Harold Budd - By the Dawn's Early Light (1991)

This is a splendid album, perhaps the most personal album of Harold Budd. Mixing together the reading of some of his beautiful poems and ambient musical soundscapes, Budd creates unique atmospheres, between day and night, between light and darkness, between sleep and awakening. Playing piano, Hammond B3 and synthesizer, Harold Budd is surrounded by B.J. Cole (pedal steel guitar), Bill Nelson (acoustic and electric guitars), Mabel Wong (viola) and Susan Allen (harp).

The result is magical and moving, deep and ambient, and a subtle and aerial chamber music surrounds Harold Budd's texts: his voice, the rythm and pauses of his reading are parts of the music.

Imagination meets memory, silence found its voice, words and sounds are just colours painting a beautiful, quiet, serene and ambient atmosphere...

link: mp3 / 320

HB.BtDEL.zip

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Russell Mills & Undark - Pearl & Umbra (1999)

Russell Mills should be a familiar name to all the ambient music fans, since he designed the artwork of many Brian Eno's and David Sylvian's recordings, among many other artists. Russell Mills also created many installations and designed stage set up for Harold Budd and David Sylvian's concerts, among others.  His paintings and his sound installations are displayed in art galleries all around the world.

Russell Mills is also a musician and a sound sculptor, and he released several beautiful CDs, mixing ambient soundscapes and post-rock climates in a very creative way.

Pearl & Umbra is a rare and impressive recording, involving 34 musicians. The gotha of the new musics scene is contributing to this album: Eraldo Bernocchi, Michael Brook, Harold Budd, Sussan Deyhim, Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Peter Gabriel, Robin Guthrie, Bill Laswell, Paul Schutze, David Sylvian, Ian Walton and Hector Zazou, to name but a few...

Enjoy...

link / mp3

RM.PaU.zip

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Dan Hartman - New Green Clear Blue (1989)

"The subsconscious mind is a powerful world possessing experiences and feelings we do not necessarily recognize in our daily movements: but nonetheless they influence our entire lives. The tones and shades in this collection were performed live and intuitively for the purpose of opening channels by which the listener may visit their own subsconscious".

Dan Hartman provides his listeners with a fair description of what this ambient CD is about. Released by Private Music, the Peter Baumann's company, New Green Clear Blue is a beautiful and minimalist album, and Hartman acknowledges the musical inspiration of Vangelis and Harold Budd. Lyrical and intimate, most of the tracks are compositions for digital synthesizers: melody and harmonies are at the forefront, beautiful treatments create a far open space around the electronic sounds.

Dan Hartman is probably best known for his work as a songwriter and a musical producer. In the late seventies, he reached number-one in the Dance Charts with his singles,  "Instant replay" and "Relight my fire". In the eighties and until 1994, he worked as a producer with artists such as Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Paul Young, James Brown, Nona Hendrix and Steve Windwood, to name but a few...

He died in 1994.

Private Music was used to offer to main stream artists a private creative space for more intimate and experimental projects. This 1989 album allows us to discover an unexpected side of Dan Hartman's talent, his interest in ambient music, his admiration for Harold Budd.

New Green Clear Blue is a beautiful CD to be listened to after midnight...

link: MP3 / 320

DH-NGCB.zip

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Harold Budd, Ruben Garcia, Daniel Lentz - Music for 3 Pianos (1992)

Music for three Pianos is the result of a long-standing friendship between Harold Budd, Daniel Lentz and Ruben Garcia. Inspired by Morton Feldman's multi-piano pieces, this album explores the border between silence and music and invites the listener to navigate along dreams and memories. Minimalist and ambient, this music is stripped to the essential, and could remind Erik Satie's atmospheres. Simplicity, depth, sensitivity, this is a beautiful dialogue between three outstanding musicians who are more interested in the essence than in the surface, this Music for 3 Pianos is a true melodic and ambient gem. This album should be listened late at night, when the surrounding silence will create its own harmonics with the music and your own feelings...

Link / mp3 320

M43p.zip

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Harold Budd - The Pavilion of Dreams (1978)

Harold Budd is an American composer (b. 1936) who played (and still plays)  a very important part in the minimalist and ambient scene, either as a solo artist or through his collaborations with musicians such as Brian Eno, Zeitgeist, Hector Zazou, Andy Patridge, John Foxx, Daniel Lentz, Ruben Gardia, Cocteau Twins, Robin Guthrie.

The Pavilion of Dreams was released in the famous series Obscure Records, where Brian Eno produced still unknown composers such as Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman. It was Harold Budd's second album, and it revealed him to a wider international audience.

Ambient and impressionist music, intimate chamber music, quiet melodies in the vein of Satie and Debussy, The Pavilion of Dreams offers "an extended cycle of works begun in 1972". Harold Budd (electric piano) is accompanied by a small ensemble of musicians (harp, celeste, marimbas, percussion, vibes and vibraphone, chorus). Among them, Lynda Richardson (mezzo soprano), Marion Brown (Alto sapophone), Michael Nyman (marimba) and Gavin Bryars (glockenspiel, voice, celeste). 

Quiet music for an hectic age, The Pavilion of Dreams explores the poetics of slowness. Mysteriously ambient, lightly melancholic, deep as an horizon, these compositions opened new perspectives in the trend of ambient musics, and they could be considered as a foreword to Ambient 2 / The Plateaux of Mirror, composed in 1980 with Brian Eno.

link / mp3 320

HB.TPofD.zip

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