Yesterday marked Drag City/Yoga Records re-release of “New Age” outsider musician Matthew Young’s 1982 album Recurring Dreams. To call Young a “cult” artist is probably overstating the case—Jandek is a household name in comparison—but that may change when, say, NPR picks up on this 32-year-old obscurity. (Yes, this is one of those things with a bit of an exotic backstory that NPR absolutely loves, like The Langley Schools Music Project or the Ghetto Brothers.)

The album begins with a number called “Mistrial,” an ambient fantasia which calls to mind Brian Eno playing the theme to Forbidden Planet. That’s what a lot of it sounds like to my ears and I pronounce this a very good thing. Recurring Dreams is quite unusual. Although it’s not necessarily “foreground” music that demands your attention, I don’t know if I would exactly call it “New Age” so much either—it’s got much more in common with Morton Subotnick than with Yanni—as I would try not to categorize it at all. The self-released album has a “homemade” low-fi sound and was, in a sense, technologically hand-crafted utilizing EMS Synthi A and Roland synthesizers, piano, guitars, log drums, voice and tape manipulation. (Young took the Computer Music Seminar courses at Princeton. He knew what he was doing.)

Yoga Records is the label that released the (deeply fascinating) set I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America, 1950 - 1990 as well as Young’s Traveler’s Advisory. There’s only so much I can really write about an instrumental album like this, but Yoga’s Douglas Mcgowan made a charming short video introducing Young, shot at his home in New Jersey.