music to fall asleep to

Also: Selected Ambient Works II, Bola's Soup and pretty much anything by Isan (esp. Beautronics!)

Mark P. I have mentioned this album often on ilm expecting someone to take the bait. they never did. it's probably my favourite album evah. so, er, nice one!

And on a slightly related note...

I have a really bad habit of playing my synths/drum machines late at night and getting into a big epic-sounding droney soundscape thing, and totally falling asleep right there with my fingers on the keys and the headphones on my head. Maybe I should start recording that stuff. :D

I actually fell asleep listening to Acetone's "If you Only Knew" last night, so I guess it can be added to the list.

top 5 fall 2002 choices at my house:
the necks - sex
js bach - musical offering
pauline oliveros, stuart dempster, panaiotis - deep listening
boards of canada - music has the right to children
miles davis - in a silent way

Rafael Toral (his latest is both stunning and lulling)
Thomas Koener

But as regards the qu, what could be more pleasant than drifting off to some late 60s Francoise Hardy?

Aw, thanks!

Oddly enough, the other day I just wrote and sent in an article on this very subject for CTCL! Thank you, hivemind. ;-)

Favorites include the Cure's Faith, Lull's Cold Summer and most anything by Main.

There was this test with flowers and music. Apparently the flowers tried to embrace the speakers when baroque music was playing, they moved away from them when rock music was playing and they happily stayed where they were for jazz.

I've tried listening to this falling asleep, as it's one of my favorite super-mellow albums, and for some reason it gives me this weird wide-awake serenity, kinda like telling my body 'no you don't want to sleep, you'll miss this beautiful beautiful note that John McLaughlin is playing here..."

And then this...
"What I like about classical jazz is that it doesn't impose itself."

Unless of course it's played by Charlie Parker. :D

Is that the Centrefuge EP? I listened to that one almost every night for about a month.

Other nighttime picks: Datacide's Flowerhead, Stars of the Lid's The Ballasted Orchestra, Labradford's Prazision, the Fine Arts LP of Mozart's Dissonant quartet, and an album of old 78s of Chinese music called Rain Dropping on the Banana Tree.

(A bad choice for weird dreams: Trance Resonance by Magical Power Mako.)

I've been listening to the same old mix of 90s ambient and Kompakt Pop Ambient era stuff to sleep to for a long time now, and have been trying to put together a compilation of a different style of music to drift off too. I am sensitive to anything that is sad or bleak, and my wife hates any kind of high pitched noises in music. I've been thinking about going a more comforting organic-sounding route; soft piano, guitars, minimal drums (if any). I'm OK with soft singing. Right now I am digging around in the catalogs of Grouper, Calexico, various Robin Guthrie collabs, Mirroring, Barn Owl/Jon Porras, and Rameses III. Anyone have any recommendations along these lines?

Even if not, I liked this thread and thought it would be fun to bump. I'm especially interested in newer musicians who have made music that falls into this category.

I don't usually listen to music while I'm falling asleep. Too distracting. But for something that puts me in a more relaxed frame of mind, I like the FM3 Buddha Machine (original) .

laurie spiegel - the expanding universe (the 28 minute title track)
i almost never am awake to hear the end of yo la tengo's "night falls on hoboken"

Going back a couple of years Jesse Sykes is great. I'm partial to Reckless Burning and Oh, My Girl.

See, I think I would find the expanding universe to be a little abrasive for bedtime listening, but I've never really tried it at a low volume so that may be worth a shot.

SomaFM - Drone Zone and Stillstream Internet radio stations are pretty good. I keep my phone next to my bed with those playing at low volumes most nights and they work well.

yo la tengo's "night falls on hoboken"

this album was my falling asleep music for a long time, but then something happened to the cd so that night falls on hoboken turned into a high-frequency high-volume machine gun assault halfway through. not so good from that point on.

if you like to fall asleep with your tv on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve5dUOWI0q4&list=UUci2c90HJbY0VAS3_eLF3Wg

in college my go-to going to sleep record was grey larsen & malcolm dalglish - banish misfortune

for some reason i find orbvs terrarvm utterly comforting late at night

music for 18 musicians makes for a great listening experience when you're kinda groggy lying in bed with the lights out

windy and carl- the Dreamhouse

wim mertens - stratégie de la rupture

i usually find naps really disorienting and unpleasant to wake up from, but yesterday i fell asleep to/woke up to lee hazlewood and it was the best sleep, and i thought, i CAN rejoin the world. if you avoid the records with nancy sinatra or any of the other girls there aren't high-pitched noises; and a lot of his stuff i think is only bleak/sad if you are already sad. it's not my favorite album but i think listening to "trouble is a lonesome town" is a great one to fall asleep to because there are lots of parts where it's just a comforting rumbly voice saying cowboy stuff in a soothing way.

i can't believe i used to listen to music every night to fall asleep when i was in jr high/ high school, i never even think to do it now. i guess not being able to choose when you go to bed when you're young has something to do with it. my old stereo just broke but i can't bring myself to throw away the remote; i had carved all of the buttons up in various ways with scissors so i could feel which one was play or pause or repeat in the dark. i have no idea how i fell asleep to stupid pop punk cds for years.

First time i heard VU's "Loaded" i fell asleep during the 2nd side. And it was the middle of the day and i was completely sober.

Oh yeah, some Flying Saucer Attack is nice to fall asleep to.

SomaFM - Drone Zone and Stillstream Internet radio stations are pretty good. I keep my phone next to my bed with those playing at low volumes most nights and they work well.

― brotherlovesdub

I love Drone Zone and that type of stuff for reading at night, but DZ never fails to wake me up with some tense sounding shit when I fall asleep to it.

Some good suggestions here to check out. Any who aren't bothered by sad sounding stuff; The Dead Texan is an all-time classic sleep album.

I set a 2hr timer. Generally I'll never hear the music stop but I have encountered some jarring changes in sound before on DZ and Stillstream. I was going to suggest Space Station Soma because I love hearing ambient music with the sounds of astronauts talking but it's not the best for sleeping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLRV_WgrNLg

big audio dynamite ii's 'kool-aid' ep is basically a sleeping tablet

Brian Eno's Bloom, Trope, and Scape apps are my go-to sources for going-to-sleep music lately.

I went through a stage a couple weeks ago listening to Henry Mancini's The Versatile Henry Mancini every night. Quite Dreamy.

i luuurve those brian eno apps. wish they'd play in the background when you swicth to other apps like messaging and stanza and so on though!

Brian Eno
Mazzy Star
Chet Baker
Cocteau Twins
Nick Drake

didn't work for me
Boards of Canada

I used to listen to the second disc of Miles Davis's Pangaea to fall asleep years ago. I would think Sunn O))) at low volume would work, too, but have never actually tried that. These days, I have a noise machine in my bedroom that I have set to play traffic sounds. Amazingly relaxing.

http://www.soundcloud.com/etape/t-12

e/tape t/12

i luuurve those brian eno apps. wish they'd play in the background when you swicth to other apps like messaging and stanza and so on though!

On the iPhone, at least, you can set it to do exactly that. Not sure about on the iPad.

terry riley, persian surgery dervishes. have prob spun that one hundreds of times while drifting off to sleep.

Motion Sickness of Time Travel