Headphone Commute

Good morning, friends. Admittedly, I have been quiet here and somewhat behind in the music I want to share. I promise you, however, that is not due to the lack of attention. If anything, I am focused even more, pouring all of my energy into Headphone Community, where I feature an artist each month, connecting on a much deeper level with a meaningful engagement. If you miss this in the current day and age of thinly veiled unsocial media and algorithmic content, I think you would love this new and intimate space. In March, I featured James Murray, finishing this month with Ben Chatwin, and I'm happy to announce that Erik K. Skodvin will be the featured artist for May! It's only $1 a month, and you also get a significant discount code from the artists' latest albums (it's 80% off!). With that said, I want to share a beautiful mix prepared exclusively for Headphone Commute by Jeremy Young. So why don't you sit back, hit play, and let me tell you more about this artist... Jeremy Young is a Canadian musician from T

Happy Monday, friends. I didn’t publish many mixes last year—probably about four altogether. Do you think I should continue investing time into this? Oh, right. You can’t answer me here, but you can on the newly launched Headphone Community. In any case, some traditions continue. And today, I have the 17th instalment of Mathias Van Eecloo‘s eisOtones series, which comprises 50 tracks from 50 releases of 2024. See all previous editions here. Prepare yourself for a very eclectic selection of tunes, some outside the HC general pathway. This is precisely what I love about this journey – I get to turn to the alleys I don’t generally go down. I like to think of it as a way to reset, cleansing the mind and stepping away from the usual sounds we take for granted. It’s a chance to explore music that exists on the outskirts, the boundaries of which we seem to narrow every day. Mathias is, of course, the founder of the now-concluded Eilean Records, as well as the ongoing IIKKI project and LAAPS, a label focusing on ambi

Looking back at last year, I realised I didn’t publish many episodes on HC Podcast. In fact, besides the celebrations of the year past, I only had Dustin O’Halloran making a Blue Summer Mixtape for me [and for you]. I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest. It’s not like anyone reached out and said, “Hey, what happened to the mixes?” But at least I have this annual tradition where Mike Jedlicka of Optic Echo creates a vinyl-only mix at the beginning of each year. And this is his 14th instalment (if you don’t count his best-of-the-decade mix). As usual, Mike keeps me on my toes by sharing fantastic music that I somehow missed, and it’s a great pleasure to experience his deep knowledge of eclectic selections in a long-form continuous mix. If you like these choices, check out the Optic Echo Presents archive. Enjoy the journey, and may I remind you once again to please support the featured artists and labels! Pick up their releases on Bandcamp, even if you still intend to play them on Spotify on the go! O

With all of my regular hectic programming, I completely forgot to invite other artists and create a mix for the HC Podcast! This is immediately rectified with this wonderful Blue Summer Mixtape by the one and only Dustin O'Halloran. Oh, and if you're just jumping on board this long-running series and want to catch up, there are a total of 330 mixes already published - almost too many to host in one place. So you can either stream them on your favourite platforms or even download the entire archive in one swoop (more on that is detailed here). But back to this fantastic modern classical voyage. Dustin is, of course, no stranger to these lands - I have been celebrating his solo piano career, collaborative film scores with Volker Bertelman (aka Hauschka), and, of course, his gorgeous project with Adam Wiltzie as A Winged Victory For The Sullen since the beginning of time. So, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome Dustin back to the podcast with his very special selection of inspirational music. Dustin is currentl

It's 2024, and Mathias Van Eecloo of LAAPS is back with another instalment (his 16th) of the eisOtones series, where he hand-selects and celebrates 50 pieces from 50 releases of the year. As is the case with other regular contributors to Headphone Commute (like Ryan Griffin of ASIP and Mike Jedlicka of Optic Echo), who continue this ongoing annual ritual, I always look forward to the eclectic sounds of eisOtones. We already know and celebrate the music featured on the LAAPS and IIKKI imprints (a separate showcase of which you can also stream here), and it's always a fascinating dive down the uncharted waters, spanning a diverse collection of genres, labels, and themes. I always think of it as a bit of a refresher (a "head-cleaner", if you will), to rinse the palette from the familiar and "normal" (whatever normal that may be) and check out the sounds on the outer edge of the musical universe, where, for some, they're at the centre, and it's ours that's on edge. So let's turn on, tune in, and drop out...

