The origin of this album was a piece entitled "The Room" that Harold Budd originally recorded on 1988's The White Arcades. Budd often speaks of his works very much like they were presences or even people, and recounts in the liner notes that after recording it, he knew there would be more to come from "The Room" in his life, though his most immediate need was to get The White Arcades completed. With this album, his first and only for Atlantic Records, Budd presents to us a work exploring "aspects of what rooms can be," these not distinguished from one another simply by colors like the chambers of Prince Prospero, but instead by titles evoking the elemental or metaphysical, a sense of dream.For many of Budd's albums, I find the most beautiful pieces are placed right up front at the very beginning. And so we have it here: "The Room of Ancillary Dreams" is breathtaking. The basic foundation of the piece finds the bass clef of the piano see-sawing between fifth notes (D-flat-A-flat). In the treble clef, an uneasy motif of fifths (F#-C#; A-E; F-C), doubled on piano and organ, softly bursts in and fades over and over, as the piano improvises along. The swell and release of tension, not to mention the hint of menace, that Budd captures in this treble motif of only three chords is commendable. "The Room of Oracles" is also a piece that is astonishingly sparse but effective, essentially a gliding ripple between two chords. It is another of Budd's pieces that perfectly conjuring up the lowest depths of the sea, though perhaps here it is the sea of the unconscious rather than of water.
There are several other moments on the album that linger in memory, like the electronic bubbling of Fender Rhodes opening up the "The Room of Mirrors" or the lonely aura of tuned bells, wind chimes, and piano of "The Room of "Stairs." There's the crystalline strums of "The Room Alight," which is later reprised in the aptly-named "Room of Secondary Light," where the melody and strums appear once again though not as brightly lit as before. And of course, there's the title track, from whence all of this came. Here it is played on acoustic piano, giving it quite a different feel from the synth version on White Arcades. I like both versions, but prefer this one.
Budd is also known for paying particular attention to the marriage of titles, music, and imagery. The cover photography perfectly matches the music you hear, with shafts of light spilling into unfurnished rooms of vast size and geometric shapes. Whatever adjectives you use to describe this music, 'claustrophobic' probably won't be one of them.
This is an album to breathe deeply and stretch out as you listen—the music can be seductive, so just be careful not to get lost within its chambers.
review by Joe McGlinchey — 6-25-08 —
