During the 80 oblivion of music, I started the searching of alternative music. I buyed some jazz in its pure state, which seemed enjoyable to me, but not my ultimate choice; then begins the boom of a music called "new age", and some bands former considered prog were classified as New Age (Tangerine dream is one of them). I made some searching thru this kind of music, but after buying and listening to some Adreas Wollenwainder and a band called "Ravy Shankar proyect", I realized that even if some musical structures, some ambiences and the general instumentation share some characteristics with Prog, the feeling of that kind of music is very dull, Comeflor (flower eating) as we called in Venezuela those things. 

Beau Heem wrote: One of my favourite progRock groups, Jade Warrior, made some new age stuff in the 80s. AWFUL But that doesn't make their earlier efforts any worse. But only the fact that "a lot" of new age stuff was made by ProgRock bands or instances in close relation with them, doesn't make the records worthy of mentioning in the prog archives, save for these discussions of ours, of course. In order to prevent someone else from doing the same mistake that I did with Jade Warrior's At Peace Album, it should be deleted from the JW Discography (along with Horizen and Breathing the Storm, I suppose)... What I did was, that after purchasing all the JW albums 'til Way of the Sun (thanks to the Island Anthology), I found (to my great surprise) in the prog archives (could have been some other site...hmm...), that the group had done music in the 80s as well, so I got up my lazy ass and really made an effort in finding At Peace. Luckily, I had a chance to listen to it prior to buying it... I felt rather cheated at the time... -Beau

It's terrible when bands do that. It's like seeing your parents trying to dance to a current chart tune at a Wedding disco. You stand there and scream in your head...'Let the ground open up and swallow me now!!!' 

Private Music was started in 1984 by Peter Baumann, a member of Tangerine Dream from 1972-1977 (he later sold the label). Peter heard the wordless sequencer prelude on Jobson's Green Album and immediately contracted Eddie to do Theme Of Secrets. Eddie did record a follow-up, called Theme Of Knowledge which was never released because of the darker nature of the compositions. The label (not sure if that means Baumann, specifically) wanted Eddie to rerecord or alter the music, but he refused. Eddie has yet to release the music on his own.

Private Music did release some interesting stuff, and some downright crap. I still have some CDs from Private, including both by Lucia Hwong, Yanni's two good ones, Optimystique and Out Of Silence, and a couple of others.

Most of these guys played synths - the Synclavier being the favoured machine - and tried to create ambient music - and after awhile I couldn't tell one from tother.

Carlos Alomar's a guitarist, he used to play with Bowie. Patrick O'Hearn (former bassist with Zappa and Missing Persons) used a bunch of different synths. We all know who Jerry Goodman is. The music by all of the artists you mentioned was quite unique and easily identifiable -- except for Ponder, I only heard bits of his, and I didn't care for it. The music Yanni, Hwong, O'Hearn and Goodman created was too dynamic and eclectic-sounding to be ambient.

Another label that is no longer is Fortuna (or if Fortuna is still around, the label doesn't even register on the radar). Fortuna released some albums by Steve Roach, Richard Burmer and Emerald Web, but those seemed like the only worthwhile acts on their roster for a couple of years in the mid-80s. Roach and Burmer both switched labels, and Audion released Emerald Web's Catspaw before the Web returned to self-publishing.