Forget those scary monster images of the afterlife, Tibetan style. Stephen Bacchus's musical take on the forbidding realms of the Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) is mostly lush, tender, and postcard pretty. Many of these eleven tracks would be sweet enough for the ears of a newreborn baby.

There is much of East meets West here, starting with Bacchus's impressive world orchestra, wherein English horns blow side by side with shakuhachi flutes, kotos, and sonorous synthesizers. The Canadian composer's sentimental melodies often seem Oriental one moment, Western the next. It's a tantalizing multicultural morph.

Bacchus ranks among the best of New Age composers because he is a composer, not a musically undistinguished soundscape artist. Nowhere is this more evident than in "Impermanence/Bardo II: The Wind of Karma." The main musical stream of this seven-minute composition is a light, even joyous koto-driven march. But tugging alongside it is a more Western, sadness-tinged countertheme, movingly played by a swelling, vibrato string ensemble. Emphasizing the tension, a hollow bass and a boxy synthesizer mark the implacable march of time with cold, staccato jabs. Perhaps it's this "wind of karma" and the laws of impermanence which dictate that good and bad, happy and sad, should forever dog each other's steps. Bacchus has captured this bittersweet reality in this exquisite piece of new music.