The Pavilion Of Dreams (studio album) by Harold Budd

From Repo 03/28/2017 10:21

It took me a long time to warm up to this one. Maybe it was the soft jazz of the opening track. Maybe it was the operatic vocals on the second track. Maybe it was the marimbas. But in general it felt a tad too precious. Like they were trying to create the most new-agey sounding album of the 70s, and I was going to chalk it up as second tier ambient in the Eno vein. Which surprised me since I absolutely love the DARK ambient of Harold Budd’s work in the 80s on Abandoned Cities and The Pearl. So I kept listening. Kept waiting for something to click. And it did. Maybe my heart chakra or some other new age vestige in my body opened up but I began to embrace its warm spirituality and the smooth jazz of Marion Brown’s saxophone. At any rate, I now find it a lovely and even transcendent album at times that really helps me find peace on the some of the sleepless nights I’ve had over the past week. It’s a great record to meditate to, and I’m actually looking forward to using this is a bridge stone to other spiritual and uplifting works.

Grade: A-. A work that may actually change my view of overtly new agey and spiritual music - that’s saying something. Please send recs of other great spiritual works my way! It’s still not totally my thing, and I much prefer Budd’s later works The Pearl and Abandoned Cities, but I’ve definitely turned a 180 on this album which is pretty impressive.

One of the pioneers of ambient music, Budd's 'The Pavilion Of Dreams' is a 'silky' ambient music in the tradition of Eno's 'Music For Airports'. But Budd adds mystical free jazz elements that acquire a more transcendental and spiritual feel that resembles a merging of sorts between Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane.