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Optical Frameworks - Vibrant  -  more ambient & less musical than the other Optical Frameworks releases but still interesting.
cv313 - dimensional space  -  very typical Echospace music, good dubby beats & synth washes.

non-ambient:
Elbow - The Take Off And Landing Of Everything  -  haven't really listened to this yet as I just pre-ordered it today but got the immediate download.  First time through sounds excellent.
St Vincent - St Vincent  -  Excellent!  But then I have a thing for Annie Clark. 

Just finished "Sand" by Hugh Howley.  Similarly to how he released "Wool", "Sand" was published as a serial with all the books being collected in the omnibus edition. 

Howley is very good at creating unique worlds and in this tale old world America has been buried under shifting dunes of sand.  We never find out why the world is the way it is but that doesn't matter.  I got totally sucked in by this at once familiar and alien world. 

Some of the characters are "sand divers," they somehow literally dive deep into the sand to forage for relics from the old world.  Special suits allow them to move through the sand almost like divers in water.  The tech is never explained but, again, it didn't matter.  I totally bought every part of this story.  Highly recommended, as is his Wool Omnibus.

Julio,

Got mine on Bandcamp...

http://losttribesound.bandcamp.com/album/hymnal-remixes

Benoît Pioulard - Hymnal Remixes - excellent collection of artists & styles with remixes by Loscil, Remote Viewer, Field Rotation, Brambles, Segue, The Green Kingdom & more.
Recondite - Hinterland - late night, lonely electronic music with beats, maybe too upbeat for something described as lonely but overall it's a melancholy trip.
stormloop - arctic conditions - pretty much what it sounds like, drone-like arctic ambience.


And one non-ambient release:

Damien Jurado - Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son - the first great record of 2014.

Mike,

I just re-started "A Wise Man's Fear."  I can't remember why I put it down, maybe something new came out that caught my interest.  But I'm back into it now & am looking forward to finishing it off.  I really enjoyed the first in the series.  I'm not usually a fan of the fantasy genre but these books are excellent.

Other recent books...

"Something More Than Night" by Ian Tregillis  -  I absolutely loved Tregillis' "Milkweed Triptych" about Nazi supermen & British warlocks.  Yes, I know that sound ridiculous, but it works.  Definitely one of my favorite set of books in the ten years.  His new one is "Something More Than Night" & it's a bit hard to describe.  According to the Amazon description it's "a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas’s vision of Heaven. It’s a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God."  Very bizarre premise and setting that actually works.

"The Human Division (Old Man's War)" by John Scalzi  -  I'm very happy to have new stories set in the universe of Old Man's War even if this book is a bit unfocused.  It started out as a 13 part online serial then was put together with a new coda as this book.  I still enjoyed it even though the stories jump around a bit.  Scalzi's writing is very readable & you can crank through the material quickly and it's a lot of fun along the way.

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu  -  A normal, everyday programmer wakes up with a voice in his head.  That voice is actually an alien life form that resides in human hosts.  The programmer gets drawn into a war being fought by factions of the alien race here on earth.  I liked this well enough & enjoyed the concept but I'm not sure yet whether I'll continue with the next books that are sure to come.

I haven't posted about any of my mixes in a while but I figured this one was worth calling attention to.

It's a guest mix by the Hypnos Forums' own chris23.  Chris had never done a mix when I asked him to do one and he was a little hesitant but decided to give it a shot.  the result is an outstanding mix of neo-classical ambient goodness.

Download it here:
Low Light Mixes

Stream it here:
Mixcloud

t r a c k l i s t :
Field Rotation - The Repetition of History
Ekca Liena and Spheruleus - Scrambling Radiosonde
From the Mouth of the Sun - Sitting in a Roofless Room
Orla Wren - Five Acre Ladder (Reprise)
Antonymes - Misshapen Beauty [ii]
The Seaman and the Tattered Sail - Her Whispers
Christoph Berg - Coda

Thanks Chris!!