Yes, folks, I am still rejoicing in last year. What can I say – I love to listen to great music, especially when it’s picked by someone else. And not just anyone – a trusted source! Ryan Griffin and I go back more than a decade now. Secretly, I’m even jealous of his capacity to operate one of the best labels on the scene today. At times, I toyed with the idea of starting a label too – but then, when would I have the time to write these words and share this music? And so, I leave it to the rest. For this annual entry in the Reflections series, we spend three hours (!) in the company of 42+ tracks selected by your reliable guide of A Strangely Isolated Place, where you will surely find new gems and inspirations. I’ll drop a short quote here, but you should check out a detailed write-up on this mix on ASIP’s dedicated page. If this wasn’t enough amazing music, you can also check out Ryan’s previous years’ selections here.

This has been an ongoing tradition for over a decade (by my count, this is the 13th year). This time, I didn’t even reach out with a friendly reminder. Mike Jedlicka of Optic Echo just let me know that he’s already on it, and here we are with a selection of his favourite vinyl releases of the year. Every single year, I complain about the amount of music, and every single year, I keep wanting even more. And even as I drown in all of the releases, it’s always amazing to discover new and fantastic sounds from a trusted source. This trusted source, of course, is Mike Jedlicka. Even if our tastes do not align on all the genres (and that’s a good thing, may I add), I can always appreciate a good selection when I hear one. If you like these choices, be sure to check out the entire archive of Optic Echo Presents mixes (there is even one where he picks his favourites of the decade). Enjoy the journey, and may I remind you once again to please support the featured artists and labels! Won’t you buy a pint or a coffee fo

Good morning, and welcome to the quietest week of the year. Did you have a good holiday? Before I sign off for the year, I think I’ve got one more gem to share with you. This is a wonderful label showcase and a reflection on this past year from a lovely independent Valencia-based imprint, Archives, curated and operated by Agustín Mena, aka Warmth. I’ve profiled plenty of its releases since its inception in 2015, and I must admit that Warmth’s Parallel (2018) has been on repeat more than others. If anything, it is only rivalled by Glow, which is his collaboration with Fionnlagh, recently released on December 8th, 2023 (you’ll hear a few tracks on this mix). In any case, enjoy the mix, and please support the featured artists! For full details and tracklisting, visit Headphone Commute's main site.

Good morning, and welcome to your Tuesday. I have a special entry in Headphone Commute’s Podcast series for you today. And if you’re just getting around to enjoying these, let me remind you that we have 325+ others available directly when you subscribe to the podcast, or you can download them from our offline archive (going back to 2009!). Anyway, it is not just a mix but an entire label showcase of Mathias Van Eecloo‘s amazing LAAPS imprint, covering releases in the last two years (2022-2023). I’ve hosted the first such showcase two years ago, so be sure to check out LAAPS 2020-2021 mix as well. Oh, and Mathias was generous enough to throw in a few IIKKI releases in there as well (just check out this tracklist!), so this is truly a compilation of some of the best experimental ambient albums from both of his fantastic labels, continuously mixed exclusively for you! As always, if you enjoy what you hear, please support the featured artists, and in this case, the labels as well!

Today, we conclude the 9+ hour mix by Roel Funcken with its sixth and final part. It's been a real journey, exactly as predicted, connecting time in a single, comforting, and beautiful stretch of sonic weave. If you pay attention to the track listing, you will notice how Funcken threaded pieces from repeating artists (sometimes even a few from the same release) to create a cohesive musical voyage, along with his expertly practised touch of additional post-processing to get it all nicely glued together. As promised, you can enjoy these instalments in a single long-playing track, which Funcken originally shared on his Soundcloud account under a different name. You can stream this and even download it here. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed your time with us, please support the featured artists and labels!

