Harold Budd
84, Pasadena
The minimalist composer and musician Harold Budd, whom collaborator Brian Eno once described as being “a great abstract painter trapped in the body of a musician,” died Dec. 8 of complications from COVID- 19. He was 84.
His death was confirmed by his manager, Steve Takaki.
Starting in the 1960s, the Los Angeles native drew from Minimalism, free jazz and beatless ambient music — even if he disliked the latter term — to craft meditative work that moved like a Pacific breeze.
Across a 50- year creative run, Budd worked with artists including the visionary musician and producer Eno, Scottish dream- pop group the Cocteau Twins, XTC’s Andy Partridge, producer and musician Daniel Lanois, British synth- pop innovator John Foxx and French producer- musician Hector Zazou. This year, Budd’s solo work helped score the HBO drama “I Know This Much Is True.”
Living mostly in Southern California, Budd composed, taught and performed works that from the start rejected the jarring, busy approach to then- contemporary experimental music. Such work of the time “seemed self- congratulatory, and for a small cadre of snobs, and I refused to go on with it,” he told L. A. Record.
His two albums recorded with Eno, 1980’ s “Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror” and 1984’ s “The Pearl” ( which also features Lanois), are considered pinnacles of the ambient movement and helped establish Budd’s reputation, one that was bolstered by a project he made soon thereafter with members of the Cocteau Twins. Called “The Moon and the Melodies,” it was issued in 1986 by the hip independent imprint 4AD and introduced Budd’s name to a new generation of outsiders.
Born in 1936 in central Los Angeles and raised at the edge of the Mojave Desert in Victorville, Budd served in the Army alongside future saxophone skronker Albert Ayler. Both shared an affinity for post- bop experimentation, a connection they discovered while playing together in the military band. Budd’s first instrument was a drum kit, and for a while he made his living playing Los Angeles nightclubs.
Budd’s first released piece, “The Oak of the Golden Dreams,” was recorded in 1970 on an early model Buchla modular synthesizer at the California Institute of the Arts.
His life changed in the mid- 1970s with an out- of- the- blue phone call from a fan, Eno, who had heard a recording of one of his pieces. “I owe Eno everything, OK? That’s the end of that,” Budd said with blunt appreciation, of that first conversation with his future collaborator. Eno invited him to London, and Budd didn’t think twice. “I was plucked from the tree, and suddenly I had f lowered. I was just waiting. I couldn’t do it on my own. I didn’t know anything.”
He knew his muse, though, and with Eno making his sonic arguments for a more tranquil music with his own series of ambient releases, Budd eased his way into the movement to become one of its standard- bearers. He devoted himself to piano, keyboards and guitar, texturing his recorded work with blurry drone tones until sounds seem to bleed together.
Budd announced his retirement from music in 2004, but apparently he didn’t consult with his creative spirit. In a review of Budd’s short- lived “farewell performance” with Jon Gibson at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles, The Times characterized Budd as “a willfully mysterious character, musically and personally. He has gone missing from the local scene for long stretches, making each Budd sighting something special.”
A few years later, though, he returned with “Perhaps” and continued to compose for the rest of his life. Along the way, Budd issued a series of albums with Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie; the most recent, “Another Flower,” was released in early December. According to his manager, Budd had recently finished composing a series of two dozen string quartets.