Harold Budd - The Breath of the Dream

From his early teenage years, Californian Harold Budd began cultivating a passion for music as an aspiring drummer, drawn to the vigor of the New York scene, where the revolutionary jazz of his idol, John Coltrane, was fomenting.
At the age of twenty-one, he began attending Los Angeles Community College and, for the first time, was plunged into the world of composition and music theory, which he fell deeply in love with.
His studies, however, were only completed in 1966, the year he graduated in music composition from the University of Southern California. As his knowledge deepened, Budd developed a tendency to deconstruct and reshape the academic foundations he had absorbed until then, almost in response to the visual impulses transmitted by the "concrete" and modular expressionism of post-war artists like Mark Rothko. 

His time among avant-garde circles, and especially the influence of Feldman and Cage, manifested itself in an increasing sonic rarefaction: in 1970, a new meeting point between Budd's synthesizer and the compositions of Richard Maxfield, The Oak Of The Golden Dreams/Coeur D'Orr, stood as a manifesto of this artistic path marked by an avant-garde electronic essentialism that was almost arid, also represented by the long piece for gong "Lirio," as well as the suite in D-flat major "Candy-Apple Revision."
But the canons of minimalism à la La Monte Young did not seem to satisfy Budd's genius, who, after two years of artistic gestation, managed to find a new calling, the one in which all his admirers are able to recognize his presence. In 1972, with "Madrigals Of The Rose Angels," that intent came to fruition, thanks to a renewed infatuation with the harmonic sweetness produced by his most beloved instruments: harp, celesta, angelic choirs and light-touch percussion. Thus, needing to give shape to his art, Budd learned to play piano with the technique that would define him ever since: a unique style that reconciles soft, romantic touches with a performing spirit geared toward jazz improvisation. In this guise, Budd immediately caught the attention of fellow musician Brian Eno, who offered to produce the debut work of a composer who finally seemed to have found the right means of expression.

Recorded between 1976 and 1978, The Pavilion Of Dreams gathers the work and maturity reached by the end of that decade into a monument to contemplative ecstasy, poised between silent surrender and the eternity of a spiritual calling. Recovering and reinserting "Madrigals Of The Rose Angels," Budd managed to forge a narcissistic, idealized dimension, evocative from the very start. The album opens with the devotional "Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahimm," a long composition in which hints of piano and harp clearly reflect a faint evening light, a seductive invitation to sleep, interrupted only by Marlon Brown's saxophone, which bursts into the idyllic scene with a sinuous emphasis that takes your breath away.
The dream slowly dissolves with "Two Songs: Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord/Butterfly Sunday," in which soprano Lynda Richardson cries her anguished lament, accompanied by harpist Maggie Thomas, in a delicate, decadent and pleasantly narrative flight.
The chimes of the opening piece return with "Juno," in a burst of sumptuousness that best expresses the thematic synthesis of this work, devoted to soothing the senses and the mind with those long, enveloping sequences that would be revisited (albeit in variation) throughout the rest of his discography.

After one of the finest episodes of his career, Budd once again drew on this fruitful partnership for the second album in Eno's ambitious Ambient series. The Plateaux Of Mirror, also released by Obscure in 1980, revisits the same atmospheres, but drops the rhythmic elements in favor of a cyclical simplicity in place of the hieratic lyricism that had characterized the previous work. The two musicians find themselves painting sonic fragments that hover above the grace of a repetitive, muffled piano ("First Light") that submits to electronic treatments at times quietly subordinate to the melody ("An Arc Of Doves"; "Among Fields Of Crystal"), at other times choral ("Not Yet Remembered"), if not outright the main feature ("Wind In Lonely Fences").
The result is an album distinguished by a delicate and carefully crafted monotony, a symptom of a growing dialogue between the two masters, who learn to understand each other's respective crafts with the ultimate aim of creating intimate, hazy music that is comforting in its simple, linear expressions.

Temporarily without Eno, Budd released Serpent In Quicksilver in 1981, an EP that in just twenty minutes retraces the paths laid out on his debut, in a quantitatively more modest structure that nonetheless still reaches peaks of unattainable beauty. Every second is steeped in a deep sense of melancholy and desolation that, starting from an initial affectionate embrace ("Afar"), gradually unveils a wounded intimacy, moving in its resigned docility ("Children On The Hill"). Warm sounds weave sorrowful piano melodies, before re-emerging into the sunlight, finding serenity again in an affable, laudatory exchange between synthesizer and piano ("Serpent In Quicksilver"), thus closing out a small masterpiece whose only flaw is being too short.

