light cycles

After a very long absence I am finally posting a new mix. I started a new job in January, so the past several months have been insanely busy. But the last few months have really brought a sea change in my life as well. My last two mixes really reflected my mood at the time. But, just when I thought the desolation and rain would last forever, things suddenly changed for the better. I feel like I have a whole new life. So, take it from me…don’t give up hoping. Change CAN occur. It just usually happens when you least expect it!

Given my improved mood, I wanted to put something together that echoed it. light cycles is the result. The original idea was to do another “Sunrise” mix. But I quickly discarded that because I felt it was too limiting. I love repetition in music–-music that uses the constant repetition of notes or themes or sounds as a basic structure to the composition. Modern composers like Philip GlassSteve Reich have based most of their compositions on musical repetition. Berlin-school groups like Tangerine Dream have used sequencers since the early 70’s to great effect as an integral part of their music. Ambient music also has a strong component of repetition in it. Many of the ambient works by Brian Eno (Music for Airports, Neroli), for example, use repetition. I wanted to put together a mix where all of the pieces used repetition as a major part of the cut. I also wanted to use pieces that had an “ambient” feel to them but that also were bright or upbeat. The title of the mix was inspired by the movie Tron. light cyclesCan. The Can piece Future Days and starts out fairly slow and quiet but becomes more vibrant as it goes along. Near the end it almost rocks out with an amazing piece I stumbled across by uses repetition to great effect. This piece is also cool because it was done back in 1973 but still sounds amazingly contemporary.

I hope you enjoy light cycles. Like the last several mixes it is somewhat of a departure from the typical ambient drift and drone but I think it still evokes “ambient-ness” throughout the piece.

Let me know what you think. Bright times are ahead for the Hydrogen Cafe–and for me as well.

D O W N L O A D S (right click, save link as):

light cycles MP3 (68:30) (192k) (94 mb)

Cover Art & Score (284k zip)

Stream:

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

1. Kamen Nedev - Waves, Atlantic Coast, Porto, Portugal

2. Cliff Martinez - Is That What Everybody Wants (excerpts)

3. Budd-Garcia-Lentz - Pulse, Pause, Repeat

4. Sonmi451 - Second to None

5. Bobby Devito – Untitled Ambient Track

6. The Elf Machine - Buddha Zone 6

7. Fenton - Neon Giraffe

8. Shuttle358 - Calty

9. The Green Kingdom - Lucky Bamboo

10. Cliff Martinez - Is That What Everybody Wants

11. Thomas Fanger - Twinkling Sun

12. Saul Stokes - The Bright Tones (Even Brighter)

13. Dollboy - Juicyfruit

14. Isan - Cinnabar

15. Can - Future Days

16. Tangerine Dream - White Eagle

17. Underworld - To Heal

“To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tears in Rain

While I was gathering music for the Desolation Angels mix, I was originally going to have both vocal and instrumental tracks. Once I started putting it together, however, I felt that having a mix of just instrumental and operatic cuts was best. So, I decided to put all of the vocal tracks left over from Desolation Angels together in their own mix which became Tears in Rain. It was actually fairly difficult to find tracks that had both sad lyrics as well as slow, somber backing music. Although somewhat of a departure from my other ambient mixes, I think the sad and melancholy mood I was going for turned out pretty well and the mix serves as a nice companion to Desolation Angels. The title is taken from the film Blade Runner. I hope you like it. This mix is also dedicated to my friend Katie, gone too long.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

Tears in Rain MP3 (74:26) (192k) (104 mb)

Cover Art & Score (575k zip)

Stream:

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

1. Various field recordings
2. Peter Gabriel – The Drop
3. The Montgolfier Brothers - Journey's End
4. Canyon Country - Dead or Dreaming
5. Damien Rice - Sleep Don't Weep
6. Porcupine Tree - Feel So Low
7. Peter Broderick - Another Glacier
8. Michael Andrews & Gary Jules - Mad World
9. Johnny Cash - Hurt
10. Cowboy Junkies - Spiral Down
11. Sigur Ros - Gong Endir
12. Azure Ray - Sleep
13. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova - Falling Slowly
14. Red House Painters - Have You Forgotten
15. Archive - Fold
16. Peter Gabriel - I Grieve

Cover art is adapted from a photo I found online. After this mix, I promise to do something a bit brighter. :)

“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”

- Aeschylus

Happy New Year

Greetings, felicitations and a Happy New Year to all! I wanted to express my sincere thanks to everyone who has taken the time to download and listen to my Hydrogen Cafe mixes. The response I've gotten since I started this has been humbling. I also appreciate everyone who has taken the time to e-mail me or post a comment. They are greatly appreciated!

