It’s easy to dismiss a lot of ambient music as shapeless, directionless noodling. Nevertheless, Steve Roach’s music has always exuded a sense of deep intention and thoughtfulness. Consider Structures From Silence, arguably his magnum opus. (Which, to be honest, feels a little weird to say given that it was only his third studio album, and he’s recorded over two hundred since.)

Roach spent months laboring on just the title track alone, hunched over his analog synth and sequencer to experiment with tones, notes, and tempos and then living with the music in order to understand it on an almost intuitive level before committing it to tape. As he wrote in the liner notes for Projekt Records’ 2001 reissue, “Often I would sleep and wake with the music playing… This gave me the opportunity to fine tune the piece to a very sublime level. At the time, I did not listen to any other music.”

That level of dedication and focus resulted in what is widely considered one of the greatest ambient albums of all time, and a landmark in the realm of space music. I’ve been listening to Structures From Silence for nearly 25 years, and I feel like I’m still trying to comprehend the depth and vastness of Roach’s soundscapes. Even so, the album has been a frequent source of comfort, and I mean that literally. With its calming atmospherics, Structures From Silence is one of a handful of ambient albums that I consistently reach for whenever I find myself in the clutches of a migraine.