Nor do the later reissues help matters, which bundle it into a single album together with the two long compositions Abandoned Cities and Dark Star, written in 1984 for a gallery installation; the latter two depart from the understated, restrained register of "Serpent In Quicksilver," opting instead for a more dramatic, expansive sound, a prelude to the atmospheres that would dominate "Lovely Thunder." While the first piece is dominated by endless dark, anguished tones, the other stands out for its cold futuristic flashes, aligned with the previous track through a shared, overpowering sense of menacing sacredness, as if aiming to instill some feeling of reverence in the listener.

That same year, Budd renewed his partnership with Eno and released The Pearl, produced by Eno himself along with Daniel Lanois. Partly picking up the patterns laid down in their previous collaboration, the album pushes further into an exploration of natural sounds. Budd's piano, no longer front and center, pairs with a soft electronics, leaning toward new age ("Late October") and prone to losing itself in languid synthetic digressions ("Lost In The Humming Air"). Where the atmospheres recalled before stood out for their ethereal, crystalline qualities, they now take on a strongly sensual, dark component ("Against The Sky"; "Dark-Eyed Sister"), unsettling at times ("An Echo Of The Night"; "Their Memories," a reworking of "The Chill Air").
From minimalism, Harold Budd and Brian Eno conjured up a new energy, more mature than before, mysterious in its complexity, suffocating in its abundance, hostile to the torpor it had previously evoked.

1986 saw Budd busy on two fronts: a collaboration with Cocteau Twins and a new solo project.

The Moon And The Melodies, credited to Budd/Raymonde/Guthrie/Fraser, links Budd's classic phrasing to the euphoric, dreamy melodies of the Scottish band. The album, heavily electronic, alternates between convincing moments ("Sea, Swallow Me"; "The Ghost Has No Home") and not entirely successful experiments ("Eyes Are Mosaics"), though the winning combination of Guthrie's guitar and Budd's keyboards keeps the listen flowing in a pleasant, romantic mood.
At the same time, Lovely Thunder takes shape in a solemn half-light, molded by dense, dramatic synthetic sounds. From the cover artwork by Russell Mills, in which a celestial blue backdrop frames an apocalyptic vignette, one can already guess the album's leitmotif. Opening right from the start with a dark, tragic tone ("The Gunfighter") and rarely allowing for melodic distractions ("Sandtreader"; "Olancha Farewell"), Lovely Thunder comes across as pompous and epic, wavering between stretches of enchanting suppleness ("Ice Floes In Eden") and crepuscular lyricism (the beautiful "Gypsy Violin"). The baroque "Valse Pur Le Fin Du Temp" is perhaps the only real dead spot on an album that stands out in his discography for its impressive musical richness.

After the interesting world music experiment with Jon Hassell and Gavin Bryars on Myths 3: La Nouvelle Serenite, Budd presented The White Arcades, recorded in 1987 and released the following year. Essentially, this sees a return to the form already explored on the previous solo album, even though the emotions the album sets out to evoke are considerably different. Eno's treatments and tonal colorings weigh heavily on the usual instrumentation (piano and synthesizer) and emphasize a majesty that unfolds more slowly and reflectively. The album partly wrestles free of the shadows ("The White Arcades"; "Algebra Of Darkness") and opens itself up to astral, placid atmospheres ("Balthus Bemused By Color"; "The Kiss"), almost always managing to achieve wonderfully surprising results, as in "The Real Dream Of Sails," a piece that alone is worth the whole record.

With By The Dawn's Early Light (1991), Budd decided to pair the music with poetry readings, which unfortunately do nothing but irritate and distract from the organic flow of the work. Having abandoned his cosmic aspirations, there's a return to his roots with sparer, more acoustic sounds that, compared to the past, seem to suggest an emotional detachment. In reality, ambiguity and seduction remain firmly in place, triumphant in tracks like "Boy About Ten" and "The Photo Of Santiago McKinn," in which Bill Nelson's Latin-tinged guitar pairs perfectly with Mabel Wong's romantic, ethereal viola. At times one breathes the air of his debut ("Albion Farwell"), at other times one is left a little puzzled by a lack of cohesion among the elements ("The Place Of Dead Roads"), especially in the pieces that lean toward the structure of a sophisticated ballad.

Nonetheless, this slight decline is brilliantly made up for by the following Music For Three Pianos (1992), credited to Budd, Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz. A brief album of cultivated ambient music, in which the absence of electronics feels more than remote, set aside in favor of an entirely acoustic, traditional sound. Three pianos in perfect harmony exchange moving, elegant notes that, in their very simplicity, reflect an underlying horror vacui, expressed through the continuous intertwining of melodies in a wonderfully composed weave.

Budd continues reciting poetry (unfortunately) and composing music for ensemble, although this time the outcome isn't among his best.

