Harold Budd - By The Dawn's Early Light

Opal Records/All Saints: 1991/2018

Harold Budd was responsible for some of ambient music's seminal albums of the '80s, but as that decade drew to a close, one could sense creative stagnation creeping in. The White Arcades was a lovely record of minimalist piano and synth tones, but territory well covered by that point. Budd felt it too, so when the '90s took form, he started embarking on roads distancing himself from the sounds folks were pigeon-holing him into.

The first of these 'experiments' was By The Dawn's Early Light, wherein he assembled four other musicians to Daniel Lanois' New Orleans studio-house. These included viola player Mabel Wong, harpist Susan Allen, guitarist Bill Nelson, and steel guitarist BJ Cole. Ah, sweet, the ol' slide guitar making a comeback into Harold's music, bringing back shades of Afar from The Serpent (In Quicksilver). Oh, more than you know.

The concept for this album was something of a challenge for Budd, in that he was inspired by the assorted half-finished poetry lines he'd written over the years. He wanted to build music around these, invoking feelings the imagery the words conjured, mostly of youthful Americana dreams in dusty California outbacks. Would he use these to create lyrical songs though? And would he have his assorted musicians clinically recreate music he'd write for them, or let the improvisational nature of his jazz background be a guiding force? Well, this is a Budd joint, so obviously the latter. Besides, he'd chosen these particular musicians for their ability to improvise. Simply give them an outline of what he wanted from each instrument with each piece, and let the creativity go from there, their simpatico vibes and chamber music ambience of Lanois' studio-house leading the way.

The poetry portions bookend the album, with an 'interlude' midway, which work wonders in selling the idea of this being more a narrative art piece than just simple music. Boy About 10 starts, with those distinct Budd piano strokes and soft acoustic guitar, then the viola solo starts and... and... oh. Oh my...

So... Harold Budd passed away from COVID complications this past winter, which I honestly didn't know until coming to this album for review. He was 84, so not that much of a surprise he might pass from any variety of ailments. Still, with that knowledge, then hearing this melancholy viola solo, meant to invoke remembrances of Harold as a boy dreaming about a wide world before him... I cannot deny my throat chokes up with such sadness, yet a love for a man's work I've only had a general fondness for.

I really don't know what else to say here. The rest of By Dawn's Early Light gives each musician a chance to perform in a subdued manner, pieces never lasting longer than they need to. There are nice moments about, others more like half-formed sonic sketches. Nothing quite hits me with the same emotional wallop Boy About 10 does though. I don't know if any of Budd's music ever will.

Harold Budd - Abandoned Cities

Cantil/All Saints: 1984/2018

We're not done with the Buddster just yet. The Budd Box contains six of his albums, and I've only covered four of them now. As is clear, he's titled his works all over the alphabet, from the dizzying highs of the 'A's and 'B's, to the decrepit lows of the 'W's and 'V's. Okay, not 'V's, but it don't rhyme otherwise, and like Hell I'm gonna' betray my Canadian heritage in saying anything other than 'zed', eh.

Abandoned Cities was the follow-up to The Serpent (In Quicksilver), and couldn't be more different from that record if ol' Harold tried. In fact, this is almost nothing like anything he'd released prior. And though I've hardly taken in much of his post-'80s work, I can't imagine many pieces in his archives quite like this either. For you see, my friends, Mr. Budd took it upon himself to do something nearly all ambient musicians do: the twenty-minute long composition!

True ultra-lengthy ambient compositions were hardly a new thing by the mid-'80s. Brain Eno's 1/1, the very first ambient track was sixteen and a half minutes long, not to mention- What? Of course 1/1 was the first ambient track. How is that even a debate? It's literally the first track on the first album with the title of Ambient in it! *does a soft-shoe off to Stage Right*

Anyhow, while ambient producers and minimalist Berlin-Schoolers were all about the long-form dronescapes, Budd typically kept his pieces short and to the point, seldom breaching the double-digit domain. Not with Abandoned Cities though, a mere two tracks long, the titular cut a whopping twenty-three in total. And moody, oh my is it ever a moody piece. Like, I get that calling a composition of music Abandoned Cities creates a sense of emptiness and desolation, forlorn thoughts of what once was and is now lost. That omnipresent synth drone though, sounding like a suffocating blanket of darkness and depression, such that Budd's usual gentle piano tones have difficulty piercing the murk. Even those, so often tranquil and introspective in his other works, can't help but ooze melancholy in their surroundings. This is about as 'dark ambient' as I'm sure Budd's ever gone, though still feels more at home in the 'modern classical' domain, befitting an art gallery of derelict husks slowly eroding in vacant urban settings.

