"Pensive Aphrodite", by Harold Budd and Clive Wright. Some people I know regard listening to Harold Budd as roughly as exciting as watching concrete set. They may have a point as a statement of fact, given that his music doesn't actually "do very much", but aesthetically they couldn't be more wrong. Budd works with mood. It is not fair to lump him in with purveyors of "New Age" music, because he strikes very strong emotional chords in his music, and not always comforting or "nice".
He also, for the most part, works in pieces of short duration, around the five or six minute mark, and this perhaps doesn't always play to his strengths. Ten or a dozen similar-sounding tracks over the length of a CD isn't necessarily going to make him a lot of new friends. But occasionally, as on the title track of "Lovely Thunder", and now with this brand new track (thank you eMusic for allowing me to download the new album, "A Song For Lost Blossoms", before it physically existed; I believe that happens today), he really stretches things out: here, to a length of somewhere over half an hour, and this compounds pleasure upon pleasure. This is music that drifts, and drifts, and then keeps on drifting. In Clive Wright (about whom I know nothing) he seems to have found another excellent foil. Wright adds the kind of atmospherics that Eno used to give to him, but with guitar (albeit drenched in FX much of the time). The ghost of Frippertronics hovers just outside of the frame. "Pensive Aphrodite" is perfect for late-night listening. If only we had a fireplace.