There will be a lot to come in 2008 starting with a follow-up vocal mix to Desolation Angels which I will post tomorrow. I have a number of other ideas simmering as well. ;)

Best wishes to everyone for the new year. 2007 wasn't the best year, but it ended on a high note. Here's hoping that 2008 will be great for all!

I also wanted to highlight a few mixes that have been posted recently by some friends. My friend Dave over at Low Light Mixes has been a busy bee and has posted several excellent mixes. Please go over and check out drown the world in reverberation and his Best of 2007 mix. They rock in an ambient way! Also, my friend Lord Sherwell from London has posted his own Best of 2007 mix called Music for the Dead Days. Check his mix out as well! Take care everyone.

nrvnet
January 1, 2008

Hydrogen Links Two

Here is another in a series of posts providing links that I think might be interesting to Hydrogen Cafe listeners. This is the Hydrogen Cafe International Edition!

First is a link to a really nice ambient mix done by my friend Lord Sherwell from the UK. This is his first mix using the Acoustica mixing software that I use for my mixes. In his own words:

It was originally inspired by walking early in the morning in the fog shrouded woods near where I work. While walking I found myself thinking about a friend of mine I'm very fond of but haven't seen for sometime. Approximate running order goes something like this:

00:01 'Haunted Ballroom' - The Caretaker
02:00ish 'Fog Animal' - Deaf Centre
05:30ish 'In the Cold I'm Standing' - M83
09:00is 'Black Dress' - Svarte Greiner
18:00ish 'Another Ballard For Heavy Lids' - Stars Of The Lid
20:00ish 'Final Sleep' - Svarte Greiner
25:15ish 'St.Christopher' - Mark Isham
27:00ish 'Waves Become Wings' - This Mortal Coil
30:10ish 'Cad Godddeu' - Nest
34:15ish Clip from Solaris
37:15ish 'Stay With Me' - Clint Mansell
39:00 is clip from Solaris

(Plus assorted Crow samples, a bell sampled from the This Mortal Coil track and plenty of pops, crackles and scrapes courtesy of the tracks on Type records)

Lord Sherwell's "Fog Memory" MP3 can be downloaded
here (right click, save link as)





My second link is from my new friend DJ Orion, a well-known DJ from Finland. DJ Orion kindly asked to use my mix Music for Sunrise in his latest podcast. So, a big thank you! to DJ Orion and a big HELLO! to all of the new Hydrogen Cafe visitors from Finland and around the world.

DJ Orion's Podcast page can be found here

(DJ Orion has a number of great chillout and house music podcasts and mixes available--give them a listen!)

DJ Orion's main page can be found here

New Host

I recently decided to switch hosting services for my mix files. I've been using Switchpod to host my files since the beginning of the Hydrogen Cafe. But, their service has been going steadily downhill. So, I stumbled upon the Podbean hosting service and decided to make the switch. So far, Podean rules. They have a pricing structure similar to Switchpod but Podbean has no upper limit to the number of files you can upload. They have a monthly upload cap based on your subscription but you can keep uploading files month after month with no total size limits to your account. That rocks! Download speeds seem to be good and they also offer embeddable stream players like the ones I recently installed for each of my mixes. They also have good iTunes support so you can easily link your podcast to iTunes.

