Harold Budd

[qdes]

I can't be the only one here who was really moved by the staggering beauty of Avalon Sutra when it came out on Samadhi Sound. That was the first thing I had ever heard from him, but after that I've purchased just about everything the man has ever released. This is the kind of piano music I've searched all my life without knowing what it really was.

I especially love just about everything he has made in the past ten years.

My favorites:

Harold Budd - Avalon Sutra (2004)
Harold Budd - Perhaps (2007)
Harold Budd - La Bella Vista (2003)
Harold Budd & Clive Wright - A Song For Lost Blossoms (2008)
Harold Budd & Clive Wright - Candylion (2009)

And I just found out he has a new album coming out with Clive Wright in April! The wait will be long but rewarding.

[qdes]

Guess I am the only one

I'll get my coat.

[Drake]

Avalon Sutra is pure magic.

[inkinthewell]

I just found out he has a new album coming out with Clive Wright in April!

And that's good news.

[Tin Bird]

I like Harold Budd. Never found his work groundbreaking, but have several of his albums and I enjoy them quite a bit. My fave is By the Dawn's Early Light because it has two of my fave guitarists on it: Bill Nelson and BJ Cole. I always felt that Budd benefitted immensly from his association with Eno, whom I DO consider a groundbreaker, and a lot of his (Budd's) work sounds the same. If you like one album, you will probably like them all (except for maybe some of the spoken word poetry stuff).

[qdes]

Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd are releasing a new album called Bordeaux on the 22nd of February. I'm extremely excited since I enjoyed the twin albums released in 2006 so much.

[Adrian]

The Room - excellent album!

[qdes]

It arrived last friday and has been my soundtrack at home solely. I must say it surpasses their previous albums with a quite a margin.

[qdes]

Release Date: 9/27/2011
Harold Budd is a one of a kind modern neo-classical artist creating high-callibre and complex music with unique and subtle tension and abstraction, and simultaneous almost-pastoral but as-often otherworldly mood. Within the first three notes of a Budd composition, with trademark fresh-as-improvisation sound, whether deep dark or bright light, the listener is transcended to an enlightened state within the balance of empty space, sometimes wistful nostalgia, frequent idealism and always persistent love and beauty.

In The Mist is the artist purely distilled. It is the music of Harold Budd at its most raw, emotive and minimalist. In addition, Harold is writing for string quartet. In The Mist is comprised of three distinct movements. Tracks 1-5, The Whispers, are minimalist, tonal, sometimes tone-bending piano compositions. Tracks 6-8, The Gun Fighters, are more dramatic piano compositions with sparse electronic effects and percussive elements. Tracks 9-13, Shadows, are new Harold Budd string quartets, which add an additional component of interest - minimal, abstract, moody compositions.

All Music Guide calls Harold "an American ambient/neo-classical composer". He is absolutely the World's number one minimalist, ambient, modern classical composer. That said, he abhors the word ambient. "Ambient: Everytime I read this word I cringe: I've been kidnapped by something I neither know of nor care about; it's better by 1000 times than "New Age" from 2 decades ago, but still..." Although his work is frequently identified as ambient, minimal and occasionally classical, these reductive labels do not do justice to the complexity and quiet beauty of his work.

"First impressions. VERY empty. A sad edge to a lot of the pieces. Nice choice of synthetic sounds.... Damn that's an empty landscape. De Chirico must be shitting himself." --Andy Partridge

"Tone bending: Interesting. Mike and I spent a lot of time getting a particular feel or sound I thought should be there. It all began with the 4tets on the first day's recording. I love string music but I hate the sceeching sound of string 4tets, thus we got to work after lunch. Took the highs out, softerned some attacks... very slight chorus reverb... then I asked for a harmonizer set at 101: no harmonizer, so: on Mike's program we simulated that, or close to it, and that was it. In fact, except for the first piece, we used it for the entire mix (not every piece "harmonized", however, -- piece-by-piece adjustments, alterations...)." --Harold Budd

Tracklist:

The Whispers

1. Haru Spring
2. The Whispers
3. The Startled
4. The Foundry (for Mika Vainio)
5. The Art of Mirrors (after Derek Jarman)

Gunfighters

6. Three-Fingered Jack
7. Greek George
8. Black Bart

Shadows

9. Come Back To Me In Dreams
10.Parallel Night
11.Sun At 6 Windows
12.The Panther of Small Favors
13.Mars and the Artist (after Cy Twombly)

Recorded and mixed by Michael Coleman at Orangewood Studio, Mesa, Arizona, March 2011.

String Quartet (9-13):
Linda J. Lambie, violin
Hisami Lijima, violin
Peter Rosato, viola
Richard Bock, cello

Can't wait!

[Tin Bird]

I wish those Clive Wright cd's had been a collab with Bill Nelson instead...as cool as they are, they don't match the magic between those two.

[qdes]

Just listening the new album with John Foxx... Amazing.

[Nicrobliz]

Wow, I had almost given up all hope of Harold Budd releasing something new and then he goes and schedules two albums for a 2011 release! I'm really looking forward to hearing them.

As for his back-catalogue, it's been a mixed bag for me (yet better than most artists) but at least 50% of his work I adore. My personal favourites include:

The Pavilion Of Dreams
By The Dawn's Early Light (with all the spoken/sung tracks omitted - it flows much better without them)
Music For 3 Pianos
The Pearl
La Bella Vista

I also enjoy Avalon Sutra quite a bit, found his beat poetry outings uninteresting, didn't like his collaborations with Clive Wright, found his work with Robin Guthrie hit and miss (Mysterious Skin is their best release so far) and found most of his synth-laden albums rather terrible (with the exception of Lovely Thunder).

[Nicrobliz]

Oops! Correction - make that three Harold Budd releases for 2011!

The third is a reissue of his 2CD collaboration with John Foxx but with a third album tacked on (a collaboration between Budd, Foxx and Ruben Garcia). It's called 'Nighthawks, Translucence and Drift Music', and was released in June on Edsel Records.