The Pavilion Of Dreams was Californian pianist / composer Harold Budd's 1978 recording debut.
Using unusual combinations of musicians in small chamber groups he crafted some beautiful pieces of music for this Brian Eno produced album.
The first track "Bismillahi 'Rrahman 'Rrahim" is a lengthy meditative work which showcases jazzman Marion Brown's gorgeous sax playing. The combination of the gentle piano, the vibes and the sultry ultra laid back sax works amazingly well and the result is twenty minutes of bliss. This is chill out music long before the term was invented.
The rest of the album doesn't quite live up to the delicacy of the opening track but it's not far off. No-one else was scoring Madrigals in 1978 and the two pieces here are delightful - light and airy and full of life. Budd was intentionally writing 'pretty music ...
Advantages: Beautifully textured, warm solo piano from a unique and incomparable artist Disadvantages: It lasts but 40 minutes... I could easily listen to another 40 more!
Harold Budd is perhaps that rarest thing in the popular music industry: he is utterly unique. In fact there are few people who I feel the loss of which would be a loss to the musical landscape, even though I might love their music, because there are others who explore similar musical arenas and hence would fill the void.
Harold Budd is almost the only musician I would say is irreplaceable.
Sadly, Budd has chosen recently to retire, saying he has said all he wishes to and is happy simply to disappear away. One can only hope that even if Budd does (and here's hoping he decides to return to music) that his music never follows suit.
But just who is Harold Budd? He studied musical composition in the early seventies and whilst in his mid-forties released his first ever record, Pavilion of Dreams, in 1978 on Brian Eno's short ...
Advantages: Superb acting, Agnes Godard's cinematography, Benjamin Britten's opera, Afro-pop music, and Claire Denis' subtle direction. Disadvantages: Galoup's motives and Sentain's character not fully spelled out; much too easy to dismiss as dull and pretentious.
In "Beau Travail"/"Good Work" (1999), French director Claire Denis' film inspired by Herman Melville's "Billy Budd", we are never quite sure why officer Galoup harbors such a disdain for new legionnaire Gilles Sentain, only that he does. In this remote French Foreign Legion outpost in Djibouti, in the North African Republic of Djibouti (a land surrounded by Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the west and south, Somalia to the southeast and the Red Sea to the east), Galoup is the officer in charge of some new guys, and answerable only to his commander, Bruno Forestier. He takes an immediate dislike to Sentain after the strong, quiet young man carries out actions that make him look heroic in the eyes of the others. Not that Sentain, a foundling and most likely an independent spirit at heart, does what he does to gain popularity, or for any ...
![Merlin (Original Television Soundtrack) [Digipak] - Various Artists](http://imagesb.ciao.com/iuk/images/products/small/409/prod_small-7033409.jpg)
