If you demand "Boogie!" from your turntable and nothing else, Windham Hill's music will come off like diminished chords emanating from a hot tub. But if you spend a fair amount of time wandering in a mental landscape of koans and quarks, you may find that Alex de Grassi and William Ackerman can have a highly salutary effect on your inner processes.

Both essentially solo acoustic guitarists, de Grassi and Ackerman play a pensive hybrid of jazz and classical music salted with an occasional violin, cello, piano or horn. For ears accustomed to rock & roll snarl, the music's most striking feature is its lack of anger. De Grassi and Ackerman don't explore extremes of good and evil, either, as does John Fahey. Rather, they look at clouds, trees, birds and women and try to re-create their beauty in music–which is not to say that it in any way resembles the rotten treacle you hear on "beautiful music" FM stations. These guys have a more Zen-like appreciation of beauty, lending it an air of mystery, not escapism. For non-twit aesthetes only. Write Windham Hill, Box 9388, Stanford, California, 94305. (RS 371)

CHARLES M. YOUNG