Not long ago one of my locker-room buddies was bellyaching that no new interesting music has been written since such old masters as Stravinsky and Bartok. After twelve-tone composers like Schoenberg and Berg took dissonance as far out as possible, where was there to go, my friend asked, drying himself with a Rec Center towel like an overweight version of Michelangelo's "David."

This piece is the first episode in a splendid series of stand-alone drop-ins about recent and current composers. That soon-to-be sexagenarian Brit, Brian Eno, perhaps more than any of his peers, has brought music back from the stratosphere to down-home audiences addicted to anyone from Kate Bush to U2. Harmonically and in terms of its sheer melodic content, Eno's electronic music captures various ambiences, moods in which we can lose ourselves and find enchantments hitherto unreached. Listening to Brian Eno is like standing out on one of the moors that the Bronte sisters wrote about, while a soft rain falls forever. I'm far from the first person to say that Brian Eno rocks.

Other notable drop-ins in this series include composers Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, and Steve Reich. Anyone in locker rooms or concert halls contending that serious contempo music is so-so will enjoy bending an ear to these not-at-all-esoteric thoughts in sound.