She Is A Phantom (1993) adds horns and percussion to the classic sound, managing to win over only in brief but cloying moments ("Breathless..."; "Nearly Awakened"; "Handsome. The Spineless...") and mostly growing tedious with depressing melodies ("Tiny Heads, Big Ideas"), or utterly inconclusive pieces with a horribly martial style ("Like A Perfume..."; "And Then I Alone Am Alone"). And with the following Through The Hill (1994) and Glyph (1995), things get even worse. The collaboration with Andy Partridge is described as the meeting of two strangers. And so it is, were it not for the fact that Budd has clearly held back his contribution, perhaps intent on making room for new ideas that turn out to be anything but positive. The input from the XTC frontman is more kitsch than eccentric, tedious when tolerable ("Tenochtitlan's Numberless Bridges"), downright embarrassing in tracks like "Hand 20" and "Anima Mundi." Hector Zazou proves less disappointing, even amid a fundamental impersonality to the music.
Setting aside Budd's increasingly irritating voice, what remains is an engaging piano section, likeable techno-dub beats ("Pandas In Tandem") and an interesting dash of jazz and exotica ("Gorgon's Anxious Pansy," "Autre Django"). Even so, over time the two musicians' hand leans too heavily on hazy atmospheres, somewhere between dated funk and precious world music. An album that presumptuously aims for a surreal-chic dimension, but ends up in the far more plausible context of a cocktail bar. As for the Glyph Remixes (1996), it's best not to speak of them.

The dreadful fondness for poetry reaches its peak with Walk Into My Voice (American Beat Poetry) from 1996, a collaboration between Budd, Daniel Lentz and Jessica Karraker. The music is almost always captivating, but it's smothered by spoken-word passages that are unbearable for anyone not remotely interested in the content of the verses. 
More attention is deserved by Luxa (1996), a tribute to the artists Budd considers most influential of the twentieth century, with contributions from Marion Brown (good) and Steven Brown (regrettable). Unsurprisingly, the album opens with "classic" pieces that best recall the theatricality of his past work, before stumbling on into insipid, already-heard ambient compositions. Aside from a bit of spark ("Niki D."), the rest is pure Budd-ian redundancy: pleasant, but nothing more. The Nineties finally draw to a close, after putting Budd's creativity through a hard test, as he seemed to have inexorably set off down the road to decline.

Fortunately, The Room (2000) brings back the best of the past, even if it doesn't particularly stand out for any real innovation. Polishing up his old weapons, Budd composes beautiful ambient gems, meditative and mysterious, once again effective at evoking the calm expanses of the unconscious, with vintage keyboards and celestial little bells. Very few notes are out of place in a work that more than makes up for his worst episodes. 

After the release of the modest collection Agua (2002), Budd manages to stay on course with La Bella Vista (2003), a collection of pieces for solo piano that pleasantly combine the composer's style with influences recalling Satie and Debussy. 
On the double album Translucence/Drift Music (2003), Harold Budd and John Foxx deliver a surprisingly enchanting, delicate album, perhaps even superior to his experiments with Eno. Electronics and keyboards merge into a linear progression of soundscapes, liquid sounds essentially devoid of any guiding melodic structure, yet forming fragments brimming with sublime nuances. This is music that presents itself to the listener as a continuous flow of echoes and reverberations, finally shedding the oppressive new age label and winning appreciation for a beauty that isn't especially original, but is certainly refined and sincere. 

Released on David Sylvian's David Sylvian's Samadhisound label, Avalon Sutra (2004) was presented as the fruit of a thirty-year career that would have no further follow-up. Even though Budd had innocently lied about his real intentions, the humility that comes through in his words is genuine, and it's just as evident in his music. The album is, in fact, the perfect synopsis of everything Budd has represented in shaping ambient music.
Marked by a strong and distinctive thematic character, Avalon Sutra opens with "Arabesque 3", the first piece to reveal the impressionist soul of the work: over the classic synth base, Jon Gibson's saxophone is layered, its low, restrained sound something you'd hardly have heard on a Budd record before this. Hazy orchestrations follow, and with "It's Steeper Near The Roses" they lead into the disarming "L'enfant Perdu", where melancholy strings soar over a hazy pianistic echo. "Chrysalis Nu", even more sublime and striking in its high notes, is followed by the bittersweet "Three Faces West" and by "Arabesque 2", in which Budd and Gibson reestablish the album's guiding principle in a poignant second overture.
"Little Heart" somehow manages to sound utterly fresh despite the usual instrumentation: little bells like dewdrops, distilled from the faint outlines of a watercolor painted by the synthesizer and by the piano's timid notes. A peak of impalpable sweetness follows with "How Vacantly You Stare At Me", while "Walk In The Park With Nancy" captivates with its intense melancholy. "Rue Casmir Delavigne", meanwhile, builds an unprecedented dimension of peace, in a climax of repetitive sounds combined with the resonances of the electric piano. "Arabesque 1", "Porcelain Ginger" and "Faraon" draw the listener into a growing abstraction, between sounds and silences masterfully arranged, until a supreme dream is reached. "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath" is a triumph of ecstatic tones, adorned with light piano touches and spirals of ambient tunings.
The work closes with a seventy-minute remix of "Akira Rebelais", in which drones and strings follow one another in a hypnotic loop, dotted with sporadic hints of piano and sudden violin flourishes. Despite the brief length of the tracks, these splendid miniatures hold the essence of a mature, self-aware spontaneity, the kind only an artist with nothing left to prove or show off can achieve.
The result is (perhaps) the finest album of his entire career. 

