These days, just about every department store has that little rack of Compact Discs that are not included with the rest of the music section. It is tucked away, usually closer to the greeting cards or scented candles. The display will have a backlit collage of all the album covers and you can sample a song by pressing the album cover you like. It really is common practice these days. All the albums feature soothing music or bagpipes or something.
Back in the 1990’s when this was just beginning, even before the sampling screen, I found this 2 disc set called A Time To Dream. It attracted me because it featured the sounds of the ocean and Thunder storms with musical arrangements. You know how I feel about sound effects. I’m drawn to them for some reason. It reminds me that I forgot to mention a couple of albums from the Environments Series that I had back in The Roach Days. One had a Thunder storm on one side and Gentle Rain In A Pine Forest on the other. I used to listen to the rain in the forest in my room at The Roach Motel and close my eyes and imagine being in the woods of Vermont. It was really cool. On the recording there was a Blue jay in the distance that would come and go. It was a good recording and I could really visualize the rain falling on the canopy of leaves and making their way to the forest floor. I can’t believe that I forgot about that album. It is a shame that they didn’t make it to Compact Disc. It truly was the best sounding forest effects. 
When I found A Time To Dream at Meijer, it was $4.99. So many of those types of CD’s were priced like that. A double disc set for $4.99 how could I pass that up. Each disc has only on track. The Mystic Sea is about 40 minutes long and A Stormy Night is about 50 minutes long. They both are developing orchestrations that travel and evolve around musical themes while the sounds of the sea or thunder storms mingle in the background. The music is electronic synthesizer driven and melodic. It really is great stuff. Sadly, Youtube doesn’t have any of it to share with you.
In my searches online, I’ve only found one place to even buy this CD and it is priced at over $60! Amazon has each of the two songs sold separately as mp3 downloads for $.99 each. I highly recommend spending the $2.00 and picking these up. I’ll see if I can wrangle some links to them for you here.
I find it interesting that throughout My Musical Evolution certain themes and notions prevail. Electronic music, instrumental music, sound effects, sounds of nature, intricate orchestrations, and multi-layered composition have always been attractive to me. I really felt like some kind of pioneer during The 90’s with my exploration of New Age music in particular. I really had no peers who shared my love for this music. When I would play samples for people, they really liked it but none of them liked it enough to share in the quest. With this absence of peer influence I really didn’t have any choice but to continue to experiment on my own. It is a very different experience when you don’t have anybody to suggest “hey, if you like Ray Lynch, you should check out this guy.” As Y2K approached, that would change.