I just shutdown my Switchpod account completely. I've tried to go back and change all of the download links on web posts I have made. There may be a few old ones I missed. If you have any problems downloading, all the new Podbean download links below work. Please drop me a line if you are still having problems. Also, if you are interested in signing up for a Podbean account, send me an e-mail and I can send you a special code that will get us each a free month of service! You can e-mail me at: nrvnet9(at)gmail.com. LOL this sounds like a freakin' ad. But Podbean does rock!

Desolation Angels

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

- Carl Jung


This mix is dedicated to my friend Katie. Taken from us much too soon, her bright smile and love of life will forever illuminate our world.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 (74:31) (192k) (104 mb)

Cover Art & Score (493k zip)

Stream:

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

1. Intro – includes segments from Beautumn – Blanket & Sigur Ros – Gong
2. Dustin O'Halloran - Opus 37
3. Aram Khachaturian - Gayane Ballet Suite
4. Angelo Badalamenti - Final Miles
5. Roger Eno - Elevation
6. Clint Mansell - Together We Will Live Forever
7. Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No 3 - II Lento E Largo - Tranquillissimo
8. David Darling - Beginning
9. Rachel's - Egon & Gertie
10. John Tavener - Fragments of a Prayer
11. Slowblow – Elegy
12. 12 Monkeys OST - Dreamers Awake
13. Sylvain Chauveau – Blanc
14. Steve Baker and Carmen Dave - For Whom the Bell Tolls
15. Barber - Adagio for Strings, Op. 11
16. Little Buddha OST – Evan’s Funeral
17. Talkdemonic - Veraison
18. Goldmund - Unbraiding the Sun
19. The Album Leaf – The Light

The title, Desolation Angels, is taken from a book by Jack Kerouac.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain.”

- Kahlil Gibran

First Light

I happened to find this video on YouTube. First Light is the opening cut on Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror by Harold Budd & Brian Eno. First Light is also one of the opening cuts from my mix Music for Sunrise. Cool video.

Hydrogen Links One

It's been a lot of fun putting this music mix blog together. In the course of the past year I've gotten a number of e-mails from people who have the liked the various ambient mixes I've done. Knowing that people have taken the time to write me makes the work I put into the mixes really worthwhile. A number of those e-mails have been from artists whose work may have been included in a mix thanking me for using them. Others have been e-mails from artists and music labels who want to let me know about their work and want to invite me to use their music in a future mix. I'm really grateful for the thank-you's and honored that ambient artists would like me to feature their work. So, I thought that, instead of making promises that I may or may not be able to keep, that I would start a new feature where I will highlight links that people have sent me--links highlighting artists or music labels or new musical works. I thought I'd also include other interesting ambient-related links I've come across. So, if you are an ambient artist, a music label, or do ambient, experimental or downtempo music mixes of your own, drop me an e-mail and I will include your links in future "Hydrogen Links" posts. These don't constitute endorsements or recommendations. This is just my way of spreading the ambient world.....

Al Gromer Khan's Rasa Music
Al Gromer Khan´s Top 50 fifty years in music listing...
Al Gromer Khan´s essay on ambient music: Ambient Religion
Rigel Orionis
Darren Rogers - The Alternate Realms
Darren Rogers' Imagineer Records MySpace page
Ouim Internet Radio
So Ham Sounds - an ambient music mix (right click, save link as...)
So Ham Sounds MySpace page
Infraction Records (Beautumn, Northern, Milieu, etc)
Infraction Records MySpace page

Enjoy!

Music for Sunrise

I received a lot of really nice feedback on my last mix Music for Stargazing Vol 1. Thanks for all of the nice comments. One listener asked if I could go from night to day and do a sunrise mix. So, per your request, I would like to present: Music for Sunrise.

This mix, like the last, was inspired by the annual trips I take to a lake cottage in northern Wisconsin. Besides putting together music mixes for looking at the night sky I had also, over the years, collected tracks to play in the early mornings. The tracks collected for this sunrise mix are ambient in nature--songs that give a sense of an awakening dawn sky. Most of the tracks also have a Classical Music "sound" to them. I’ve always associated early mornings with Classical Music and that first hot cup of coffee. I also included a few very slow, quiet Classical works in the mix as well. Music for Sunrise was originally inspired by the work of Harold Budd. He is an amazing piano player with a massive body of excellent ambient compositions. The album he did with Brian Eno, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror, was my first introduction to him many moons ago. If any album evokes “dawn” this beautiful work would be it. So, the next time you awake at dawn, grab a hot cup of joe and play Music for Sunrise. I hope you enjoy it.

