A new space music ambient trance download with a psychill twist this week. A few listeners have asked for some more mixes with that Ultimae records like sound so here you are guys. I don't do too many spacey ambient trance mixes purely because I don't get a lot of that music in my mailbox. I would love to do more but there just aren't that many producers out there outside of the Ultimae and CosmicLeaf Records roster that produce that kind of psychill. Anyway here we have a nice mix of tunes that builds up from a rather slow dark ambient beginning into some pulsating ambient trance in the second half before a soft touch down.

We kick off with the suitably titled Take Off from Connect.Ohm. Connect.Ohm is a collaboration between composers Hidetoshi Koizumi (Hybrid Leisureland) and  Alexandre Scheffer (Cell). Both are well-known to fans of Ultimae records and have graced a number of my past mixes in their solo projects. This track comes from their debut album, 9980, released last year and marks another triumphant collaboration from the labels established artists. You can grab a download of 9980 through Ultimae Records online shop.

Next up is another Ultimae team member. Mihalis Aikaterinis is the name behind project Miktek, an ambient music producer who gained a lot of recognition recently with his album Anisotropy on label Abstrakt Reflections. He is due to release a new album on Ultimae this year so keep an eye out for it - should be awesome. This track, Flying Dots, comes from the excellent compilation Greenosopy.

Lauge and Baba Gnohm are up next with their track Nostalgi from the Critical Beats 2012 charity release A Conversation Between Two Trees. Critical Beats works with indigenous communities in the Amazon to share their music and their stories with the world to raise awareness about the gifts of the culture, the needs of the people, and the critical state of the forest. Copenhagen based Lauge and Baba have released a couple of great recordings over the past few years and I recommend following them on Facebook where they often share info on their recent activity and provide links to great dj mixes that they find or are involved in. And believe me they find some good ones ! They have quite a few releases on Bandcamp too.

Here is a great little collection of trippy psychedelic rock posters from the 60s featuring bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floyd to name a few. 

I really love the simplicity of these designs. 40 years before the advent of Photoshop artists like Rick Griffin and friends were pumping out spectacular hand crafted works of psychedelic brilliance. 

Sixties psychedelic art went on to inspire so many great artists and musicians over the following decades. I see definite echos of the original 60s style in modern day graffiti and psychedelic visionary art too. I suspect they were also used as general trippy pictures to look at when high back then too.

Finally managed a new psybient mix on the blog !  I have been busy importing many of my old CDs into iTunes these past few weeks so I've put a few classic tunes into this mix along with a few spicy new numbers as usual.

As far as the old tunes go I really dig the track "Homeworld" by Protoculture ( Nate Raubenheimer ) which appeared on his psytrance album "Refractions " back in 2003. Great album by the way for those of you who like psytrance from the period when the bass-lines were tight and pumping. I always love it when psytrance guys have a crack at producing psychill music. It doesn't seem to happen so often these days but about 10 years ago it was quite common to find a sizzling psybient tune as the final track on many a psytrance album as is this case with this Refractions.

In a similar vein are the two psybient downtempo tracks by Australian psytrance legends Mantrix. Although Mantrix are sadly no longer around, one core member is creating great ethnodub psybient tunes as part of his Temple Step Project group and has a spiffy new website so check it out here. I bumped into Temple Step years ago while I was DJing at a festival in Australia - really nice guy who deserves lots of support with his upcoming EP in March.