Harold Budd

If one had to choose a period and an artist who codified and dictated the stylistic blueprint for the birth of ambient music, one could only point to the three years spanning 1975-1978 and to Brian Eno, with the historic triptych "Discreet Music" (1975), "Music For Films" (1978) and "Music For Airports" (1978), followed by the celebrated ambient tetralogy "The Plateaux Of Mirror" (made in collaboration with Harold Budd), "Day Of Radiance" and "On Land". But Brian Eno's achievement was the culmination of a journey that had begun much earlier, almost a century before.

Ambient music absorbs a number of ideas that long predate the 1970s, with Erik Satie (1866-1925) as a key precursor: as early as 1893 he had composed piano sonatas (criticized at the time), such as "Vexations", in which tempos were stretched to extremes and music was pared down as much as possible. Next came John Cage with "In A Landscape" (1948), followed by the entire American minimalist scene (La Monte Young, Terry Riley and others), who pushed the concept of obsessive repetition to its extreme, and the early cosmic experiments of kraut-rock, which did away with the very concept of rhythm. One cannot fail to mention so-called muzak which, despite its purely commercial purposes and simplicity (it served as background accompaniment for shoppers in the first big shopping malls), gave rise for the first time to the idea of background music: music that fills a space, keeps the customer from getting bored, accompanies them through their errands while barely being noticed. In short, it creates music not meant to be listened to (at least not necessarily). But while muzak is meant to entertain the non-listener, distract them, keep them company, "banish silence", ambient music can soothe or even unsettle, provoke reflection or conjure an environment in which to envelop the listener. Unlike muzak, ambient music doesn't strip an environment of its characteristics but rather retains them and describes their qualities.

A contemporary of Eno's and his collaborator, Harold Budd can be considered a predecessor and inspiration for Eno, thanks to a series of recordings made between 1972 and 1975 and released only in 1978 as "The Pavilion Of Dreams", an album that anticipated much (if not all) of what would become Eno's signature influences, while developing its own distinct and personal way of conceiving music for environments.
An avant-garde musician rooted in free jazz, Budd reveals these influences right from the opening track, "Bismillahi Prahmani Brahim" (eighteen minutes), a crystalline gem of post-minimalism that takes the saxophone into wholly uncharted territory. It's hard to imagine sounds more pure and refined, with piano, vibraphone, marimba and sax reaching a mystical ecstasy that fuses the vertiginous heights of John Coltrane's jazz with the most mystical, unreachable Eastern atmospheres. It isn't ambient music in the strict sense, but all the influences that would shape Brian Eno's formative process are already present here. What strikes most is its secular spirituality, a message of universal peace addressed to a generic god rather than the deity of any specific religion. Few avant-garde composers will ever again strike such a fine balance between musical innovation and an emotional pull that verges on ecstasy.

A minimalist evolution of the opening piece is "Juno", which puts the piano back at the center, with choirs and sumptuous passages and repetitive marimba patterns, marking a new peak in Budd's career and foreshadowing much of his later discography. "Madrigals Of The Rose Angel" (fourteen minutes split into two parts), written in 1972, is the earliest piece chronologically. Built around harp, piano and female choirs, it's the first composition in which Budd pursues absolute beauty, starting with those crystalline voices. This modern madrigal was undoubtedly a remarkable source of inspiration in helping Eno grasp the fundamental tenets of his own idea of ambient music. "Two Songs: Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord/Butterfly Sunday", on the other hand, leans much more heavily on classical vocal music, featuring soprano Lynda Richardson and harpist Maggie Thomas.

A pivotal album in the musical education of its producer (Brian Eno himself), "The Pavilion Of Dreams" represented a felicitous union of avant-garde, jazz and religious music, an alternative vision of what Eno himself would later come to call "ambient music".

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05/04/2020