This wonderfully sublime album comes from Roach's "atmospheric ambient" period of the late 1980s that produced 'Dreamtime Return' and 'Desert Solitaire,' among other works.  There is a good deal of the Southwest outdoors that Roach loves on this work, and the pieces breathe with the same kind of expansiveness and natural harmony that made 'Dreamtime' such a success.  The original release of 'Western Spaces' in 1987 included works by Richard Burmer; these are deleted in the 1990 Fortuna version.  This is truly too bad, because one of those pieces is "Across the View," Burmer's signature work and one of the few ambient compositions yet produced that justly deserves the tag "masterpiece."  Even without it, however, this one is well worth the listen.