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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Ketil Bjørnstad - Floating (2005)

This is not a ECM release, but it looks and sounds  like... Palle Danielsson (double-bass) and Marilyn Mazur (drums, percussions) add a subtle rythmic and sonic touch to Ketil Bjornstad lyrical and inspired piano playing, and the three of them built up beautiful climates, where melody, swing and atmosphere are mixed in a very creative way... Is it jazz ? ambient music ? chamber music ? As often, with ECM artists (and the three of them are ECM artists), labels and definitions are useless and disappointing...

Let say it is a kind of ambient chamber music whose strong identity and originality results from the unique way Ketil Bjornstad plays piano (delicate, introspective, melodic and melancholic)  and from the way the two other musicians listen to him...

Floating is a perfect title for this album: it is floating music, a quiet melodic soundscape that will surround you at the heart of the night...

link / mp3

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part1

part2

Wim Mertens - After Virtue (1987)

Wim Mertens belongs to the bunch of my all time favorite musicians ... This Belgian composer (b. 1953), after studying social sciences at the University of Leuven, discovered American repetitive composers, such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. From 1978, he worked as a producer for the Belgian TV and from 1982 he started an amazing career of musician, composing musics for theatrical plays and for movies (for example Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect and Louis Delluc's La femme de nulle part).

His first album was released in 1982 (For Amusement Only - The Sound of Pinball Machines).

His whole discography, until 2007, includes 71 CDs !!! 

Wim Mertens wrote many pieces of chamber music for small ensembles or solo instruments, he also recorded many albums as a solo artist, playing piano, sometimes with vocals.

Defining Wim Mertens' music is not easy. I would say it blends minimalism and classicism in a very intimate and poetical way, with a personal lyrical touch... This music is serene and dynamic at the same time, melodies are at the forefront, there is a unique feeling... Wim Mertens' music is intemporal, at the crossroads of classical traditions and of the exploration of new patterns and atmospheres...

As an introduction to his musical universe, please listen to After Virtue, and try to buy some of Wim Mertens' 70 other recordings ;-)

 link: mp3 / 320

WMAV.zip

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Harmonia Ensemble & Roger Eno - In a Room (1993)

"The rich subtle music of Roger Eno has forever remained dreamily suspended between an electronic appeal and high brow tendency. This record proposes him as a composer of pure chamber music, featuring acoustic melodies for piano, cello and clarinet. The CD also includes tracks for piano solo".  

The liner notes of this CD, released on the Italian label "Materiali Sonori", are a good introduction to Roger Eno's music. Roger is Brian's brother, and he shares with him the same interest in ambient musics (he was involved into the Apollo album, with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois). Pianist and singer,  Roger Eno is also a composer of chamber music, subtle and elegant, with a unique style. Orio Odori (clarinet, bass clarinet), Damiano Puliti (cello), Alessandra Garosi (piano) create an intimate and beautiful mood, while playing these 16 compositions. Listening to this record will take you from track one "Classical Music for those with no memory ( 4th Movement)" to track 16: "A Dance with no people (Aromatic Tango)".

This is a beautiful musical journey....

link: mp3 / 320

HERE.zip

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Hans Otte - The book of Sounds (1984)

Hans Otte (1926-2007) was a very creative German composer and artist, as creative in poems and drawings as in sound installations or music for theatrical plays. He helped a lot in promoting in Germany artists such as John Cage, David Tudor, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, in his Bremen radio Festival. As a musician, Hans Otte was a student of Paul Hindemith and of piano maestro Walter Gieseking. 

The Book of the Sounds or Das Buch der Klänge is among Hans Otte most significant compositions. He played live this composition in many places. This 1984 recording by the Kuckuck German record company is the best introduction to his musical world, where Western minimalism meets Eastern spiritual traditions. John Cage, Terry Riley, Morton Feldman are obvious references, if one tries to compare Hans Otte's piano music to someone else...

What fascinates me in this CD is the quest for new sounds through a traditional musical instruments...

Hans Otte conceived and played piano as anyone else...

For lovers of experimental music, this original CD calls another one: "Das Buch Der Klange" played by Herbert Hencke on ECM New Music...

The interest of Manfred Eicher and ECM for the compositions of Hans Otte is enough to tell its importance in the landscape of contemporary music...

Link: mp3 / 320

BofS1.zip

BofS2.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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Bill Carrothers - After Hours (1998)

"Jazz that gives you the shiver... This guy is a phenomenon, a poet of the keyboard, with a lot of inspiration and a master in the art of the trio. He plays with grace and goes around the cliches of music and comes out with an implicit chord of pure expression. Bill Carrothers jumps from anywhere, full of stylish maturity, and the least we can say is he surprises you, he seduces you, he brings you up and you can't resist it. You have to listen to this miraculous CD, After Hours"

- Les Inrockuptibles - 

Until 1998, the pianist Bill Carrothers was known only among small circles of jazz fans, especially in New York, where he was part of the club scene. This After Hours album gave him an international exposure and it was the starting point of an amazing career... All the songs of this fantastic album were recorded live, during late night "after the club date" performances, between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM, in front of a very small audience. These improvised sessions were true miracles, with a great feeling, a romantic and intense mood in the playing, a magical interaction between the three musicians involved. Revisiting jazz standards, the musicians let the music develop itself, a music of late night or early morning, at the edge of consciousness and of dream.

This is one of my favorite jazz albums and I love to listen to it during the night, where the subtlety of Carrother's playing gets all its intensity. Shades and light, dreams and thoughts, imagination and feelings compose a kind of inner movie, and this After Hours album is its perfect soundtrack...

Bill Carrothers: Piano

Billy Peterson: Bass

Kenny Horst; Drums

links :  mp3/320

BCAfH1.zip

BCAfH2.zip

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