This week’s mixtape is all about the ethereal and the quiet. Basically, it’s an ambient selection. I know y’all aren’t getting tired of these right?
This Week’s Picks
Intense, dark, ominous. Definitely, words I would use to describe this song. You can almost imagine everyone looking up into the sky and seeing an alien shipping hovering over a city preparing to rain destruction down (think scarier than the ships from Independence Day which were just big flying dinner plates).
New Moon by Dave Keifer (CC-BY)
As the description states from Dave about this song, there is nothing happy about it. It’s a very melancholy and dreary song. The strumming of the guitar gives a wistful tone to the piece, almost lamenting a long lost love or a forgotten memory. To me the best use of this song is for a person that knows they’ve lost the best thing in their life and can’t see the way to get it back.
The Life Above the Clouds by Maxim Kornyshev (CC-BY-SA)
First time I heard this I immediately thought of a cross between the show Marco Polo and the movie Cloud Atlas. The song has very definitive futuristic kinds of tones with the synthesizer but then the beginning and the end give a feeling of being lost in vastness; very similar to some of the music found in Marco Polo. It definitely creates that sense of wonderment and being shown, for the first time, something truly amazing.
Running Waters by Jason Shaw (CC-BY)
Another great guitar piece, Jason Shaw is able to give a sense of driving out on the open road with this song. It creates a feeling of being lost but in a good way, of exploring the unknown but there is plenty of gas in the tank to get you back to the familiar. I think he chose the title because like a bubbling stream, this song provides calmness with its melody.
I think this one of the best songs to end a mixtape with. Kai hasn’t produced any songs that I don’t like. This one is no exception with the light beats and simple tune giving a great sense of hope and possibilities, very different from the earlier songs of this mixtape. If it sounds familiar, it’s because Ron has used this song a number of times in Radio Film School as well as the Breaking the Glass series. To me, any shot you use this song with has to have sunlight in it. It just has that feeling of the yellow and orange rays casting the darkness away and letting inspiration and determine rise.