If that seems just a tad on the “Hey, you okay, bro'?” side of things, then get a load of the first track on here, Dark Star. As depressive as Abandoned Cities is, at least it still had a thread of humanity in it, Budd's piano a comforting, familiar companion. There's no such instrument in play here though, Harold's trademark gentle touches on the keys replaced with stark synth stabs, stripping out all traces of human soul in the process. Oh, what a tantalizing 'what if' this piece proposes, Harold Budd doing dark ambient for the remain of his career. Might still have worked in that Cocteau Twins collaboration too.

Harold Budd - The White Arcades

Opal Records/All Saints: 1988/2018

I've noticed some folks pointing to this particular album as the point Harold Budd broke out from being thought of as just 'that guy who provides piano on Brian Eno's ambient', which is funny since Brian Eno produced this album. I get where they're coming from though, Harold's most prominent records prior to this still his Eno collaborations (Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirrors and The Pearl). He'd released at least a half-dozen other LPs in that time, but remained rather obscure compared to those – forced to basically self-release some of them didn't help Budd's efforts in getting noticed outside Eno's shadow.

Still, Harold found other musicians to work with throughout his budding '80s career, including the folks over in the Cocteau Twins camp. He even made an album with them, The Moon And The Melodies, though for some reason, it wasn't credited as an album with the Cocteau Twins. Rather, each member of the band was credited separately, as though they were musicians on par with Harold Budd in this particular recording session. Odd, is all I'm saying, though it did give Mr. Budd access to their studio for future projects, plus a little extra bump of prestige beyond the ambient art world.

The effects of that collaboration could definitely be felt in Lovely Thunder, released the same year as The Moon And The Melody, and might have even been included in this Budd Box, if it had been out on a different label. But nay, the purpose of this set was to round up Harold's albums on minor prints, from which the follow-up to that was The White Arcades, released on Opal Records. In fact, it was among the print's launching releases, established by, of course, Brian Eno. Well, something had to take the place of the defunct Editions EG. Again, it just seems odd seeing folks pointing here as Harold's major turning point outside Eno's influence with so much of Brian's hand still in the pot.

What I think is meant is that The White Arcades is a handy summation of what Budd was doing throughout the '80s, a nice capper on a decade's worth of music making. For sure it's got the gentle piano tones about, but moody, atmospheric pad work with modern classical flourishes too. Yeah, we're still in the era when ambient was still mostly abstract art music, so you wouldn't imagine this stuff being out of place in museum galleries or the like, but it's also quite nice and soothing and relaxing to hear too. We're still a year or two off from when the scene would take a sharp turn towards the ravey-psychedelic stuff.

The White Arcades might be among Harold Budd's best solo albums of the '80s, but as I've already talked about so many of his albums from that period, I'm not left with much else to say than that. You should know what to expect from a Budd joint by now, and this record delivers it wonderfully.

Harold Budd - The Serpent (In Quicksilver)

Cantil/All Saints: 1981/2018

Harold Budd had made his proper debut with the well-received The Pavilion Of Dreams, which Brian Eno produced. Following that, they teamed up for the second entry into Eno's seminal Ambient series, The Plateaux Of Mirror. Being such a prominent figure of ambient's early years surely yielded many opportunities for the Buddian one, if not for the fact that scene was barely existent yet. Sure, you had the synth noodlings of the Berlin-Schoolers, and the electronic experimenting of the soundtrackers, but Eno and Budd's brand of abstract art music remained a super-niche side of ambient's emergent sound, especially Harold's classical approach to playing the ol' ivories.

