Last week, when this month’s episode of Join The Future aired on Noods Radio – on my birthday, in fact – I was otherwise engaged up in Scotland, wandering around the Loch Lomand and The Trossachs National Park. I took in some dramatic waterfalls, dense forests, and a few steep hills.

Ironically, this month’s show, which you can stream via the embedded Soundcloud player further down the page, would have made an excellent accompaniment to my activities in nature. Following on from last month’s “cooling sounds for extreme heat” ambient adventure, I decided one more to offer up a heady musical mix of ambient sounds old and new, field recordings, curious spoken word snippets, new gems, classic beat-free cuts, folktronica, folksy loveliness, and a few of my own fresh reworks and adjustments. Look out for more of these, as part of a higher profile project, later in the year.

I would say this, but there’s some fantastic stuff in there, from the slowly spun melancholia of The Black Dog’s ‘Soft Collapse’ (from the Sheffield veterans excellent new album, Feral Grace), and the acid-flecked ambient-meets-IDM of Global Communication remixing their own ‘Biosphere’ (originally released as Reload), to the folktronica excellence of Mintotaur Shock remixing Juni Habel (‘Pearl Cloud Song’), the out-there bliss of Grouper’s ‘Alien Observer’, and the gentle joy of Frankie Valentine’s superb remix of Huw Costin classic ‘Birds’. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about music to soundtrack woodland escapades, and that’s the general theme of this show. Hopefully it hits the mark.

Tracklist below. Scroll down further for the embedded Soundcloud player.

JOIN THE FUTURE: S6E7 (originally broadcast on Noods Radio, 22/07/26)
Black Deer – Tortuga (Valet Remix)
Alien Mutation vs Indigo Egg – Gateway To The Sun (Matt Anniss Thetford Forest Adjustment)
The Black Dog – Soft Collapse
Landtitles – Occupancy Matters
Grouper – Alien Observer
Reload – The Biosphere (Global Communication Remix – Matt Anniss Thetford Forest Adjustment)
Space Ghost – Emotional Treatment (Ambient Mix)
Juni Habel – Pearl Cloud Song (Minotaur Shock Reformation)
Torn Sail – Birds (Frankie Valentine’s Air Sign Mix)
Mudd & Pollard – Scaffold (Dan Tyler Epic Fail Mix)