Album: Stephen Goss, Northern Lights (FMR)

Rendered here in woodwind tones and acoustic guitar, the ambient landscape compositions of Stephen Goss exist in the grey area where ECM chamber-jazz and Hathut minimalism shades into Windham Hill new-ageism.

At its best, it's utterly captivating: the solo flute piece "The Sea of the Edge" is as hauntingly desolate as the moon feature after which it's named, and the four-part suite "Northern Lights" hangs like East Coast fog, clarinet and flute in sparse, unhurried collusion akin to a meditative Feldman work. And the transcription to flute, guitar and clarinet works particularly well on the eight-part "Reflections on the Garden of Cosmic Speculation".

DOWNLOAD THIS Northern Lights; The Sea of the Edge; Reflections on the Garden of Cosmic Speculation