Harold Budd: The Pavilion of Dreams (Superior Viaduct)
The Pavilion of Dreams is an apt title for Harold Budd's landmark 1978 album: a carefully crafted musical space (Budd's structures, Brian Eno's production) filled with shimmering tones and long-held notes. The appositeness of the title is not surprising: Budd, in addition to being a musician, was a poet.
Budd had passed through several phases by the time he landed in the place from whence these compositions -- dating from 1972 to 1975 -- sprung. He'd played drums with Albert Ayler when they were in the army; written graphic scores inspired by Morton Feldman and John Cage; and recorded "The Oak of the Golden Dreams," a Buchla exploration that reveals Terry Riley's influence. But on Pavilion, Budd hit on the sound that he would continue to develop for the rest of his life (Budd contracted Covid while rehabilitating from a stroke in late 2020).
Superficially, Pavilion does resemble New Age recordings from that time, but the album is clearly linked to classical and jazz in significant ways. A sense of form and an attention to timbral subtlety sets his work apart from the soothing sound baths of the seventies.
Jazz giant Marion Brown is featured on "Bismillahi Rrahman Rrahim," a piece Budd wrote specifically for him. Brown's alto saxophone delicately intones over a bright bed of electric piano, glockenspiel, marimbas, and celeste; Brown's tone is truly exquisite.
On "Two Songs" Budd draws from music that later came to known as Spiritual Jazz. His take on "Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord" is "after a version by Pharoah Sanders," presumably the expansion of the traditional hymn that appears on Sanders' Deaf Dumb Blind (Summan Bukmun Umyun). The other song, "Butterfly Sunday," is adapted from John Coltrane's "After the Rain," a gorgeous ballad from Impressions. The resulting art songs are scored for harp and wordless mezzo soprano and have a markedly different quality than the recordings that inspired them. The warmth and emotional depth of the Sanders and the Coltrane are transformed into ethereal Air Music, a bit anemic but intriguing nevertheless.
"Madrigals of the Rose Angel," the earliest composition, features long-tone female vocals brushed by arpeggiated harp patterns. Celeste, acoustic piano, and percussion are also part of the compelling gossamer. As the music moves, there's a sense of journeying through a musical landscape with just-so hollows carved out.
Dark acoustic piano tones mark the brief opening passage of "Juno." A longer central section brims with piano runs edged by glockenspiel and marimba tremolos. And then the dark tones return: a gloomy, modernist gesture at the end of a blissed-out album.