Click here to download (125MB MP3)

Insomnia has been a big deal in my life for nearly fifteen years. I've seen doctors about it and I've taken medication for it, but it never really goes away.

Sometimes insomnia is just annoying. Other times it can be kind of dangerous. But there's a medium level of insomnia that I've found can be pretty cool. It's that state where you're dead tired but still wide awake and your brain has dried up in just such a way that certain things seem quite a lot more significant than perhaps they would otherwise. It's in this mode that I think insomniacs start to feel creative.

I've learned the Internet is home to quite a lot of us. I like the idea of a small community of friends and strangers who all suffer from the same problem, so, being a dedicated music fan, I occasionally share via Twitter and Facebook a download link to what I think is a special nighttime song, just for my fellow insomniacs. I delete the links when I wake up, just to make the whole thing a little more exclusive.

The songs I choose are ones I think insomniacs will respond to. They're often somber as melancholy is the typical experience for an insomniac, but sometimes they're more upbeat. Really, I try to reach out with my mind and psychically gauge the spirit of the Internet and the people I think might be awake and choose a song accordingly, like I'm DJ'ing somebody's bad mood without knowing who they are or what kind of music they like. 

That last sentence is the sort of thing you could only believe in - even for one second - if you've been awake too long.

I've made several dance mixes and DJ'd a few gigs over the years but never a quiet or ambient mix, so it seemed like a good idea to take the first batch of insomnia songs -- which are largely atmospheric and electronic but not strictly instrumental either -- and create a continuous mix for both insomniacs and regular humans to enjoy, and then do it again when I pile up some more songs on Twitter.

You can download this mix and save it for when you can't sleep, or you can listen to it now if you happen to be reading this in the middle of the night, or whatever. I hope you like it.

Download Insomnia Mix I here.Download my previous mix here.