Saturday Morning Records: #31 — Harold Budd & Brian Eno’s "Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror "
A new series for paying subscribers — celebrating favourite albums for the weekend
If I’m ever up for first light, or even close, then I put this record on. And that’s any day of the week, but also including Saturday.
It’s best thought of as “Brian Eno album”, though it’s also “a Harold Budd album”; you could argue, as I did that’s it more of a Budd album, than an Eno one. But I arrived at this through Eno — though it sure made me check out a whole lot more Budd.
Budd is at the piano, playing gorgeous, slowly unfolding pieces. Eno is in the producer’s chair, adding his treatments and manipulations, building (and dismantling, or fragmenting) the sound-world.
They made a few gorgeous records together, and each made several on their own too, or with others, but this pairing and this recording interest me the most I think. It’s music for all seasons, for any time of day, for the weary mind, for the gentle start to a day, for the wind-down at the end of an evening; it is the music that you let soak into the walls.
I have a huge collection of Eno recordings, on vinyl and CD, and I always want more. Maybe listening to ambient music on vinyl isn’t always the best, with side-breaks creating a split in the flow. Another way of looking at that is the music has space for pause built into its run time. It can work in the favour of the album as much as it might ever work against it.
Eno is one of my great musical obsessions, one of my all-time favourite artists, and that includes a lot of his amazing work with others. But I have the softest spot for his Ambient series of records. Masterful, joyful music — and stories surrounding its making, or the decisions and processes.
I’m up early on this Saturday morning to listen to Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror, and maybe you are too, by coincidence? Or now, because you’ve been influenced. Maybe you’ve never — ever — heard it? I envy you so hugely right now. Take the first plunge. You’ll be back. Your world will have changed. This is music that allows you to see the world in new ways.
