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Harold Budd - The Pavilion Of Dreams CD (album) cover

THE PAVILION OF DREAMS

Harold Budd

 

Progressive Electronic

3.82 | 35 ratings

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admireArt
Prog Reviewer
3 stars A conflict of interests.

In "Pavilion of Dreams" recorded in 1976, later released in 1978, Harold Budd's second known "solo" release, (his first "The Oak of the Golden Dreams / Coeur D'Orr, 1970 is missing in this page), harbored himself with, what was known in 1976 as "new age", top notch fellow musicians, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman, both as Budd, still active up to this day.

So what went wrong, as not to have achieved something, music-wise, far more "genial"?

The borders of, call it : "easy listenng", "new age" or "ambient" music , are kind of fragile but demanding. The musical structure has to respect those limits, in order to keep its goals. But as many "new agers" found out eventually, it is at the same time, a limited field of action, when it comes to the "colors" you are allowed to do with or as Brian Eno quotes: "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting".

And sadly this effort is more ignorable, than interesting. It focuses on to many directions, but it does not really propose something new on none. Most of the setting of its moods, are "tingly" and "sparkly", the kind of sweet solutions, to a somewhat limited palette. The best is Marion Brown's saxophone lines, which remind me of John Coltrane's "super cool" long sax lines in the early 60's. The rest of the music relies to much on this kind of overly-sweet surfaces, that more than once are just plain mellow (or quiet uninteresting). The choral song ""Madrigals of the Rose Angel: 1. Rossetti Noise / 2. The Crystal Garden and a Coda", is the 5 star song, although it also suffers, the "twinkling" effect of the be it, glockenspiel, piano, celeste or harp, obsessively appearing everywhere.

Harold Budd eventually evolved, but here he is just gathering the pieces of his eventual and future musical "ambient" language.

***3 good, "promising" and that is it, PA stars

admireArt | 3/5 |

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