Tears In Rain: A Tribute Album to Blade Runner (FCR)

A very well produced compilation paying tribute to the sound of Vangelis' Blade Runner sound track. The beginning of 'Shinjuku Rose' is a bit jarring, but the rest of the track - and album are stellar.

Full size album art:

glo - sovande (Ambient soundscape album)

Another wonderful (and free!) release by gℓo. Perfect background music for work or contemplation:

Album as a single mix or individual tracks via Bandcamp.


gℓo
Soundcloud
Bandcamp

Top 20 tracks with personal anecdotes from Joshua Leeds

A fascinating article that mingles musical recommendation with personal anecdotes from Joshua Leeds life and experiences. Joshua is best known for his part in Telefon Tel Aviv and current productions with Sons of Magdalene in sombre minimalist electronica.

http://warmer-climes.blogspot.ro/2015/09/warmer-mixtapes-1466-by-joshua-leeds.html

A few of my favourites from his list of 20 tracks:

Autechre - Eutow


Round Five - Na Fe Throw It (Feat. Tikiman)


william basinski - melancholia ii


Aphex Twin - Rhubarb


Red House Painters - Have You Forgotten


Wendy & Bonnie - Children Laughing

High Tides ~ ~ ~ Chillwave

High Tides self-titled 1st release is some very relaxing tropical/coastal sounding chillwave (in the vein of Tycho) with a touch of TOBACCO's Psychrock and some wonderful nowave styled looping mixed in.



The pre-release tracks (Coastal Cruise '86, and Sunware) compromised my go-to soundtrack this summer, and I can't recommend High Tides enough:



Five of the tracks even have custom music videos that use recycled vintage 8mm-style beach videos from the 1960s-1980s to further shape the beach aesthetic High Tides flows with. It's a nice touch.

Interestingly enough, some early versions of the tracks are available on a near-forgotten Soundcloud account, but have been primarily released through Rad Cult (Tobacco's label) on their Soundcloud.

The only substantial presence this has is on BandCamp - so go buy this now, as it's worth appreciating in levels beyond the 128k MP3 preview quality.

Vaporwave

I've been aware of this genre of music for some time, but had no idea it had a name. It didn't fit into any genre playlists I'd constructed, but the mood fit perfectly with many specific mix sets as bumpers, or transitions from one state to another. Fitting that it would be called 'Vaporwave':

Vaporwave was first characterized by its heavy use of samples from late 70's, '80s, '90s and early 2000's music, typically lounge, smooth jazz or Muzak. Samples are often pitched, layered or altered in classic chopped and screwed style.

The genre emerged in 2011 from online communities [...] Imagery associated with vaporwave includes glitch art, Classical sculpture, '90s web design, outmoded computer renderings and classic cyberpunk aesthetics. 

Use of Japanese characters and other non western writing systems is also prominent. Music writer, Adam Harper of Dummy Mag, describes the genre as "ironic and satirical or truly accelerationist", and that the name "vaporwave" itself is a nod to both vaporware, products that are announced but never actually manufactured or cancelled, and to the idea of [emotional] energy being subjected to relentless sublimation under capitalism. [Wikipedia]

Often, Infinity Frequencies [SoundCloud] tracks feel like I've fallen asleep as a child with the TV on: back when signals were analogue, and subject to distortion. I miss those days. More to be found via Reddit.

Marconi Union - Weightless

Haven - You Should Know_

gℓo ( glo )

https://soundcloud.com/gloneiric

Tycho - Awake Album

Via NPR:

The instrumental music San Francisco's Scott Hansen makes as Tycho splits the difference between post-rock's melodic architecture and pop ambient's immersive, uplifting environments. Hansen's aims felt a little harder to grasp on the sprawling Dive, the 2011 predecessor of his fourth album as Tycho, Awake. The latter is a slickly constructed album that finds him streamlining both his setup and his aims — the sounds he uses and how he deploys them are more considered and purposeful. 

Awake is focused on the dynamic between driving rhythms that wouldn't be out of place in M83's '80s-worshipping work and the stargazing romanticism of Ulrich Schnauss. In all of these songs, electric bass and live drums are locked on cruise control as litanies of guitar and Minimoog lines peel off in divergent, kaleidoscopic patterns. Things never crystallize into narrative song structures, but Tycho never loses the plot, offering the listener a steady succession of thematically united vignettes. In contrast to both the tension-and-release tactics employed by the likes of Mogwai and the wintry narcolepsy of Kompakt's Pop Ambient compilations, this succinct album — clocking in at just under 40 minutes — contents itself with being a seamless, vaguely melancholic reverie. 

Awake humbly suggests itself as the soundtrack to a sunbaked road trip, capturing the inexplicable nostalgia you feel imagining a new life in a new town glimpsed from the highway. Transitions within and between individual tracks take place so smoothly they register mostly as changes in atmospheric pressure rather than plot points. So when the album concludes with the floating "Plains," there's a nagging sense that it has done so prematurely. Music often requires some acclimatization before it can be fully appreciated. In Tycho's case, it's returning to the real world that takes effort.

The full album can be streamed from the NPR posting, found here.

Update: 

The full album is available for streaming/purchase links on SoundCloud: