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review by Bill Binkelman This is reportedly ambient musician Harold Budd's last album, no doubt sad news to fans of his magnificent previous recordings (Lovely Thunder, The White Arcades, The Pearl, et al.). However, if an artist like Harold Budd is closing out his career, I can't fathom a finer release than Avalon Sutra (the release is actually a two-disc/two title set, but more on that later). Quite possibly the most poignant and beautifully melancholic recording I've ever heard (and that covers a lot of ground, since its my favorite type of ambient music), Avalon Sutra is stunning, so achingly sad are its fourteen tracks. Working more in an acoustic vein with (echoed) piano accompanied by soprano sax, bass flute, string quartet (all by John Gibson), violin (James Sitterly, Peter Kent, John Acevedo), and cello (Marston Smith), although some synthesizer shadings do occur here and there, Budd crafts one miniature piece of sadness and regret after another. Nine tracks are three minutes or less in duration and, while I wish they were all longer, their brevity is actually part of what Budd is conveying (or at least that's how I see it). As usual, his music is minimal in nature, working (as, for example, Tim Story does) with repeated musical phrases and slight variations as they repeat, or in short tone poems that explore one corner of an emotional mood. The densly echoed piano adds an introspective color to each selection, especially when laid as background to violin, sax, cello, or the string quartet. Avalon Sutra is a somber and sorrowful affair, yet without a doubt startlingly beautiful. I can't imagine a better "late night" recording, especially while reading (in fact, Kathryn and I did just that recently when we had a rural bed and breakfast in western Minnesota to ourselves; the music fit perfectly with the stillness of the century-old house sitting in the middle of a small farm community). Singling out individual songs is relatively pointless for several reasons. One, I would have to compliment each one, since every track is worthy. Two, describing this music except in a general way, is like trying to accurately convey, in words, an impressionistic painting. You can't do it in a manner that conveys the emotional impact of what you are seeing (or hearing, in this case). Hard core "electronic ambient" music fans (who normally shun all acoustic recordings) can enjoy tracks like "Little Heart" which has lush warm washes of keyboards flowing underneath twinkling tones and echoed piano (it's also the longest track here at seven-and-a &endash;half minutes) as well as the terribly sad "A Walk In The Park With Nancy (In Memory)," featuring piano set against a series of repeated reverberating gentle bells and "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath," which combines piano with broad washes of synth strings in an ebbing and flowing melodic refrain. The remaining selections are all acoustic piano, either solo or accompanying the instruments named in my opening paragraphs. Some of the pieces have either a neo-chamber music feel to them or a morose kind of jazziness (owing to the presence of Gibson's soprano sax, mostly). Worthy of special mention, as far as I'm concerned, is the poetry of Budd's titles: "How Vacantly You Stare At Me," "Porcelain Ginger," "L'enfant Perdu" and others mentioned in the previous paragraph. The images created by the amalgamation of the words and music are those of dreary rainy afternoons sitting by a window, cool crisp late autumn days walking through a city park, or moments reading through a book left behind by a loved one as a memento. The second disc of the set is an almost seventy-minutes long treatment of "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath." It's not meant for direct listening, I imagine, but as a background soundtrack during reflection, remembrance, or introspection. The music itself centers around minimal piano improvisation circling around a repetitive two-note cello sample and a solo violin that lilts over the others, as well as gentle ambient/electronic textures buried further back in the mix. Whether a person can handle this long of a riff on a basic set-up is purely a matter of personal preference. I look at it the same way I do most long-form ambient recordings, such as Lost at Dunn's Lake. On the surface, little seems to be happening. But on a less obvious level, there are intricacies that reveal themselves, if one is prepared to dig deep. On the other hand, one can just let the "whole" of the piece wash over oneself, as if one was a leaf in a stream being borne by the current. Either way, the second disc has merits of its own in addition to serving as an intriguing "book-end" to Avalon Sutra. I consider disc one to be among the very finest albums of recent years and it will be in my CD player for a long time, especially during the remainder of the Minnesota winter. This album represents a pinnacle in musically portraying the somber side of the human condition and it has few, if any, equals. As a final offering from Harold Budd, it crowns his career in fitting fashion and is, in my estimation, an absolutely essential recording for anyone who aspires to appreciate ambient music. |
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