Basically, despite having his name associated with a trendy tastemaker, Budd was still left without any sort of record deal for his own musical explorations. He thus did what many a genre-niche artist is forced to do: create his own print to self-release his albums. Eh, why didn't Eno just help Budd along with on his label? If I was to hazard a guess, it was either because Eno was between labels himself (Obscure, where Pavilion Of Dreams had come out on, folded before the '80s), or Budd wanted to release something without Eno's ambient treatments prominently involved, letting his own muse speak for itself. Neither would surprise me.

Whatever the case, Cantil was the result of Budd going into label business for himself, with The Serpent (In Quicksilver) being its first release. Um, out of three, according to Lord Discogs. Guess becoming a record mogul just wasn't in Budd's blood, but at least he got his records out.

And if setting up your own print to release your own music in the early '80s doesn't sound like a punk enterprise to you, then the production of The Serpent (In Quicksilver) sure will. If there was anything Budd took from his time working with Eno, it was realizing he could accomplish more making use of a studio than just recording some piano pieces and calling it a day. Unfortunately, ol' Harold didn't have the greatest connections in California at that point in his career, so he wandered from studio to studio, recording bits and pieces wherever he could, whenever he could. The almost renegade approach to crafting this album helps explain why it's so short, a mere six tracks long, half of which hover around the two-minute mark. Heck, the longest is a shade over five minutes, which may as well be a radio jingle where either ambient or modern classical is concerned.

So the short running time may be a turnoff for some, but let's be honest: the moment you hear that sliding pedal guitar opening in Afar, there's really almost no where else to go but down; or up, to a higher state of peace. Like, I'm not saying The KLF nicked the idea of a pedal guitar making perfect sense in the context of ambient music, but I'd like to hear of an earlier example of it than The Serpent.

Harold Budd, Daniel Lentz, Ruben Garcia - Music For 3 Pianos

All Saints: 1992/2018

Whoa, I wrapped up that last batch of 'L' albums with a Harold Budd release, and now I'm wrapping up the 'M's with another of his. Does this mean the start of a trend, where each batch of letters will feature an item from that Budd Box bundle? Ah, no. Just a total coincidence. Besides, even if Budd's lone 'N' album was in this collection (too recent a release to qualify for the Budd Box), Nighthawks wouldn't even be at the end of the upcoming batch, three more CDs coming after that particular position in my alphabetical queue. Eh? Which albums might those be? Oh, something old, something new, something now now.

With a tidy amount of word count now burnt, I can reasonably do a tidy little review of this tidy little album from Harold Budd, Music For 3 Pianos. Well, not sure I can call this an LP-album, barely over twenty minutes in length. What's remarkable is this isn't the shortest 'album' in this box set, the earlier The Serpent (In Quicksilver) not even reaching that 'lofty' length.

While ol' Harold had no problem playing the piano on his own, he wasn't averse to adding fellow musicians into the mix. The obvious pairing was with Brian Eno, which immensely helped his profile among the niche market he already existed in. Along the way he paired with the Cocteau Twins in The Moon And The Melodies, but it wasn't until Music For 3 Pianos that Mr. Budd would truly unleash the collaborative floodgates forever after. Joining him on this venture was Daniel Lentz and Ruben Garcia. Lentz was a composer of some note through the '70s and '80s, though save his album Missa Umbrarum, quite opulent compared to the minimalist lane Budd usually traversed in. Garcia seems to have been a relative unknown compared to the others, this album his first Discoggian entry. He released a few more items after this, mostly obscure self-released ambient affairs, though did pair up with Budd on a few more albums before his passing half a decade ago. We got the instruments set up, the players involved introduced. Time to hear us some three pianist action, yo'! (stop sniggering, you)

And it's... surprisingly bare. Like, I should have expected it from a Harold Budd joint, but for some reason, I figured three players would involve more dynamic interplay, maybe on a jazz tip. Instead, it seems like more a 'call-and-response' thing going on, one player offering sparse tones while another adds their interaction, all the while allowing enough space between that you couldn't interpret this as anything other than Harold Budd doing Harold Budd th'angs. And I'm admittedly no expert on the intricacies of piano interplay, but isn't there supposed to be a third member here? I honestly can't tell.

