riverfolk
16. Brian Eno - Caught Between
17. The Remote Viewer - Listening to Ballad of the Band
18. The Quiet American - Waking
19. Broken Social Scene - I Slept With The Bonhomme At The CBC
20. Amute - A l'ombre de 12000 medias
21. Brian Eno - A Long Way Down
22. Brian Eno - Drift Study
23. Brian Eno - Soft Dawn
24. Brian Eno - Discreet Music
25. The Quiet American - First Light
26. Helios - Mulier
27. Brian Eno - Lantern Marsh
28. Alva Note + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Uoon I.mp3

The Hydrogen Café

Earlier this year my best friend Dave started his own blog called Low Light Mixes to host some ambient music mixes he had put together. It’s a great site and I encourage you to visit it. Since Low Light Mixes began, Dave has kindly posted several of my own mixes. As I have put together more mixes he has been bugging me about starting my own blog.

I’d like to present The Hydrogen Café. I’ll be posting my own music mixes and maybe a few other things as well. Why “Hydrogen Café?” I’m a coffee fanatic so I liked the idea of a café—a place to come and sit a while, have a cup and listen to some music. And hydrogen is an element that is both simple and minimal yet underlies everything—kind of like ambient music and music in my life. So, welcome to the Hydrogen Café. I hope you’ll sit and stay a while. Most of the mixes will be ambient or quiet in nature but I do have a few that cross into jazz, classical and folk. I hope you’ll enjoy them.

I also have recently “discovered” the writings of Jack Kerouac and have become a huge fan, burning through several of his books this year. I tried to channel Jack, as you will see, with a few of my more recent mixes, with apologies to my own meager talents. So to close my first post on my first blog I’d like to leave you with Jack:

...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'

- Jack Kerouac