Downloads (right click, save target as):

MP3 [68:25m] (192k) (96 mb)

Cover Art & Score (624k Zip)


Stream:

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

1. Deon Rowe - Early Morning Birds (field recording)
2. Olivier Nijs – Cornfield Insects and Birds (field recording)
3. Harold Budd & Brian Eno - First Light
4. John Foxx & Harold Budd - Long Light

5. James Johnson – Remembrance
6. Kit Watkins - Beauty Drifting

7. Patrick O'Hearn - A Lovely Place To Be

8. Aaron Copeland - Appalachian Spring: Andante

9. Rachel's - Egon & Wally Embrace and Say Farewell
10. Michael Hoppé - Martin Tillman - Tim Wheater - Long Ago
11. Erik Satie - Gymnopdie I (Orchestration Debussy)
12. Roger Eno - Days Like This
13. John Didlock – Dawn Chorus (field recording)
14. Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending
15. Max Richter - Sunlight

16. Henry Purcell - Sonata for Trumpet & Strings in D Major - Adagio
17. Stars of the Lid - Jon McCafferty - Anchor States - Part I
18. Budd-Garcia-Lenz - Somos Tres
19. Roger Eno - Turning
21. Harold Budd - Robin Guthrie - The Memories Returning
22. Helios - Halving the Compass

Music for Stargazing Vol 1

Sorry for the long delay between mixes! Life has been busy and complicated lately and time has a way of slipping by. I also thought I’d breeze through putting this mix together but I ended up tweaking it for weeks to try and get all the sound levels right. I also will try my best to not let too much time go by before my next mix. I have two mixes (unrelated to this current mix) that I have collected most of the tracks for, so I will be starting those soon. Thanks so much for all your kind words and concern. They mean everything to me.

I would like to present: Music for Stargazing Vol 1. The idea for this mix was generated several years ago actually. My friend Dave (from Low Light Mixes) and I take an annual trip to a lake cottage in northern Wisconsin. It’s far out in the country, away from the wash of city lights. At night, the sky is filled with an amazing blanket of stars. At this lake cottage we got in the habit of sitting out at night to look at stars and enjoy a cold brew. Besides stars we could also often see satellites track across the sky and any number of shooting stars. Years ago I decided to put together a CD mix made specifically for sitting out and looking at stars. I went for tracks that, in my mind, gave the listener a very slow, drifting, expansive and somewhat awe-inspiring feel. Some of the artists that were the biggest inspirations for this mix include Steve Roach, Brian Eno and Jeff Pearce. This is a more straightforward mix than some of my others and utilizes fewer, longer tracks.

Over the years I have collected dozens of tracks I used for various stargazing mixes. The tracks used in this mix are from my old collection of stargazing cuts. I did a newer mix of cuts last year in The Stars My Destination mix. I did reuse a couple tracks from that mix because they were from the original collection. So, here is the first of what may be a series of Music for Stargazing mixes for the Hydrogen Cafe. Go grab a beer, pop this mix onto your MP3 player or burn it to a CD and slap it onto a boombox, head out into the night, and enjoy the magic of stars. This mix would work well as a sleep mix too. I hope you enjoy it.

Downloads (right click, save target as):

MP3 [68:14m] (192k) (93.7 mb)

Cover Art & Score (467k Zip)

Stream:

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

1. Michael Stearns - Baraka Finale (excerpt)
2. Night sounds field recording
3. Ashera – Violet Night Perfume
4. Steve Roach - Glimpse
5. Grassow–Baghiri–Gleisberg – The Different Perception of Light
6. Diatonis – Glass of Starlight
7. Jeff Pearce – Inner Light
8. Brian Eno - Stars
9. Amir Baghiri - Sleep Well (Part Two)
10. Ma Ja Le & James Johnson - Methane Sea (Live)
11. Jeff Pearce - Vestiges
12. Steve Roach – The Return
13. Stars of the Lid – Dust Breeding (1.316)+
14. Brian Eno - Drift
15. James Johnson - Drift
16. Jeff Pearce – From the Quiet Hours
17. Steve Roach – Magnificent Gallery

