The second of two collaborations with Kevin Braheny inspired by the desert, this album pays homage to the Edward Abbey book of the same title. It inadvertently became a memorial to that Southwestern nature writer when Abbey died shortly after the music was recorded. Featuring some powerful work by Michael Stearns, this album taps into the psychological depths of stark Southwestern landscapes through a subtle set of soundscapes depicting the hidden dangers, unseen gifts, and intoxication that the desert promises.

After being silent for six years, Michael Stearns returned with the full-length experimental ambient album Sorcerer in September of 2000. The album was inspired by spiritual writing from Carlos Castaneda, resulting in a dark, abstract world created by Stearns and Ron Sunsinger using environmental sounds, bowed metal, and acoustic instruments. The result: Sorcerer is a highly abstract piecing together of noises, absent of beats or melodies.

The Storm is an excursion into deep, often un rooted ambience. Stearns can completely transform a space with his swirling layers of sounds. Environments cascade atop each other as the Balinese "Ketjak" chante merges from a white noise of rain and barber-pole glissando, but he also leavens The Storm with welcome respites of minimally drawn melody. The Last Feeling is a techno-tribal trance work of plaintive flute melody and hypnotic hand percussion, while The Light in the Trees illustrates the deep melancholy Stearns can evoke with just a few well-placed chords.

Michael Stearns is an electronic wizard, sound designer and master of analog synth space music. To a certain extent, Michael Stearns can be considered as the founding father of the Californian sacred space music scene next to Steve Roach and Robert Rich. Sacred Site marks the return of Michael Stearns as a solo artist after five busy years creating spectacular soundtrack music. Stearns saw the dawn of the 90's while traveling to Indonesia, Thailand, Egypt, Costa Rica, Brazil and the Galapagos Islands to record indigenous music and sound effects for film assignments. Arriving with an open mind and a finely tuned ear for ambience, he left stimulated - not only by the exotic soundscapes and unfamiliar instruments he heard, but also by the powerful, elemental music of these ancient worlds…

The 54-minute concept album "The Lost World" is a gem of cinematic ambient music which sees accomplished ambient sound painter Michael Stearns deliver another stunning piece of sonic art. Inspired by a trip into The Lost World of Venezuela, this highly textural work is acts as a time capsule, being able to paint a vibrant picture of grand natural surroundings with the many sounds collected during the journey and assorted electronic sounds. The outcome is an impeccable sounding, vast and overall rich sonic tapestry interweaving complex synthesizer layers, assorted percussion, flute, voice and diverse natural soundscapes, in which the Mighty Serge is also clearly present…

Michael's enveloping film score to Ron Fricke's pandimensional time lapse IMAX film masterpiece. This is a package tour through time and space, with ports of call throughout the ancient and modern worlds. Michael guides us on an aural journey that is tuned to the time scales and rhythms of the sets… the slow steady march of Nature, the measured acceleration of the Egyptian movement, and the free fall through a window-in-time into classical civilization. Finally, a roller coaster ride of music, as the film careens through Paris, New York, and Los Angeles.

In the spring of 1998, Barbara Hand Clow commissioned Michael to write this music for use in her workshops. Once he completed Barbara's version, he rearranged the compositions and added material for this CD. The music encompasses nine dimensions of the Earth experience, stretching from the molten center, to life and sounds from the planet's surface, out to the distant galaxies. One of the pieces, Seven, was composed on a Serge synthesizer. This is the first piece done entirely on the Serge since Planetary Unfolding. Other pieces feature the same bell collection he last used on the Baraka soundtrack.

This music by ambient maestro Stearns dates back to 1977. Here, its 61 minutes are remastered and reissued on CD in 2001. This ambient music is delivered in a pair of tracks, each just over 30 minutes in length. Its sonic content was not designed to play as music, to engage the mind and emotions, but rather as textural meditative backgrounds, as a sonic context for personal explorations. The two lengthy 30-minute tracks, both composed in 1977, feature a minimal amount of melody while they smoothly evolve in a textural, hypnotic manner. The title track was created using Erv Wilson's Eikosany, a 20-tone instrument, while the second piece ("Sleeping Conches") offers a background of ocean surf sounds with heavily processed bells and conches. All in all, this two-fold collage of sounds is a sure bet for any experienced listener of meditative ambient soundscapes.

Hearing the first notes of "M’Ocean", you can immediately hear Michael’s massive and distinguished sound with which he received world fame a couple of years later with classics like "Chronos" and "Encounter". This piece, "Sirens", was written and performed entirely on an Oberheim OB8-synth immediately Michael took it out of its box. Dear musician, do you recognize this feeling? "M’Ocean" can also be regarded a Michael Stearns classic: from the little symphonies "Sirens" and "Lightplay", the intense ambiences of "Marriage Chords", the sequencer-driven title track and "Fireflies Delight" and the pastoral voices in "Vickey’s Dance" to Igor Stravinsky’s "Walking Song". A real warming-up for all the great things to come. Michael Stearns is one of the biggest names in contemporary electronic music. This early music already shows why.

Imagine the Earth as a being of sound. The sounds are of all times, its past life mixed with sounds yet to be heard. Now imagine the cosmos as a vibrating living orchestration, with a resonance so complex and deep that we are engulfed by a vast and tender silence. Considered a classic in its genre, Planetary Unfolding was performed entirely on the mighty Serge Synthesizer. From the opening movement "In the Beginning…" we are transported to the far reaches of deep space.