ETLAN -- A few months ago, Vicky Pratt Keating decided she'd had enough of the music business.

No more options that tied her to a company for three months yet never produced an album. No more dealing with inaccurate or aged press releases from her record company. No more, as she terms it, "ego-driven schmoozing."

So, she quit.

In her wake, Vyktoria Pratt Keating has emerged. She's enjoying the simpler things in life -- cooking, playing with her new cat and just hanging out with her new husband, Matthew Gottlieb, at their Etlan home.

And she's enjoying making music intended to please her, not record executives.

The result of this new approach may be her best recording yet. This Guardian At Noon, released on her own label, has a fresh, fan-friendly feel that captures much of the feel of seeing Keating live.

Keating's local CD release party will be held Saturday at Sperryville's Blue Moon Cafe (8 p.m., $3 cover charge).

Guardian has a fresh feel because it was a fresh idea. Instead of the five-month project that produced Blue Apples, which eventually was picked up by the PRIME-CD label, Guardian was a spur-of-the-moment effort.

"It was very spontaneous. It was like, 'Bing! I'm going to go in in December and record a CD,'" Keating said.

She called J. Christian Quick, who owns Stillness Sound Facility in Warrenton, and scheduled a couple of sessions. About 10 days later, they were recording. Three long night sessions later, they were finished.

"We were creating it as we went," said Keating. "I played and sang at the same time."

"It sounds like me. It has more feeling. It has more essence. It has more soul."

She labels the new album "a progressive new age record."

"Every song on it has a spiritual theme," she said.

Currently, the album could be called Vyktoria's Secret. No store has it. No radio station has it. Until the spring, when she goes on tour again, it is only available at her shows or by mail order. (P.O. Box 51, Sperryville, VA 22740).

On Guardian, Keating's lovely soprano voice and intricate, finger-picking guitar work guide you through 10 songs.

Some are sentimental; some are silly. But all show a side of an artist who has rediscovered what makes her happy in life.

That rediscovery included an elopement, complete with a ladder to a second-floor window and white roses.

While Keating has had the musician bit down for years, the record executive bit is a work-in-progress. The second-floor office in her farmhouse is somewhat cluttered.

A map enables her to see where she's going to be as she books her next tour. Envelopes hanging below are labeled to let her know what to stuff inside. The "Brilliant Ideas" envelope does have a few entries.

The Guardian tour will take her to a few places she's never been, such as Florida. She'll also be hitting the towns that have embraced her, keeping her afloat financially -- several in the southeast and midwest in addition to her southwestern strongholds of Santa Fe, N.M., Sedona, A.Z., and Tucson, A.Z.

In each of the past four years, Keating said she's covered 60,000 to 70,000 miles while touring.

Touring has opened Keating's musical charms to the country. Blue Apples garnered daily airplay on 150 stations nationally, earning awards and critical praise.

Such success enabled her to start her own label, Diaphanous Records, and reclaim control of her career. And though she admits there are a few "niche" labels she wouldn't mind working with, she's happy in her own niche for now.

"Now that I have my own label, I'm feeling more inclined to release more records," said Keating, who has lived in Sperryville or Etlan for the past six years.

"I have another whole album of stuff that's really good material," she added. "[Recording Guardian] broke open a lot of that control. I feel like I can go in and make records that are more representative of myself at the moment."