Close Your Eyes And Drift Away Dept.

A nice bunch of spacey, atmosphery, relaxy, ambienty albums that avoid the pan pipes n' windchimes New Age aromatherapy blandness. Between Interval's Legacy carries you along a river of burbles and swooshes, delivering the promise of that gorgeous cover art.

Rameses B.'s Spacewalk adds occasional vox to the mix, with slippery beats and familiar chord voicings. And more winning cover art. Further explorations into their discography will disappoint unless you're a Balearic enthusiast.

Dharana's Between - astonishingly, from '77 - has a more Easterny vibe (warning - some chanting may be present), some nice acousticy guitar, and organicy texture that's guaranteed to impart luster to your chakras. We'll have to forgive the cover art.

Maneesh de Moor's Sadhana, rather off-puttingly described as "an ethno-ambient journey into Oneness" establishes, as you'd expect, an Indian mood without ever descending into curry-house pastiche. Larvely!

Mantric Muse's eponymous [rock crit advisory - Ed.] album features some very satisfying electric guitar soloing over the urgent rhythms, giving it a distinctly rockier edge, and this is almost as much jazz-inflected prog as spacey ambience.

I tend to ignore this genre (whatever you'd call it) because a little goes a long way, and there's an inevitable tendency to sound alike, but these albums have enough structure, melody, and variety to become much-played keepers. It is my fervent hope, dear freeloading schlemiels, that you find a tiny corner of your lives to accommodate these musical offerings as relief from the corpse-grinding bleeding throat metal bands you find so compelling.