The last we heard from Barry Schrader was his 'Lost Analog" release in 2022, which was a collection of pieces created from 1972 through 1983, using the Buchla 200 analog modular synthesizer. Prior to that, it was his 'Barnum Museum' from 2013, an excellent album of fantastic and varied cinematic soundscapes. Schrader's latest work, 'Ambient : Aether' is quite different from both of those, being entirely computer-generated in four large-scale movements, an imaginary journey through the aerosphere, traveling from the rising clouds that we can see to the atmospheric edge and the invisible mythic aether beyond. Schrader says the album is not ambient in the traditional sense, but I guess that depends on what you believe traditional ambient music to be. Rather than get in a philosophical discussion of the minutia of genre parameters, I can tell you 'Ambient : Aether' sure sounds ambient to me. It is some of the finest minimal space ambient I've come across, where atmosphere is all, activity is slight, and the tone is everything.

The album's four pieces are: "Cloudrise" - An aural portrait of ever-changing skies, where clouds gather, dissolve, darken, brighten, and vanish in the distance. "Atmospheric Rivers" -- Streams of vapor swell into torrents before dispersing into delicate rivulets of sound. "Supernal Ascent" - A layered voyage through the Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere, Thermosphere, and finally the Exosphere, surrounding the listener is shifting sonic strata. "Aether" - The final movement reaches the edge of mystery, exploring the unknown beyond the Earth's atmosphere.

Exactly how the textures and sonic manipulation through the use of a computer was achieved isn't clear, but I don't think the technical methodology is important to the average ambient listener. What I can say is that it is thematically consistent throughout, mostly smooth as silk, and a pleasure to listen to. If space ambient is your kind of music, don't let this one pass you by.