Every year I come up with two lists of favorites, one of ambient/electronic music & one of "normal" music.  By normal I mean music that may actually be played on the radio.   Indie, alternative, rock, Americana, whatever you want to call it, most of my list would be played only on college or indie stations, not regular commercial radio.

So here are my personal favorites from 2013...

Favorite albums of 2013:

1. Blaudzun - Heavy Flowers
2. John Vanderslice- Dagger Beach
3. Volcano Choir - Repave
4. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
5. Phosphorescent - Muchacho
6. Kacey Musgraves - Same Trailer Different Park
7. The National - Trouble Will Find Me
8. John Vanderslice - Diamond Dogs
9. Mikal Cronin - MCII
10. Darkside - Psychic
11. Jon Hopkins - Immunity
12. Vic & Gab - Love of Mine
13. Elvis Costello & The Roots - Wise Up Ghost
14. Boards of Canada - tomorrow's harvest
15. The Flaming Lips - Peace Sword ep
16. Wavves - Afraid of Heights
17. Rhye - Woman
18. Daughter - If You Leave
19. Public Service Broadcasting - inform - educate - entertain
20. San Fermin - San Fermin

The songs of 2013:

1. Phosphorescent - Song for Zula
2. Mother Falcon - Dirty Summer
3. Kacey Musgraves - Merry Go Round
4. Vampire Weekend - Unbelievers
5. Moby - The Perfect Life (with wayne coyne)
6. The National - I Need My Girl
7. Jose Gonzalez - Step Out
8. Jonathan Boulet - You're a Animal
9. Volcano Choir - Bygone
10. Nonono - Pumpin Blood
11. Postino - I Love It(Mo Funk Mix)
12. Mikal Cronin - Weight
13. Bonobo - Cirrus
14. MIA - Bring the Noize
15. Laura Mvula - Like the Morning Dew
16. Daniel and the Lion - The Dark Red Waltz
17. Hardwell - Spaceman
18. Jon Hopkins - Open Eye Signal
18. Night Beds - Ramona
19. Oscar Isaac & Marcus Mumford - Fare Thee Well
20. Andrew Bird - Pulaski at Night


You can find audio samples to the best album list here... http://lowlightmixes.blogspot.com/2013/12/best-of-2013.html

I've been on an ambient dub kick lately...

the nautilus project - excursions
Axs - Arctic Circle
Cold Tear Records - The Sound of Nature Vol.1
Blamstrain - Tundra I-VII

All Bandcamp releases.

Andrew Bird - The Quietest Show on Earth - I've been in an Andrew Bird mood for the past week or two & was happy to discover this download of a small live show in the Mojave Desert.  You can find it here... http://www.quietestshowonearth.com/

seaman and the tattered sail - light folds - Might be my favorite ambient recording of the year.

Moritz von Oswald & Nils Petter Molvaer - 1/1 - This one is fantastic.  Dubby electronics with Molvaer's trumpet over the top.  I'm not sure when it will be available on the US but I didn't want to wait so I broke down & bought it on ebay for $30.

tonefloat-ikon - streams of consciousness 132406 - Got this at Bandcamp thanks to an earlier post here.  Very nice.

Pop spins...

San Fermin - San Fermin - excellent chamber-pop.
The Reigning Monarchs - Black Sweater Massacre - surf + ska + punk = awesome.
The Clash - Sound System - I'd forgotten how much I love this band.
The Avett Bros. - Magpie And The Dandelion - I'm not overwhelmed with this one yet.  I think I just OD'd on The Avett Bros the last few years.


Electronic...

Optical Framework - Aether Blueprints - nice ambient, dub that ebbs & flows beautifully.
Deepchord - Electrostatic Soundfields - more good ambient dub.
Vytis - Deepchord Avenue - even more ambient dub.
Hibernate - We Like Ambient, Curated by Isnaj Dui - One of 4 different samplers, I recently bought at Bandcamp of Hibernate records ambient music available for name your price.  Each curated by a different Hibernate artist.,