While the entirety of this disc of Ligeti’s compositions is worth hearing, Atmosphères itself was quite a significant composition for the spectralist composers. Ligeti described it as exploring the ‘micropolyphonic’, which explores a simultaneity of moving lines and timbres – as such, its dense clouds of sound seem to prefigure some of what the spectralists would explore in their own compositions. It is particularly important for the  way in which Ligeti focuses the listener’s attention on sound itself, reaching a heady density that’s quite headswimmingly psychedelic to encounter, while retaining the ‘distance’ that’s key to both Ligeti’s composition and the spectral composers – indeed, scholar Benjamin Levy notes that distance, relating in part to “acoustic imitation of echoes and reverberations,” is one of the key matters that unites Ligeti and the spectralists.