Harold Budd

★★★★ The Pavilion Of Dreams SUPERIOR VIADUCT. CD/DL/LP

The late minimalist/ambient composer called this 1978 album his Magna Carta.

In 1972, when Harold Budd composed Madrigals Of The Rose Angel, the piece that caught the attention of Brian Eno, the then 34-year-old Californian composer was trying to escape the theoretical traps of the avant-garde and create something of surface beauty and emotional power. Such is the case with Budd’s first album for Eno’s Obscure label, which rejects abstract inspirations such as Mark Rothko and Robert Rauschenberg and instead references the romantic art of the Pre-Raphaelites. Created with British composers and multi-instrumentalists Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman, the album is an exercise in sublime surface textures and ethereal patterns, utilising light motifs of harp, keyboards, celeste and glockenspiel alongside the hovering saxophonist Marion Brown and the soaring mezzosoprano of Lynda Richardson. Not designed as an album of depth or weight, it is, however, intricate and beguiling, both accessible and unknowable.