*** Various Artists

SPACE DAZE 2000: A MIND JOURNEY OF ELECTRONIC AMBIENT SPACE ROCK

(Cleopatra)

Think of these rockers as mutant offspring of the late, great jazz pioneer Sun Ra. Their use of outer space as a programmatic metaphor for the inner spaces of consciousness is certainly similar. Of course, this being synth-heavy progressive rock, there's little rhythmic development of ideas. The pleasures are all about floating electronic textures, pretty in the case of Brian Eno's collaborations with David Bowie and Robert Fripp, abrasive in the selections by the Future Sound of London and Melting Euphoria. Largely instrumental, this disc is less sleep-inducing than most "ambient" product simply because the 14 acts culled realize there's no ascent to a musical stratosphere without a hefty volume of primal, loud, driving three-chord rock to serve as fuel.

-- Norman Weinstein