Arriving at part five of a 9+ hour ambient mix by Roel Funcken, I am exactly with it as intended. This is a continuous ambient journey, serving as a bridge between fragmented times, uniting days and months into a single voyage. For a while, I’ve had an image in my mind as if we all move in a circle, approaching seasons in their respective physical locations (winter is on top), traversing time as we rotate on the perimeter. I wonder where it’s from? Perhaps they showed me that in elementary school, and it stuck. Do you, as well, have that peculiar perception? But what if we stand still and time moves through us like a tape? An endless river of events arrives from the unknown into the present and finally recedes into the past. And we are nothing but observers… You can find the previous four parts right here. I’ll see you on the other side!  

We’re almost halfway through the series, and today, I’m publishing the fourth instalment of this 6-part mix by Roel Funcken. How are you getting on with it? Don’t forget that I’ll share the full, uninterrupted, 9+ hour continuous journey once this podcast series is completed. I can tell you that I’ve personally listened more than a couple of times to each entry, noticing the tiny nuances that are the handiwork of Funcken, who is not only the selector but also the navigator of this trip but is also a bit of a producer behind the transitions – not only using volume to fade in and out but also a few time-based effects here and there (delay, reverb, etc.) to create seamless transitions between each piece. It’s not something you usually notice in mixes, but I can tell you that Funcken has consistently been doing that in his. If you’re new to this series, check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

September’s upon us, and just as predicted, this third part of the 9+ hour Gorreliann Plasebant mix by Roel Funcken serves as a type of bond, creating continuation in a somewhat fragmented turn of events. As if on cue, the temperature dropped, and the weather has changed, and the sunshine and warmth are somewhere in the memory, recalled through some words and, of course, through this music. There are lots of great pieces on here as well, painting the Autumn sky with the colours of sound, and as usual with these travels, I should let all these tracks do the talking instead. Once again, the azure gorgeous sphere is courtesy of the original artwork created by Funcking with acrylic paint. And yes, once I finish the series, I will share the mix in its entirety. Enjoy!

It is Tuesday morning, and perhaps you’re on your way to work. Or maybe you’re already in front of the computer reading through those emails that can surely ruin your day. Or perhaps you’re just waking up to all the possibilities this day may come to offer. Being open to the “good” and the “bad” without colouring these with your expectations and simply watching things unfold — the way a flower would without judgment. To help you onboarding for your day (even if you’re not listening to this on another Tuesday morning), I’ve got a second part of Roel Funcken‘s Gorreliann Plasebant mix, which I am publishing in six parts over the upcoming weeks, as we transition into another season. Once again, I want to point your eye to the beautiful original artwork created by Funcken himself using acrylic paint and point your ear to his skill at seamlessly transitioning between the selected pieces, taking us on a gorgeous journey through another Tuesday morning. Enjoy!  

Summer is almost over. I just took some time to travel a bit again, and as usual, when I return, it’s always difficult to get back into the swing of things. Thankfully, I have an easy task ahead of me today because Roel Funcken has done all the work for me. If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed that today I’m only publishing the first section of a 6-part (9+ hours!) Gorreliann Plasebant mix, which I will link to in its entirety at the end of this series, in which Roel traverses some of his favourite ambient and contemporary classical pieces of the day. I love every minute of it and look forward to revealing each part every week, seamlessly taking us from the end of summer into the beginning of fall. Let’s hope that I can keep this going through September! But for now, enough words! Enjoy the music! And don’t forget to check out Funcken’s latest output as part of Funckarma and Legiac, which you can find on his Bandcamp. Oh, and all artwork is taken from Roel’s original acrylic paintings!

