**1/2 Various Artists

THE EVENT HORIZON (TAU)

(City of Tribes)

This sampler from Bay Area "ambient" music label City of Tribes acquits the young genre quite well. Ambient strives to be the thinking person's alternative to the gauzy nothingness of new-age pap. Hoping to elaborate on a tradition that extends from John Cage and Brian Eno, many City of Tribes artists perform their collages of ethnic, folkloric sounds, and techno-trip effects in clubs. In the studio, they create audiophile montages like Kenneth Newby's "For a Pavilion of Wind & Cloud Sarasvati," which creates a foundation of drones and pumps in warm, deep-toned hand drumming. Layered on top is a melody that blends reedy humming with an Indian violin, refrains of metallic clanging à la gamelan, and breathy, Central African-sounding vocal passages.

Actually, though, the world's ethnic music traditions inform little of this music, and that's no criticism. They aren't meant to -- the sounds themselves are what count. And composers seek to combine them in serendipitous ways, as in Trance Mission's "The Sun Cries, Part One," where a bird-like Indian flute is chased by a barking didjeridoo through a field of cymbal shivers and slow, electronic roars.

-- Banning Eyre