Amazon.co.uk Review
Californian pianist/composer, Harold Budd is one of the fathers of ambient music.
The Room took as its point of departure (as well as its title and texture) a piece on his 1988 album,
The White Arcades. Superficially this 13-track album recalls the work of one-time collaborator, Brian Eno on
The Pearl but seems less fussy and more directly rooted in the form of the compositions. However the opening minutes of "The Room of Ancillary Dreams" sound like they were recorded at Eno's around the time he created his "ambient classic",
Another Green World--beatific, shimmering synths and the faintest trace of piano. But as the album progresses through the various "Rooms", Budd comes into his own to produce one of those atmospheric albums that owe as much to Erik Satie as musique concrete. On "The Room of Mirrors" deep waves of melody rise and crash as inevitable as breakers on the beach. On the creepily melancholic blues of "The Room of Secondary Light", Budd marries spidery
Moonlight Sonata-stalking figures with echoes and quiet drones. The overall feel is very emotional, very strong and the variation helps to sustain interest. The intense parts aren't so hard to take and the gentle parts fade into your ambience smoothly. Indeed,
The Room's lovely rate of change has been well judged to keep pace with the world outside. --
Maxine Kabuubi
CD Description
When Harold Budd makes "space music", he doesn't conjure images of galaxies and planets. He is an architect of small spaces--rooms lit, or unlit, by sun, moon, or candle. THE ROOMbegan as a single piece on Budd's 1988 album THE WHITE ARCADES, and refracted into a number of other studies, 12 of which are captured here. A new recording of the original composition, "The Room", also appears at the very end.
As with all of Budd's albums, reverb and silence play a big role. These rooms echo with both emptiness and warmth. Budd uses chimes, distortion and, most effectively, the deep strains of aHammond organ to sketch the contours of each sonic chamber.The occasional guitar appears, as in the compelling conversation between acoustic piano and pedal steel guitar in "Roomof Ancillary Dreams". Budd makes startling use of feedback on "The Candied Room", transforming simple piano chords intoshimmering salvos of harp-like sound. Compositionally, the highlight of this record is "The Room of Mirrors", a quietlydramatic organ fugue. Although Budd is not a piano virtuoso, his genius is in wresting commanding and complex sounds from a limited palette and a single source of inspiration.