I think I met Joseph sometime in 2008 when he was running his Solipsistic Nation podcast. We shared the same taste in electronic music, and in 2010 I prepared a mix called “DSM-IV-TR“. This seems to be a long time ago now, but Joseph and I still keep in touch. So when he asked me to follow up with another instalment, I gladly pulled out my latest favourite pieces to prepare this mix. These days his show is called Soundwave, where he continues to showcase some of the best artists on the scene, including many of my favourites like zakè, Billow Observatory, and Mike Cadoo, as well as co-conspirators in writing, like Peter van Cooten of Ambientblog, and many other eclectic artists, who are new to my ears and are always a pleasure to discover! My original mix premiered as episode #163 in July of this year, and today I am happily republishing it here for syndication. I think this music needs more ears, and I hope you enjoy the journey! In this mix, I focused on exploring the very edges of the sonic landscape, where

Fields We Found is the moniker of an artist and the newly-launched quiet details label founder, bathing our ears with ambient bliss. In the last few years, we were gifted with deep-evolving soundscapes appearing on Ambientologist, Seil Records, and Handstiched Recordings, with the most recent album, Paths, “… exploring the routes we all choose and where they take us” on Facture. Late in 2022, Alex also put out music on the beloved Home Normal, run with tremendous devotion by the one and only Ian Hawgood. Today’s mix on Headphone Commute Podcast is essentially a love letter to our mutually adored ambient imprint, showcasing a lot of the beautiful music appearing on the label. Please support the label, check out the full tracklisting and more words from Alex on the mix directly on the site: https://hcdi.gs/trees

Sofia Nystrand is a Stockholm-based composer with an anticipated new album M​å​nens Hav, due out on June 2nd, 2023, via the German LEITER imprint. This follow-up to her 2019 record Hav, is deeply influenced by her childhood experiences growing up in the Swedish archipelago of Roslagen. With her music, she explores the duality of beauty and brutality in nature, “awe and fear, magic and sorcery,” and how it shapes our emotions and creative expressions. For this Headphone Commute Mix, Sofia compiles a selection of pieces that she listened to while composing her album. Here, we can find all of our favourites, from Grouper to Nils Frahm, from Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres to Tim Linghaus and his collaboration with Nystrand as Vargkvint. Sprinkle in a bit of This Mortal Coil, and you will get a sense of the influencing themes that permeated the music on her upcoming release, which in Swedish means “Oceans of the Moon”.

I am always happy to bring new sounds to your ears [and mine!], and today I’ve got a mix showcasing some special selections from the upcoming boutique music festival named Q3Ambientfest, which will take place this year in June. Creating a perfect balance between some established and emerging artists of various genres and diverse origins, this event showcases a wide range and reach of the music scene. The festival [and this mix] is curated by Brueder Selke, East Berlin-born, Potsdam-based, multi-instrumental composers Sebastian and Daniel Selke, who are also known under their pseudonym CEEYS. “Each year, Brueder Selke invite like-minded friends and renowned artists to meet on a common, physical stage, and, with performances that range between academic avant-garde and accessible pop, develop a kind of cinematic music that holds a mirror up to and makes audible the eclectic architecture of the world-famous Filmstadt Potsdam, with its neoclassical palaces and socialist brutalism.” For this hour-long showcase, the

I've got an exceptional podcast for you today, folks. It's not a mix but rather a continuous, single, long-playing track composed by Fields We Found. I'm sharing this fantastic music as an opening to an introduction to a brand new label, quiet details, which I will be profiling this week. Founded this year by the artist behind this piece, the imprint focuses on each artist's interpretation of the phrase after which the label is named. Spanning multiple genres, the upcoming releases explore this idea in each artist's unique way, with the catalogue and upcoming schedule including names such as the humble bee, Fields Line Cartographer, Luke Sanger, bvdub, zakè, and many others [with nearly two years of releases planned already!], whom I'm sure we'll find on these pages. Each release will be accompanied by handmade artwork, with the music and each artist's intuition as a guide to the palette and structure, available as a physical item with bespoke packaging and individual prints. It's a wonderful series to follow