Music For 3 Pianos is certainly pleasant in its presentation, but I can't deny being a little let down by what I was expecting, even for a Harold Budd album.

Harold Budd - Luxa

All Saints: 1996/2018

So I got myself a box of Budd. I was stunned to discover such a thing existed, and kinda' relieved too. There's just so much Budd to sample out there now, different flavours for different moods, such that one can get lost figuring out where to begin. And yeah, I've sampled a little Budd in the past, toked on the obvious flavours as cultivated by Brian Eno. There's so much more in Budd's bowl than The Pearl and Ambient 2 (The Plateaux Of Mirror) though. Sure, I'll find myself in familiar territory of calm, soothing haze of pleasant piano tones no matter which album I dab on, but surely there's a bluffer's guide of his various musical crops. Indeed there is, the Budd Box, with six albums from his first fifteen years of releases. Yeah, that's but a third of Budd's total output in that time-frame, but as I said, I'm after a bluffer's guide, not a compendium.

By alphabetical decree, the first album I'm reviewing in the Budd Box is Luxa, which also happens to be the last album in the Budd Box. Or rather, the most recent, released in the near-times of 1996. Considering this box-set was initially released in 2013, it seems funny that the Budd Box only went that far into his discography. No interest in any of his post-Millennium material? Though considering there isn't a detailed Wiki entry for Luxa, it's fair to say even his more well-known works retain but a niche audience to this day.

I do wish there was a Wiki for Luxa though, in that this is an odd-ball album, and I'd love to have more background info on it. Harold himself calls it a “decorative thing”, in that it's him exploring different facets of his various musical backgrounds, in that artsy sort of way you'd expect of a student of the minimalist avant-garde.

Thus we get four segments in Luxa, the first of which is titled Butterflies With Tits - I think that's the title of the cover-art too. The longest segment, it features pieces titled after various artists in various fields (Agnes Martin, Serge Polakoff, Paul McCarthy, Anish Kapoor... you may have heard of some of them), and touches on the various keyboard tones Mr. Budd had since incorporated into his repertoire. It ain't just 'soft pedal' pianos, yo'! There's moody pads, flowing synths, and even some light jazzy percussion too.

Following that is the ultra-short Inexact Shadows segment, three short piano pieces that you'd probably think was one, single, two-fifteen minute composition. Smoke Trees, on the other hand, gets into the pure ambient side of Budd's muse, long drawn-out pieces noodling about in a calm, abstract manner, a little light percussion joining the pads and organ tones every so often. The final segment, Laughing Innuendos, features a weird contrast between its two pieces, Marion Brown doing the modern classical piano thing, and Steven Brown doing a ...piercing organ thing? Gosh, that tone almost sounds 16-bit. Oddly familiar, that.

Harold Budd & Brian Eno - Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror

Editions EG/EMI: 1980/2009

How does one follow-up a genre- nay, scene-defining album? Carry on with business as usual, I guess, and that's what Brian Eno did in the immediate aftermath of Music For Airports. It's not like he had plans to create ambient music as a critical benchmark and cultural touchstone, 'music as abstract art' ideas already explored throughout the '70s. All Music For Airports really did was crystallize those concepts under an easily identifiable banner. It wasn't Eno's manifesto to be the vanguard of an entirely new approach in music-making, more content playing the role of producer for numerous new wave bands emerging out of Britain and New York. Then again, one does not title an album Ambient 1 without some inclining this was a concept that would see future interpretations as a series. Kinda' committed yourself there, Eno ol' chap.

He couldn't tackle this wide-open field of potential music exploration on his own though, hence calling in one Harold Budd for a little collaborative work. Mr. Budd, having worked behind the scenes with jazz and minimalist musicians as a composer since the mid-'60s, released a proper debut album in 1978 called The Pavilion Of Dreams, released on Eno's own Obscure print. In fact, ol' Brian helped produce it, finding Budd's lengthy and sustained 'soft pedal' approach to piano playing gelling nicely with his notions of abstract minimalism. If anyone should join the ambient jamboree Eno was itching to set off, Harold was a perfect pairing. Having an actual pianist making the music instead of manipulating tape-loops is always preferable, right?

