The most important factor with any of these environmental comps is whether or not they include a musical track. Inexplicable, it's true, since most people don't like mixing their Euro-trash synths with the clicks and twitters of your average forest floor. Regardless, many of these releases fail to realize this, and muck up nature with new age accompaniment. Thankfully, Environmental & Ecological Sounds avoids this pratfall. Though its packaging gets a little heavy-handed with the relaxation rhetoric ("The luscious underbrush becomes saturated at your feet, bathing you in its freshness."), recording-wise it's the simple pleasure of rain forests, dolphins, North American forests, and the call of the whale. ~ Johnny Loftus