The Dharma Bums

A new year brings a new mix. The first mix for 2007 is called The Dharma Bums. The title is taken from a book by Jack Kerouac which covers his exploration of Buddhism and the search for Truth. With this new mix I wanted to expand on the ethno-ambient feel of one of my other mixes, Tea Time at Brian Eno's House. The Dharma Bums was also greatly inspired by the amazing field recordings done by The Quiet American and the superb ethno-ambient music of Loren Nerell. Loren Nerell uses his own field recordings from Java and Bali in his work. My hope was to create a Pan-Asian soundworld using music inspired by, or artists from the Middle East, India and Indonesia.

This is the most complex, multi-level mix I have ever done and I am quite proud of the results. If you look at the music mix score (a jpeg contained in the Cover Art and Score Zip file you can download below), you will see that at any given time, there are at least two and sometimes up to seven different pieces of music or field recordings playing simultaneously. I used a total of 32 different Quiet American field recordings in the mix (on the music score, all Quiet American field recordings start with "QA"). I even made a small field recording myself. I hope you enjoy it.

I would like to dedicate this mix to The Quiet American and Loren Nerell.

Lightbright Dharma Bums soulwalk through old time. Gamelan Buddhas sing wailing cries of joyful sunsand. Stone cities appear like ghosts from rivers of ancient karma. Sitars sing Salaam songs soulsung with the first voice. Monks chant the way of higher truth in rainforest insect soundscapes. Ancient future cities team with peoplestreams that vibrate Kama Sangha dreams. Sheiks ride horses of sound across desert moonwaves. Duduk birds glide among templespires, passionwings stretched toward enlightenment.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

MP3 [69:01m] (192k) (95 mb)

Cover Art & Score (1.5 mb Zip)

Stream:

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

1. Numerous Quiet American field recordings
2. Brian Eno + David Byrne - Arabic Sample #1
3. Gamelan Madu Sari - Dreams He is a Ball of Fire...or a Hummingbird (ii)
4. Alio Die & Festina Lente - Movimento Nel Cielo Sotto
5. Soundtrack - Little Buddha - Raga Kirvani
6. Loren Nerell - Indonesian Soundscapes Track 2
7. Ravi Shankar - Raga Malkauns Alap
8. Al Gromer Khan - Mumtaz
9. Daniel Lentz - Lascaux
10. Alio Die & Festina Lente - L'orlo, La Fune, Il Niente
11. Jon Hassell - These Times
12. David Parsons - Lahaul Valley
13. Djivan Gasparyan - Apricot Tree
14. Loren Nerell - Hiasan (Ornament)
15. Peter Gabriel - Open
16. David Parsons - Darshan
17. Jon Hassell - Emp
18. L. Subraminiam - Wandering Saint
19. Soundtrack - Little Buddha - Nepalese Caravan
20. Steve Roach and Loren Nerell - Texture Wall
21. The Year of Living Dangerously Soundtrack - Kwan
22. Jim Cole and Spectral Voices - Nuage
23. Peter Gabriel - Disturbed
24. Jon Hassell - Power Spot
25. Jon Hassell - Malay
26. Gamelan Madu Sari - Thinly Roundly
27. Robert Rich - Calling Down the Sky
28. Marsen Jules - Eillet en Delta
29. Mawlawiyah Music of the Whirling Dervishes - Na't-i Sherif
30. nrvnet field recording
31. Michael Stearns - Baraka Finale

Winter Mix at Low Lights

My friend Dave has put together another great mix over at his music mix blog Low Light Mixes. It's called: First Snow - An Ambient Winter Mix. A great mix of tunes for frigid winter days. Go have a listen.

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.

Downloads (right click, save link as):

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

Cover Art & Score (Zip)

Stream:

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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!