Music for working on photos

I'd call this post semi-off topic, but it's my blog and I post what I want here anyway. :D I'm posting this because music has always been one of my greater passions (in fact, it used to be my own creative outlet before I started with photography), and with the internet there's been a remarkable shift in the availability of music - free music, to be precise.

I'm listening to music most of the time when I'm working on photos, but it has to be music that is not too obtrusive. And I admit I'm a huge fan of electronic music in general, and goa/trance in particular (and I mean the oldskool stuff with that) but a thumping 4/4 beat with swirling acidtrance riffs is not really the soundtrack and background music for working on photos. At least not for me.

To work on photos, I prefer the Ambient and Chill-Out genre*, and I'd like to list some of my favorite blogs and sites that offer high quality "mixtapes" and releases for the digital age. I prefer downloading mixes and digital albums over listening to endless internet radio streams - simply because there's a track list that allows me to go back after a couple of listens, and identify one or the other outstanding track and artist. [and I always like to give any mix a couple of chances. Sometimes a mix might not fit my mood right now but works very well for me when listening to it again later.]

And as I always use to say: if there's just one person out there that will benefit from what I write and share here, it's a good thing and my "mission" is accomplished. :) Anyway... enough babbling.

• Peter van Cooten runs AmbientBlog with reviews, mixes, and whatnot. He even has an Android app so you can stream his mixes. And his mixes are outstanding: not just one song playing after the other with some gently fading, sometimes there's three or four pieces of audio overlapping and playing together. Awesome stuff.
• The Hydrogen Cafe stopped publishing new mixes unfortunately, but the old ones are still there.
• PsyAmb is another blog that offers mixes of Psychedelic Ambient and Chill-Out (a genre that evolved from Goa and Psychedelic Trance.) - you can also get the DIFM "psychill" channel mixes from here.
• Ping Things is another weblog, and a netlabel as well with releases you can download.
• Dave Michuda offers his Low Light Mixes in a blog.
• distance recordings is a net label with a very enjoyable output.
• Passage is another net label with nice ambient electronica goodness.
• The Internet Archive has a good amount of the old Serein net label output available. One of the most outstanding pieces IMHO is the Nest album "Retold" from 2007 (I bought the FLAC download but a part of the tracks is available for free as an EP.)

I like these mixes so much because they're mostly unobtrusive background music that floats along nicely, doesn't get tiring, or drawing too much attention and thus helps me to stay focused on what I really want to do: work on photos! Maybe the most important aspect is that I really do not recognize too many of the songs in these mixes and can just enjoy them without being distracted.

*) it's highly arguable how to keep the genres apart, and as with all things that you want to put into drawers, they might fit into more than one. :) Personally, I decided that "Ambient" is the mostly beatless and/or non-percussive stuff, while Chill-Out has some drums and percussive rhythm elements.