by William RuhlmannScott August's fourth album, Lost Canyons, makes the point that there is a distinction between instruments employed and style of music played. August is a multi-instrumentalist who handles nearly all of the instruments on this disc, but his primary axes are Native American flutes, and the primary one he uses here is the Anasazi flute, newly discovered from excavations of the Pueblo Indians and said to date from AD 650 to AD 1250. (Of course, August is playing a replica.) "How these flutes were used is still not known," a sleeve note acknowledges, and it's worth pointing out that August does not use his, and several other Native American flutes, to produce music similar to other current Native American music. Rather, he is a new age composer/performer creating highly original work in his own style. He does give several tracks on the album -- "Morning Star," "Swallows & Nighthawks," "Huuknyangw (Wind)," and "Evening Star" -- over to virtually solo flute performances, with lots of added echo and "textures." He also creates ambient soundscapes in such tracks as "Desert Skies" and "Thermals" to rival those of Brian Eno. And he contrasts these spare, quiet efforts with lively, more melodic, and percussive statements such as "Thunder on the Mesa" and "Chasing the Sun." The intention seems more to provide a musical reflection on the American Southwest of the 21 century than that of a thousand or so years earlier.