Western Spaces is a collaborative album by the American ambient musicians Steve Roach and Kevin Braheny. This album is the first of Steve Roach’s many musical tributes to the Southwestern Desert

Southwestern United States

The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...

.

On several tracks Kevin Braheny uses his trademark sound created by playing a cello preset on his Steiner EWI (Electronic Woodwind Instrument). This album was originally released on the Innovative Communications label by Chameleon Records as a Steve Roach/Kevin Braheny/Richard Burmer

Richard Burmer

Richard Steven Burmer was an American composer, engineer, sound designer and musician. His work with electronic music combined with musical styles and instruments from around the world has formed his own unique and distinct sound.-Personal life:Richard was born September 19, 1955 in Owosso,...

 album and was released later the same year on the Fortuna label as a Steve Roach/Kevin Braheny album, with Burmer's solo contributions (“A Story from the Rain” and “Across the View”) replaced by two pieces from Roach.

The liner notes contain a poem by Roach's wife Linda Kohanov

Linda Kohanov

Linda Kohanov is an author, speaker, riding instructor, and horse trainer. Kohanov is best known in the field called "equine facilitated psychotherapy" , and as the author of two books, The Tao of Equus: A Woman's Journey of Healing and Transformation through the Way of the Horse and Riding...

 from which many of the song titles and perhaps the album title were derived.

Innovative Communications (Chameleon Records)

1. ”The Breathing Stone” (Roach) (6:46)
2. ”Desert Walkabout” (Braheny) (7:03)
3. ”A Story from the Rain” (Burmer) (7:08)
4. ”Desert Prayer” (Roach, Braheny) (12:33)
5. ”Across the View” (Burmer) (4:40)
6. ”In the Heat of Venus” (Roach, Brennan) (22:42)
7. ”Western Spaces” (Roach, Braheny, Burmer) (6:07)

Fortuna

1. "The Breathing Stone" (Roach) (6:46)
2. "Desert Walkabout" (Braheny) (7:03)
3. "New Moon at Forbidden Mesa" (Roach, Brennan) (5:40)
4. "Desert Prayer" (Roach, Braheny) (12:33)
5. "In the Heat of Venus" (Roach, Brennan) (22:33)
6. "The Slow Turning" (Roach) (7:40)
7. "Western Spaces" (Roach, Braheny, Burmer) (6:07)

Personnel

• Steve Roach (Oberheim
  Oberheim
  Oberheim Electronics is an American company, founded in 1969 by Tom Oberheim , which manufactured audio synthesizers and a variety of other electronic musical instruments.-Oberheim Electronics:...
  
   System with digital drums and Xpander, EMU I, Arp
  ARP Instruments, Inc.
  ARP Instruments, Inc. was an American manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman in 1969. Best known for its line of synthesizers that emerged in the early 1970s, ARP closed its doors in 1981 due to financial difficulties...
  
  , Casio
  Casio
  is a multinational electronic devices manufacturing company founded in 1946, with its headquarters in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Casio is best known for its electronic products, such as calculators, audio equipment, PDAs, cameras, musical instruments, and watches...
  
  , Emulator II, Ensoniq ESQ-I)
• Kevin Braheny (Steiner EWI, The Mighty Serge Modular, Oberheim, Ensoniq ESQ-1
  Ensoniq ESQ-1
  Ensoniq ESQ-1 is a hybrid digital-analog synthesizer released by Ensoniq in 1986. The ESQ-1 featured 8 voices with 3 digital oscillators per voice. Each oscillator could be set to one of 32 different waveforms. Some of these were standard simple waveforms such as sawtooth and pulse, while others...
  
   piano, panpipes, kalimba, bells)
• Thom Brennan
  Thom Brennan
  Thom Brennan is an American electronic ambient musician, composer and synthesist.Active since the 1980s with his first album Mountains , he belongs to the scene of Californian pioneers of electronic music...
  
   (Oberheim Matrix 12 on “New Moon at Forbidden Mesa” and “In the Heat of Venus”)
• Richard Burmer
  Richard Burmer
  Richard Steven Burmer was an American composer, engineer, sound designer and musician. His work with electronic music combined with musical styles and instruments from around the world has formed his own unique and distinct sound.-Personal life:Richard was born September 19, 1955 in Owosso,...
  
   (Emulator II on “Western Spaces”)

See also

• Steve Roach
• Kevin Braheny
• Thom Brennan
  Thom Brennan
  Thom Brennan is an American electronic ambient musician, composer and synthesist.Active since the 1980s with his first album Mountains , he belongs to the scene of Californian pioneers of electronic music...
  
   http://www.thombrennan.com
• Richard Burmer
  Richard Burmer
  Richard Steven Burmer was an American composer, engineer, sound designer and musician. His work with electronic music combined with musical styles and instruments from around the world has formed his own unique and distinct sound.-Personal life:Richard was born September 19, 1955 in Owosso,...
  
  
• Ambient music
  Ambient music
  Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
  
  
• Electronic music
  Electronic music
  Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...