Harold Budd and Brian Eno did a classic ambient album together that I really like a lot called
The Pearl. Daniel Lanois was one of the players as well. 1984 is when it came out but I didn't get the LP until much later at a used record store as I was kind of played out on all the Eno ambient sound collages at the time. The hints of electronic tapestry that he weaves around Budd's piano is just beautiful. I guess one could almost call it new age, but the beauty and artistry and craftsmanship in this recording really makes most new age music sound pretty insubstantial in comparison. Yeah, this is definitely one of my favorites.
So fast forward to 2004 and I hear that the 68 year old Harold Budd has decided to call it quits after so many years of making beautiful music so he put together a final album with tributes to the people he's worked with over the years sprinkled throughout. It's called
Avalon Sutra and comes with a second disc which has only one song, the over 60-minute remix of "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath". This one I had to have. It was only released in January I think, but is really a beautiful album. Lots of that signature treated piano, but some very nice soprano sax by Jon Gibson too, along with a string quartet to fill out many of the compositions. Very classy album and artwork. There's a very nice 4.5 star review at
AMG and I also see a 9.4 rating in the review at the
barcode ezine site, but if you like this type of ambient chillout music with a lot of real instrumentation in the mix, you can't do much better than this, at least for me. Oh, it's unfortunately not released in the US yet as it's on the Samadhi Sound UK label so I bought my copy through
AB-CD. Not an endorsement for them, that's just the place I used since it was cheap at about $15, and I'd bought some stuff there before so knew they were a good place. But I'm sure there are other places you can find it for a decent price if you want. Just not at amazon since they're asking over $30
So what are some of your old or new favorites for the times you feel like just floating away with the music?