HAROLD BUDD - In The Mist

It's a faded void, a livid, clammy fiber that filters through the sonorities of this latest album by Harold Budd, a composer and musician who (I believe) needs no introduction.

"In The Mist" contains within itself a triad that I'd describe as conceived on criteria more methodical than substantial: we're talking about three sets that, while perfectly in dialogue with one another, differ from each other only in the eclectic variety of instrumentation, in the singularity of their artifice, but which are fundamentally pervaded by the same, beloved archetypal breath typical of Budd, extraordinarily capable of making the listener fall in love regardless of any stylistic mannerism.

The sense of emptiness mentioned above is nothing more than a surface impression: there's a clear return to the minimalism that lay at the foundation of this artist's formative years, but this aspect, as obvious as it is negligible, can nonetheless constitute the record's one irreparable flaw, since it genuinely lacks the splendid flourishes that made his last solo work, "Avalon Sutra", so memorable.

That said, it all comes down to a matter of taste, but be careful not to associate this essentiality with any kind of coldness or detachment, because that's not the case: the album is objectively beautiful, lived-in and engaged, inspired even in its repetitiveness, harmonious, simply Buddian.

The Whispers

Naked sounds. Just a handful of notes follow one another delicately across intervals of false silences, swaying atop an infinite reverb that stretches the piano's breath into a pale illusion of structure. It seems like improvisation, with those slight shifts in register before quickly returning to the opening keys; but "Haru Spring" is pure meditation, masterful, luminous. Budd whispers in your ear and lays down his sedating veil with sublime sounds: the silky "The Whispers" and "The Startled" dance over composed phrasings, their sound always treated and enriched with sinister tonal dephasings that make the music feel like a faint wind, shifting, ungraspable.

The sweet melancholic vein recalls the airs of Serpent in Quicksilver, even brushing against the shadiest faces of Lovely Thunder with the monotonous, distorted spiral of "The Foundry", a track with a hypnotic gait, broken only by occasional bursts of sonic rarefaction, as hazy as it is alienating. "The Art Of Mirrors", on the other hand, loads up on vibrato and resonance, elements that fill out a deliciously redundant scheme in which the silent parentheses gather the elegant trails of those sounds that are never spent, left there, sketched, in suspension.

The Gunfighters

"Three Fingered Jack", instead, allows itself timid hints of melody, unfolding into sensual turns that are duly accompanied by the contrasting voices of the lowest octaves, likely in an attempt to weigh down an atmosphere that is fleeting, yes, but undoubtedly bewitching. Next comes the track that is both the linchpin and the weakest point of the second half: "Greek George", with its irritating background rattles, gets lost in shrill echoes, old stuff arranged in a scattered way and incapable of communicating anything.

As if that weren't enough, "Black Heart" only makes you hope this "nonconformist" phase ends as soon as possible: an atonal roar overlaps with what is perhaps the only glitch experiment in Budd's discography, but which, alas, can't help but come across as amateurish and dated. The track picks itself up a little thanks to some lush piano notes, which unfortunately are also present in a rather forced measure.

Don't get me wrong: avant-garde electronics are welcome, but in this case, so flat and approximate, they barely manage to hide behind the tenets of the minimalist project, which would instead find far more thrilling outcomes if more expert hands were involved (see the liaison Sakamoto/Fennesz).

In conclusion, the shots missed their mark, but I don't feel I can call myself disappointed. What remains is the anticipation of a turning point, and if that doesn't come, a reconciliation would suffice, a return to the origin of expression.

Shadows

And so it is. A suite of five short tracks begins, played entirely by a string quartet. The autumnal sound, so majestic and charged with tension, drags itself through rustling, low transitions, all tied together by a subtle reverb and a highly peculiar resonant effect. It feels as if the record is spinning beneath the needle of a gramophone. It feels as if the music were giving off heat, as though we were enveloped by the rumble inside the soundboard. In a crescendo of lyricism, the sobbing "Back To Me In Dreams" slips into sudden plunges of silence, up to a breathtaking reprise, stretched out into a choked hiss.

All the sharp edges and jagged attacks seem to have been smoothed away in favor of a density concentrated in patches, as in "Parallel Night", which intones ever more maimed and desperate tolls, imperceptibly yearning for powerful high notes, outside the fleeting touches, exiled within the succession of bars.

The minutes grow shorter in inverse proportion to the sweet languor stirred up by "Sun At 6 Windows", a coda of violin shudders and macabre cello echoes at the end of each bar, as if exhaling their last breath.

But it is ultimately "The Panther Of Small Favors" that sheds most of the systematic interruptions and unfolds into bolder, more complex phrasings, with a moving, supple ascent around the halfway point of the track, intense and dramatic, a clear prelude to an ending that will, in my view, be particularly unripe.

"Mars And The Artist" indeed marks an open, ambiguous ending, because of those two thrusts that repeat with few exceptions, almost always indulging in devious tones. These notes truly hover like shadows in a funeral march, their pace slow and their sight blurred by tears. We, as listeners, will hardly be moved to tears, but we will clearly understand that the beauty of this sound does not spring from a clear, easy feeling, but from something more subtle, decadent, fleeting, veiled. It is stupor, dissolution, metaphysics.

The dream is over.

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08/11/2011