Jeff Oster, Vin Downes and Tom Eaton prove with ‘Seven Conversations’ that ambient or New Age music doesn’t have to be planned to be good.

Everything on Nick Millevoi’s meditative ‘Moon Pulses’ points to conceiving a single idea and a single-minded determination to bring that idea to fruition.

André 3000 didn’t enter the studio intending to make an ‘Alice Coltrane’ or ‘Jon Hassell’ album, he simply followed his muse. If only more high profile artists did this.

‘In the Rain Shadow’ is largely inspired by progressive fingerstyle guitarist and composer Mark Vickness’ move to the high desert of California.

There’s no one like Carl Weingarten and his new retrospective ‘The Simian River Collection’ will make you like his music, like no one else’s.

Mia Garcia and Hailey Niswanger of OHMA made a pure chilled vibe record with ‘Between All Things,’ arguably the best such record of 2022.

Carl Weingarten and Delay Tactics offer more tempered prog that’s still filled, thankfully, with a very earthy groove.

It’s easy to use electronic wizardry these days but that’s not the same as handmade music. Will Ackerman, Jeff Oster and Tom Eaton drive the point home on ‘Brothers.’

Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte feed human musical ideas into computer algorithms using an elaborate set of rules and a dash of randomness to generate fully notated compositions.

Like other Scott DuBois works, ‘Summer Water’ is sagacious and spiritually deep, only this time, only DuBois’ guitar is needed for those qualities to shine through.