Category: surround

ambient music, MIXES, surround

Ghost Road Stroll (Mix)

This mix is made to be published in the excellent series of mixes on the “Sounds of a Tired City”, part of the larger website with the same name.
It is published exactly on its first year’s anniversary, so it’s in fact a birthday present too!

Inspired by the site name, I decided I wanted to try to create a sonic ‘walk’ through a ‘tired’ city.
A mix with a lot of scene changes… like walking through an unknown city on a (quiet sunday?) morning – finding hidden surprises and marvels around every corner..

ambient music, MIXES, surround

Jam Karet (Elastic Time) (Mix)

“Jam Karet” is Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) meaning “Elastic Time” (or “Rubber Hours”).
To me, this concept also applies to mixes that include ambient and drone fragments… where the listener gets immersed in sound in such a way that all notion of time is lost; where music could last for minutes, or for hours.

(Created for – and also published on – Headphone Commute)

ambient music, MIXES, surround

Siren Song (Mix)

This mix is built around mysterious vocals. Vocals that may guide you, or lure you, into distances unknown.
Often, but not exclusively, female, and some of them not even human – like the beautiful flute-playing by Jean-Christophe Bonnafous, or the mysterious singing sound of the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko that was recently discovered during the Rosetta space missions.
With just a little fantasy you can imagine the Philae Space Lander being attracted by the comet’s song – ultimately leading it to an untimely death.

ambient music, MIXES, other-music, surround

Incidental Memories (Mix)

If one of the criteria for ‘ambient’ music is that you can comfortably fall asleep to it, I guess you’d better skip this particular mix. Although it starts quiet and reassuring with soothing vocal chords from Silvestrov’s “The Lord’s Prayer”, the mood disintegrates and sometimes can become rather unsettling – depending on your own personal ‘incidental memories’, of course.

For reasons I can’t really explain, this mix works better if you listen on speakers instead of headphones – just let the airwaves flow for maximum immersion.

ambient music, MIXES, surround

Tristesse D’Automne (Mix)

This mix was created especially for Headphone Commute.
Thanks to H_C for publishing it, and for the beautiful introduction words:

Autumn is here. Darkness slowly creeps up just a little bit earlier. Clouds get grayer and swell up with rain. Trees shed their colors and tighten their belts. And people begin to prepare for winter. But among all the shadows there’s a small ray of light. And with that glow comes the music… For today’s exclusive podcast, Peter van Cooten weaves in layers of haunting soundscapes spanning the gray-scale of the ambient universe. It’s a gorgeous soundtrack to the season of tears… I hope you will enjoy!

ambient music, MIXES, surround, videos

Parallax (Mix)

“I’m not formed by things that are of myself alone”

This is the key quote (taken from Stoker) for this mix, which is also ‘not formed by things of itself alone’. Every detail, every short sample, has its origin in another context, another musical composition, from which it is taken to find a new place in a completely different context.

“My ears hear what others cannot hear.”

“Parallax“ is the visual effect that, when you are moving yourself, objects closer to you seem to move by faster than objects in the distance, which slowly seem to move with you in the same direction.
In sound, drones seem to create a somewhat similar effect.
In some way that is what this mix is about: the background sound slowly moving along with you while some other fragments pass by so quick you cannot even focus.
Just don’t try to focus.

“…Now I see things that were hidden from my eyes…”

ambient music, MIXES, surround

Rust (Mix)

The title of this mix is taken from the beautiful soundtrack it heavily leans on: Alexandre Desplat’s “Rust and Bone” (“De Rouille et D’Os”).

“Rust” usually refers to ‘decay’, but in dutch “Rust” simply also means ‘rest‘, (‘tranquil – or ‘repos’ in french).

But – as we say in Holland: “Rust Roest”
– or: “Too much rest will make you rusty…”

In other words: don’t expect just ‘tranquil’ sounds in this mix..
This is nót meant to be your average ‘healing session ambient’ soundtrack… so be prepared…

ambient music, MIXES, surround

Broken Lines (Mix)


HAL's eye

If you have ever watched Stanley Kubrick‘s “2001 – Space Odyssey“, you will definitely remember the impressive scene in which the memory modules are slowly taken away from HAL, the ship’s main computer, because it started to disfunction and became a threat to the astronauts and their mission.
Just before his memory fades completely, HAL remembers being programmed to sing“Daisy”, one of his earliest digital ‘childhood memories’.

With this scene (as well as with HAL‘s name), Kubrick directly referred to the IBM 7094 computer (used to control the Mercury and Gemini space flights, as well as the Apollo missions) which was programmed to sing Daisy in 1961 – a remarkable accomplishment at that time!

Computer systems revolting, loss of memory, human utterings that seem to come from lost souls….
I guess you’d better be prepared for a dark and suspenseful listening hour …

If you have listened to this mix, I’m really curious to know what you think, so please let me know!
(and please let your friends know, also… just spread the word and make these mixes heard …  thanks for your help!)