Budd, Harold

Artist: Brian Eno
P: 1980 / 2009
By 1980, Brian Eno had found his own voice and had his technique firmly in grasp. Having spent the better part of the '70s developing looping mechanisms and then laying the groundwork for ambient music with historic recordings such as "No Pussyfooting" (a collaboration with Robert Fripp), "Discreet Music", and "Music For Airports" and fusing these ideas with David Bowie's paranoid idiom (on Bowie's Berlin trilogy, amongst the most powerful music Bowie has ever done), Eno was at the height of his powers. It is into this regard that "The Plateaux of Mirror" was recorded. A collaboration with minimalist composer and pianist Harold Budd, this record is quite different from the rest.
What Budd provides is a stronger sense of evocative composition than Eno does-- this frees Eno to focus on technical details and technique. The result: a melancholy sort of record filled with moody interludes and tracks. Its far more theme-driven and less loop-driven than Eno's previous or contemporary work. This lends itself well to listeners who aren't really overly enamored with the idea of loop-based music. The work is particularly superb on the melancholy "First Light", the dark "Not Yet Remembered", and the noisy and mysterious "Wind in Lonely Places".
If there's a fault with this record, its that it has a bit of a sameness to it that prevents it from really shining, but its some beautiful music, and a great entry point into the catalogs of either Eno or the lesser known (but often equally brilliant) Budd.

Artist: Brian Eno
P: 1988
A collection of tracks by Brian Eno and musicians associated with him over for use in soundtracks,  or as atmospheres in movies.

Artist: Harald Budd / Brian Eno
P: 1984
This sublime, tranquil recording features 11 haunting ambient tone poems for treated piano. They are crafted from simple chords, arpeggios, or melodies that are frequently trailed by delicate electronic whispers to produce dreamy results. Even though Budd and Eno chose to compose and record in a minimalist style, their gorgeous, moody music evokes so much more, for the reverberating spaces between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves. In an interesting experiment, both "Against the Sky" and "An Echo of Night" explore the same melancholic musical theme in different settings--the former is a sparse piano piece with gentle electronic treatments, the latter is a murky synth work set against a nocturnal outdoor backdrop. (Budd later explored the theme again as the ethereal elegy "Olancha Farewell" on his 1986 solo album, Lovely Thunder.) Beautifully understated, the slow-motion ballet of The Pearl is a piece of striking ambient impressionism that was highly original in its day, well before the myriads of New Age imitators its composers spawned, and it remains fresh and vital two decades later.

Artist: Harold Budd + Ruben Garcia + Daniel Lentz
P: 1992
Music for Three Pianos' is a very calming and relaxing CD. I don't really consider it an 'ambient' CD in the Brian Eno & Harold Budd tradition; the tracks have more of a modern, classical music feel to me. The CD cover indicates that the performers are Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz and the inside cover indicates that all compositions and performances are by these 3 same individuals.

Artist: Harold Budd
P: 2013
This release from the Avant-Garde/Ambient composer. Jane 1-11 is at least among Harold's very best work and may be his all-time best. Start to finish, this is Harold at his most inspired and most tapped in to his unique gift. There is no other Harold Budd record on which he so strongly expresses his singular avant sensibility.
On the eleven sequentially titled pieces, Jane 1-11, we find minimal compositions of cozy, hushed and serene keys, droning pads, and sparse droplets of sound. The music flows, swells and ebbs through the plateaus and valleys of silence. The plucked strings, struck marimbas and various synthetic instruments often wonder around the main theme, which is less aimless and more contemplating in nature. There is plenty of reverb, but it is administered with care, like a thin layer of ointment on a slow healing wound. The rest is explored through ongoing resonance, harmony and meticulous stereo field placement. And although he seems to reject the prescribed categorization of styles, with most pieces [especially the gorgeous Jane 8], Budd seems to define what was once proclaimed by the ambient movement itself: music that is as ignorable as it is interesting.

Artist: Stearns, Serrie, Roach, Jeff Pearce, H.Budd u.a.
P: 2001
Lunar Twilight - Ambient Visions is a collection of the some of the finest examples of the style called 'ambient' or 'space music'. Relaxing, spacious, and soothing, the perfect night music after a busy day. Lunar Twilight includes ambient pioneers Harold Budd, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, John Serrie and Jeff Pearce. Enjoy a true journey ...

Artist: Various Artists
P: 1996
This comes out of the house of Fripp, Eno, Budd, Laraaji and some more. With some new remixes.

Artist: Budd, Serrie, Van Zyl, u.a.
P: 2004
Every day, host John Diliberto tunes in and chills out to an ambient world on Echoes, a soundscape of music, concerts and interviews on Public Radio International stations and on-line at echoes.org. Each year we produce a CD of tracks from our favorite recent Living Room Concerts, performances recorded just for Echoes in musicians' homes and studios or the Echoes Living Room.