And yet, it was the looping nature of Music For Airports that gave it such a distinct characteristic that it spawned an entire genre of music. With Harold Budd laying his feathery touch upon the ol' ivories though, The Mirror Of Plateaux comes off less an ambient record, and more a modern classical one, where traditional musicianship remains in charge of a composition's direction. It's still very loose and improvisational, mind you, but you can't help but see Budd performing it, whereas ambient music typically prefers removing the notion of a musician at work altogether. At least, that's how it evolved over time – ironclad genre rules were still in the process of development at this early stage.

As for how Ambient 2: Plateaux Boogaloo sounds, it's fairly similar to Budd & Eno's later work on The Pearl, though with less of a coherent theme going on beyond music making for its own sake. It's mostly delicate piano noodling or soft organ diddling, with some synth pad in support. Not Yet Remembered breaks mould with a choir pad, and Wind In Lonely Faces adds bell and bowl tones, but that's about as adventurous as this album gets. Pleasant? Yes. Calm and soothing? Absolutely. Essential listening? Eh, The Pearl was a better pairing of these two's talents, but Plateaux Of Mirrors is a fine effort all around, a fitting companion piece to Eno's Ambient series.

Harold Budd & Brian Eno - The Pearl

Editions EG: 1984/1987

Most everyone is familiar with Harold Budd and Brian Eno’s first collaboration, if nothing else because it served as the second in Eno’s seminal Ambient series. Less familiar is The Pearl, released during that period of the ‘80s when Eno and Daniel Lanois were hanging out a bunch, making soundtracks for Apollo missions and awakening sleepers (but before elevating U2’s musical presence to the godly realms).

For that reason, I keep thinking this is the score to an obscure art film that aired on BBC or PBS. I picture a haggard galleon captain, writing in his log book as twilight has settled. His only light is a single candle at his desk, and a pale glow of a near-half moon filtering through his window. An inner monolog intones bleak loneliness, uncertain of his futile mission of travelling incognito along the Spanish Main hunting for dwindling supplies of precious pearls. Why are they pillaging wondrous tropical islands for an Empire having difficulty sustaining these expeditions? What news of his wife and family back home, what with war brewing on mainland Europe? Half his crew remains discontent, hushed whispers of mutiny leaking through the ship’s wet, wooden floors. Existential historical drama at its finest, 8pm this Friday on your local public station.

So that may or may not have been what Budd and Eno were envisioning when crafting The Pearl (I’ll wager ‘not bloody likely’), but the beauty of this album is it can represent whatever you wish. That said, there’s definitely a lonely tone throughout, Budd’s delicate piano work enhanced by wispy synth echoes and ghostly reverb. At times, it feels as though notes linger in the air forever, your ears wandering the vast stretches of seeming emptiness before another gentle bit of piano plays out. There’s never any urgency in this music, though sometimes a looming feeling of disquieting unease permeates the atmosphere. Screw the historical drama, this is a perfect soundtrack for writing modern-epic Russian literature in the dead of Siberian winter.

The Pearl is a lovely collection of music, but unfortunately has little else to detail. Budd’s on the piano, Eno’s on the subtle synths, and Lanois’ on the treatments. Each track only lasts a few minutes, none breaching the five-minute mark, which is nice in keeping the music thematically tight within each composition – no meandering dithering on this album, my friends. A couple tracks make use of natural sound effects, like dripping water in A Stream With Bright Fish, distant calls of the wild in Dark-Eyed Sister, or night-time critters in An Echo Of Night. Also, Budd doesn’t always lead with piano, Against The Sky sounding like he uses a soft organ.

Given how much minimalist ambient material Eno’s put out over the years, it’s all too daunting diving into his extended works and collaborations, especially albums that aren’t at the peak of recommendation lists. As The Pearl comes from his golden ambient period though, definitely check this one out if you’ve started past the essentials.