It's final exam week here at UW-Madison. Technically, this show fell on "study day"; the university gives students an entire day off between the last day of classes and the first day of exams. Can you believe that, one whole day to prepare for your exams?! Whatever the case, we figured we'd offer the students some soothing sounds for their study sessions (holy alliteration, Batman!). What started off mostly as a joke - I (Andrew) thought it'd be funny to do a whole set of super chill new-age music - turned into a fairly serious set of classic ambient music from the 1960s-1980s.
Most of this music (though maybe not all of it... I'm looking at you, Michael Jones) is actually very good and well worth your listening attention. I'll spare you my "in defense of new-age" lecture for another time, in part because this set ended up leaning a bit more heavily on electronic, progressive, minimalist, and other ambient music styles that evade the "new-age" tag. (We've got plenty more of this music set aside, so expect an Ambient 2 set in the very near future - that one will likely delve more deeply into the heart of the 1980s new-age music genre/movement.)
By the way, this was our last show of the Spring semester and our last show for awhile in our regular Saturday night slot. We're not able to keep to a normal schedule this summer. But we'll still host some broadcasts over the next few months, they'll just be a bit sporadic - follow our Twitter for announcements about future appearances.
Here's the playlist for the 2-hour set Ambient 1: Music for Studying, which was broadcast on Saturday, May 9, 2015:
Vangelis - "Hymne"
Iasos - "Formentera Sunset Clouds"
Steven Halpern - "3rd Chakra: E"
Patrick O'Hearn - "Malevolent Landscape"
Kitaro - "Silk Road Theme (Shichu No Michi)"
Steve Roach - "Towards the Dream"
Popol Vuh - "Ah!"
Ashra - "Deep Distance"
Tangerine Dream - "Phaedra"
Terry Riley - "Across the Lake of the Ancient Word"
Andreas Vollenweider - "Hall of the Stairs/Hall of the Mosaics (Meeting You)"
Harold Budd & Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois - "Late October"
John Fahey - "View (East from the Top of the Riggs Road B&O Trestle)"
William Ackerman - "The Impending Death of the Virgin Spirit"
Michael Hedges - "Spare Change"
George Winston - "Sea"
Michael Jones - "Morning Mist"
Mark Isham - "Raffles in Rio"
Jean Michel Jarre - "Oxygene (Part II)"
[Archived audio of this show is currently unavailable. Check back soon.]
