This group of albums takes us on a mainly instrumental journey through deserts, electronic soundscapes, the psychedelic West of the future, and the days of the work week.

Steve Roach/Brian Parnham: The Desert Inbetween (Projekt)
Roach teams up with Parnham to offer an homage to the desert featuring eerie soundscapes that mix electronic textures with organic instruments like didgeridoo and Waterphone.

Ken Elkinson: Music for Commuting (August Son Productions)
Elkinson used eight different synths when recording this three-double-CD box set of ambient-electronic music. Each of the CDs represents a different part of the week, with the music changing from drone-like to more upbeat to spacey as the “week” progresses.

Things that Occur in Nature: Snow Flower (Things That Occur in Nature)
This ambient post-rock project features flowing, often arpeggiated keyboard lines, with guitars, bass, and drums woven in around them. Check out the video that goes with the song “Sky (Fast Moving Clouds)” at emusician.com.

Robert Miles: TH1RT3EN (S:alt)
Producer Miles cooks up a blend of prog rock and electronic music on this instrumental album that offers synths; cool, textural guitar playing; and much more. Robert Fripp is one of several guest artists.

Yellowbirds: The Color 
(The Royal Potato Family)
The lone album in this month''s batch that contains vocals, The Color is the brainchild of Sam Cohen from the psychedelic collective Apollo Sunshine. Folk-rock song structures mix with spacey instrumental textures to create what Cohen calls the “4th Dimensional Future West.”