(All Saints/Gyroscope)
Ethereal, ethereal, ethereal. Minimal, minimal, minimal. The same dry, unengaging comments about Harold Budd infect the few discographies, summaries, and press releases regarding his work.
More precisely, Harold Budd is impressionistic in the age of "pop" overstatement. His work is crafted with the quality that the experience of experimentation brings; Budd was part of the minimalist and avant-garde movements of the 1960's, writing such pieces as "Unspecified D-flat Major Chord and Lirio" (a 24-hour solo gong performance). In the 70's, Budd shifted his composing focus from outright simplicity to prettiness and decoration; in '72 he wrote "Madrigals Of The Rose Angel", featuring a topless chorus of female singers, harp, percussion, celeste and lights.
Luxa, Budd's first solo album since 1991, is an excellent mixture of the minimalism and prettiness of his past. Simple, repetitive, direct melodies and rhythms throughout the album, accompanied by one-dimensional background hums, lock the listener into a state of amused contemplation. "A Sidelong Glance From My Round Nefertiti," one standout track, seems reminiscent of his collaboration with the Cocteau Twins, The Moon And The Melodies, with a simple, rolling piano melody over a subtle background drone. "Feral" in a similar way sets up a harmonic balance between background drone and repetitive foreground "themes," or patterns of notes through a song, and adds gentle voice-like samples and an even less cutting keyboard sample in the fore instead of regular piano.
The 80's brought Budd to utilize the recording studio as a key instrument in his music, much like ambient composer Brian Eno, with whom he collaborated on The Pearl and Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror. This kind of emphasis on production and sonic decoration has a definite positive effect on Luxa and many other albums, without taking away the music's ability to make tiny, beautiful auditory tracks across his audience's mind.
Budd's work includes well over a dozen solo works and collaborations, working with musicians like Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins on The White Arcades, and XTC's Andy Partridge on Through The Hill in 1994.