This masterpiece is followed shortly after by the release of Music For "Fragments From Inside", a collaboration between Budd and Italian musician Eraldo Bernocchi. The album, which collects pieces composed for an audio-visual installation in Siena, rarely rises above mediocrity. The fault lies not with Budd, but with Bernocchi and his dreadful electronic patterns, so insipid and banal they could pass for the default samples in "Fruit Loops"! Grace is granted only on "Fragment One", the sole track on which Bernocchi had the decency to keep his contribution within tolerable limits. Chronologically just as close is Budd's far happier collaboration with his old partner Robin Guthrie on the soundtrack for the film Mysterious Skin. In apparent contrast with the gravity of the film's themes, the duo's partnership results in a highly evocative album, full of childlike, fantastical atmospheres, steeped in that constant undercurrent of unease that seals a perfect harmony with Gregg Araki's film.

The same effect is reproduced in the twin albums After The Night Falls/Before The Day Breakes (2007) and in the more recent Bordeaux (2011), in which Guthrie's electronic manipulations and the rhythm section — largely built from drum machines — are pushed further to the fore. Recorded together with Clive Wright, A Song For Lost Blossoms (2008) and Candylion (2009) are two experiments with rather uncertain outcomes. On the first, when boredom doesn't simply take over, Wright's anonymous guitar, spoken word passages and annoyingly metallic effects only manage to ruin what few barely-sketched ideas there are. The second fares better: the melodies and electronics improve, but the guitar still lets it down.
Unfortunately there's no progress either on the following Little Windows (2010). 

Through ups and downs, Budd brilliantly continues to refine his art and please an aging audience, by now loyal and happily accustomed to his unique, versatile style.
He is an anomalous, solitary artist, who looks upon his audience with the detachment of someone who lives music as an extension of his own being rather than a race for commercial success; for this reason it's no surprise that Budd has always operated quietly, far from the fanfare and recognition he would have deserved.
Whether you love it or despise it, there's no denying the merit of a music that remains consistent, that frees itself from the pressures of a furious, sterile ambition, and that, amid the hysterical frenzy of the collective, remains a solid and comforting certainty.

2011 instead saw the release of In The Mist, on which there's a clear return to the minimalism that underpinned the artist's formative years, but this aspect, as obvious as it is negligible, may well also be the record's irreparable flaw, since it genuinely lacks those splendid flourishes that made his previous solo work, Avalon Sutra, so memorable. That said, it all comes down to a matter of taste, but be careful not to mistake this essentialism for any kind of coldness or detachment, because that's not what it is: the album is objectively beautiful, lived-in and engaged, inspired even in its repetitiveness, harmonious, simply Budd-ian.

The same path is followed in a decidedly shakier way on the two subsequent works: Bandits Of Stature incorporates outside elements, leaning further into chamber-music territory and nods to the historic minimalist school, without fully convincing, while the latest, Jane 1-11, sets out to find a common denominator between the worlds of its two predecessors. In the end, the glass comes out half full, a mixture that is nonetheless made up in generous measure of that crystalline class of which nothing and no one could ever strip any Harold Budd record. A class, however, that ends up being pure form, when it isn't matched by substance — and this time substance is stripped down to the bone.

The impression is that, thirty-five years into his career, the greatest painter in ambient music still knows how to create exquisite tonalities, but has lost the ability to use them to conjure up those scenarios that had always been his specialty. And that, regardless of records that are, on the whole, worth saving, is anything but good news. The hope is to be proven wrong as soon as possible, to see a return to those poetic, magical, delicate and intangible evocations in which, to this day, no one has managed to surpass the Californian watercolorist.

Contributions by Matteo Meda ("Jane 1-11")

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