Clive Wright has a different definition of shooting for the stars than he did in the '80s.

Back then, the British-born Joshua Tree resident was a guitar star with the pop-rock band Cock Robin, which performed sold-out European shows and had a top-40 U.S. hit with “When Your Heart Is Weak.”

Today, Wright draws inspiration from the stars playing ambient music as astronomers provide visual presentations about the universe.

He'll continue his weekly Ambient Music Chill Out parties Friday at Le Haut Desert Aerie bed and breakfast deep in Pioneertown. He'll perform more ambient music Saturday for the Perseid Meteor Show Party at the Integratron in Landers.

As he puts it, “It is a long way from Cock Robin.”

Ambient music is a term coined by music producer Brian Eno, best known for his collaborations with U2 and Talking Heads, to describe “low-volume music designed to modify one's perception of a surrounding environment.”

Eno pioneered the music with minimalist composer Harold Budd in the mid-'70s after recording with Roxy Music and guitarist Robert Fripp.

Wright's solo work has been compared to Fripp and he's collaborated with Budd, who has lived in Joshua Tree since 2004, on three ambient albums since 2008. He also played a rootsy ambient music with Spiral Ascension, featuring native flute and didgeridoo player Carl Roessler.

But Wright found new inspiration last year when he performed for the Perseid Meteor Show Party at the Integratron with the Southern California Desert Video Astronomers. Playing the Middle Eastern oud, he recorded his performance for the album “Taqsim to Antlia” (connoting a link between Middle Eastern classical music and a constellation). The website Daggerzine called it, “One of the most beautiful, most restful albums of 2010. A quiet masterpiece.”

“I got excited by the whole idea of doing that,” Wright said in a recent interview. “That's my real passion — to create something which is improvisational but at the same time sort of channeled. You're putting yourself in a position where, if something is going to come through, it will come through.”

“Taqsim and Antlia” became the first of a series of live ambient improvisational CDs Wright recorded under the stars. Then in March, he performed for documentary filmmaker Jonathan Bermans just hours before the earthquake in Japan. Captured on the CD, “Deluge,” Wright said he seemed to foreshadow the disaster.

“It was kind of strange,” he said. “The music has this spooky feel and then almost an apocalyptic element to it, which seemed to be reflecting what was going to happen.”

Wright said the stars are an inspiration for his ambient improvisations.

“It just seems to be a perfect fit,” he said. “It's like an aural representation of what you see and what it feels like, the whole cosmos, space. When you start seeing it from the projections of the telescopes, it seems to really perfectly interface with the music.”

Besides the Hot Friday Night Ambient Music Chill Out parties and the Perseid Meteor Show Party, the Southern California Desert Video Astronomers use Wright's recordings for their Saturday viewings at the Joshua Tree Lake Campground. Wright admits it's like a soundtrack to the cosmos.

“Some people fantasize about the idea of the whole thing,” he said. “The reality is, I'm just sitting there performing and just kind of channeling. It's just coming through.”