By the Dawn's Early Light

Artist: Harold Budd
Label: Warner Bros / Wea
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 075992664929
EAN: 0075992664929
ASIN: B000005JB8

Release Date: 1991-07-23

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Ambient

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Best Atmospheric Music
spacey, trippy,  & ambient (multi-genre)
Beautiful Music Languishing in Undeserved Obscurity
New & Timeless Music & Movies

Tracks:

Poem: Aztec Hotel
Boy About 10
Arcadia
Dead Horse Alive With Flies
Photo Of Santiago Mc Kinn
Corpse At The Shooting Gallery
Albion Farewell (Homage To Delius)
Distant Lights Of Olancha Recede
Down The Slopes To The Meadow
She Dances By The Light Of The Silvery Moon
Blind Bird
Saint's Name Spoken
Place Of Dead Roads
A Child In A Sylvan Field
Boy About 10
Wings
No Name
Advent

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Customer Reviews:

Perhaps Budd's best effort?.......2006-07-06

I know, I know, hard to make that statement, given Budd's remarkable work over the years; especially with Brian Eno. Still, if I had to pick out a single Budd album to give to a non-Budd listener, as an example of Budd in top form, I'd go with this one.

Budd's signature piano blends beautifully with Bill Nelson's guitars, B.J. Cole's slider, Mabel Wong's viola, and Susan Allen's harp. Intentionally evocative of the dusty Southwest which Budd called home as a boy, the album also features a series of Budd's quirky spoken word poems, which begin and end the album in appropriate fashion.

The highpoint, in my opinion, is 'Saint's Name Spoken', featuring Budd on piano and vocals and Bill Nelson on string guitar. Slow, melancholy, evocative, it's right there with some of the best blue Jazz and, yet, is not jazz at all, but something else entirely.

Like most of Budd's work, it's not easy to describe this album, suffice to say that it is among my top ten ambient/instrumental albums of all time. I can't say enough good about it.

I often play this back-to-back with Budd & Eno's ambient classic, "The Pearl".

Not Your Father's Boring Piano Solos.......2005-01-11

I orginally bought the CD for track 13 b/c I kept hearing it on somafm.com but upon listening to the entire CD, it was well worth the money. Budd has a way with the keys and the depth of the heartfelt emotion is reflected in the beauty of the music.

Rich in texture.......2000-09-06

When I first bought this CD some seven years ago, I was immediately put off by the viola that somehow dominates many of the tracks. I put the CD on the shelf and never listened to it until recently. What I found now was a richly textured Ambient/Minimal CD, packed with very emotional pieces. It sounds alot like Harold Budd, but since he gets som extra help from other musicians, this turns out to be something more. I can see parallells between this and for instance Gavin Bryars "After the Requiem" as well as the instrumental extension of David Sylvian's "Gone to Earth", where Bill Nelson's guitar playing is featured as well.

Sleep will come.......2000-04-16

Abandoning the dark, synth-driven soundscapes of "The white arcades", this release delves into contemporary chamber music. However, I think "By the dawn's.." comes dangerously close to shallow new age music. Budd wastes his talent with sketchy, half-way developed compositions, thin synth sounds, and wailing viola. This album features very little of his piano playing, instead there's a couple of mediocre 'spoken word performances' by Budd himself. Besides, this loose collection of tracks and traces clearly lacks the concept character and underlying suspense of his best albums like "The pearl". Actually, the only redeeming quality are some guitar parts by Bill Nelson and B.J.Cole, lending a nice country-rock feeling to some tracks ("Down the slopes..", "The place of..", "A child in.."). After all, the result is a sweet but unengaging sounding album that fails to have anything really intriguing and memorable about it. Fortunately, Budd would return to top-form with 1996's "Luxa".

Little bits of darkness.......2000-01-28

Harold Budd's body of work since the mid-70s has been concerned with a lush, beautiful area of sound. It's worth noting that Budd's work was one of the first things released by Brian Eno on his influential and aptly-named Obscure label. And while this album is a lush, dark, and beautifully atmospheric effort, I find that the occasional poetry...as also occurs on his collaboration with Andy Partridge of XTC...detracts from the atmosphere that the pieces themselves build up. It would've been more effective, I think, if the music had been left to just flow and the verbal bits had been left for perhaps another release where they could've been merged with the music in a more effective manner. But by no means does this mean you shouldn't buy this work; there's a lot here that's more than worthwhile.

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