The White Arcades
Dream food for night owls returns to the table after 35 years in the aether, bearing some of Harold Budd’s most divine work, bar none, and notably recorded at the Cocteau Twins studio with help from Robin Guthrie and Brian Eno.
Originally issued in 1988, ‘The White Arcades’ emerged during a window when Warner Bros. were distributing Eno’s label, All Saints Records, meaning it was more widely available than any of Budd’s previous works, and thus reached a wider audience than all of them combined. Prominent in the popular imagination, its billlowing arrangements for synth and piano would colour myriad imaginations in varying contexts, and be hailed by Simon Reynolds as “an exemplary form of humanly useful music” with fine application as music for studying to, grieving, romancing, and sleeping afterwards.
The canonical ambient classic envelopes the senses with a calming, reverberant vibrancy that depcits Budd at a crest of his powers following a mid ‘80s succession of evocative atmospheric staples such as ‘Abandoned Cities’ (1984) and the 1986 works ‘The Moon and the Melodies’ with Cocteau Tins’ Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie, and solo side ‘The Lovely Thunder’. Its nine parts sweep supine minds from the sylvan soothe of its title piece thru the airborne lustre of ‘The Child with Lion’ to a pair of glorious Eno co-productions, the feathered pulse of ‘The Real Dream of Sails’, which also benefits from Guthrie’s sublime engineering, and angelic chorales to ‘Totems of the Red-Sleeved Warrior’. The blissed effect would be less effective, however, without the inclusion of the occluded temperament to ‘Algebra of Darkness’, while ambient romantics will swoon hard for the curtain closing finesse of ‘The Kiss’, up there with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s poignant cinematic pieces.
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Dream food for night owls returns to the table after 35 years in the aether, bearing some of Harold Budd’s most divine work, bar none, and notably recorded at the Cocteau Twins studio with help from Robin Guthrie and Brian Eno.
Originally issued in 1988, ‘The White Arcades’ emerged during a window when Warner Bros. were distributing Eno’s label, All Saints Records, meaning it was more widely available than any of Budd’s previous works, and thus reached a wider audience than all of them combined. Prominent in the popular imagination, its billlowing arrangements for synth and piano would colour myriad imaginations in varying contexts, and be hailed by Simon Reynolds as “an exemplary form of humanly useful music” with fine application as music for studying to, grieving, romancing, and sleeping afterwards.
The canonical ambient classic envelopes the senses with a calming, reverberant vibrancy that depcits Budd at a crest of his powers following a mid ‘80s succession of evocative atmospheric staples such as ‘Abandoned Cities’ (1984) and the 1986 works ‘The Moon and the Melodies’ with Cocteau Tins’ Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie, and solo side ‘The Lovely Thunder’. Its nine parts sweep supine minds from the sylvan soothe of its title piece thru the airborne lustre of ‘The Child with Lion’ to a pair of glorious Eno co-productions, the feathered pulse of ‘The Real Dream of Sails’, which also benefits from Guthrie’s sublime engineering, and angelic chorales to ‘Totems of the Red-Sleeved Warrior’. The blissed effect would be less effective, however, without the inclusion of the occluded temperament to ‘Algebra of Darkness’, while ambient romantics will swoon hard for the curtain closing finesse of ‘The Kiss’, up there with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s poignant cinematic pieces.
Dream food for night owls returns to the table after 35 years in the aether, bearing some of Harold Budd’s most divine work, bar none, and notably recorded at the Cocteau Twins studio with help from Robin Guthrie and Brian Eno.
Originally issued in 1988, ‘The White Arcades’ emerged during a window when Warner Bros. were distributing Eno’s label, All Saints Records, meaning it was more widely available than any of Budd’s previous works, and thus reached a wider audience than all of them combined. Prominent in the popular imagination, its billlowing arrangements for synth and piano would colour myriad imaginations in varying contexts, and be hailed by Simon Reynolds as “an exemplary form of humanly useful music” with fine application as music for studying to, grieving, romancing, and sleeping afterwards.
The canonical ambient classic envelopes the senses with a calming, reverberant vibrancy that depcits Budd at a crest of his powers following a mid ‘80s succession of evocative atmospheric staples such as ‘Abandoned Cities’ (1984) and the 1986 works ‘The Moon and the Melodies’ with Cocteau Tins’ Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie, and solo side ‘The Lovely Thunder’. Its nine parts sweep supine minds from the sylvan soothe of its title piece thru the airborne lustre of ‘The Child with Lion’ to a pair of glorious Eno co-productions, the feathered pulse of ‘The Real Dream of Sails’, which also benefits from Guthrie’s sublime engineering, and angelic chorales to ‘Totems of the Red-Sleeved Warrior’. The blissed effect would be less effective, however, without the inclusion of the occluded temperament to ‘Algebra of Darkness’, while ambient romantics will swoon hard for the curtain closing finesse of ‘The Kiss’, up there with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s poignant cinematic pieces.
Dream food for night owls returns to the table after 35 years in the aether, bearing some of Harold Budd’s most divine work, bar none, and notably recorded at the Cocteau Twins studio with help from Robin Guthrie and Brian Eno.
Originally issued in 1988, ‘The White Arcades’ emerged during a window when Warner Bros. were distributing Eno’s label, All Saints Records, meaning it was more widely available than any of Budd’s previous works, and thus reached a wider audience than all of them combined. Prominent in the popular imagination, its billlowing arrangements for synth and piano would colour myriad imaginations in varying contexts, and be hailed by Simon Reynolds as “an exemplary form of humanly useful music” with fine application as music for studying to, grieving, romancing, and sleeping afterwards.
The canonical ambient classic envelopes the senses with a calming, reverberant vibrancy that depcits Budd at a crest of his powers following a mid ‘80s succession of evocative atmospheric staples such as ‘Abandoned Cities’ (1984) and the 1986 works ‘The Moon and the Melodies’ with Cocteau Tins’ Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie, and solo side ‘The Lovely Thunder’. Its nine parts sweep supine minds from the sylvan soothe of its title piece thru the airborne lustre of ‘The Child with Lion’ to a pair of glorious Eno co-productions, the feathered pulse of ‘The Real Dream of Sails’, which also benefits from Guthrie’s sublime engineering, and angelic chorales to ‘Totems of the Red-Sleeved Warrior’. The blissed effect would be less effective, however, without the inclusion of the occluded temperament to ‘Algebra of Darkness’, while ambient romantics will swoon hard for the curtain closing finesse of ‘The Kiss’, up there with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s poignant cinematic pieces.
First time vinyl re-press. Limited edition clear vinyl. Printed inner sleeve - Harold Budd interviewed by Carl Stone. Includes download card.
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Dream food for night owls returns to the table after 35 years in the aether, bearing some of Harold Budd’s most divine work, bar none, and notably recorded at the Cocteau Twins studio with help from Robin Guthrie and Brian Eno.
Originally issued in 1988, ‘The White Arcades’ emerged during a window when Warner Bros. were distributing Eno’s label, All Saints Records, meaning it was more widely available than any of Budd’s previous works, and thus reached a wider audience than all of them combined. Prominent in the popular imagination, its billlowing arrangements for synth and piano would colour myriad imaginations in varying contexts, and be hailed by Simon Reynolds as “an exemplary form of humanly useful music” with fine application as music for studying to, grieving, romancing, and sleeping afterwards.
The canonical ambient classic envelopes the senses with a calming, reverberant vibrancy that depcits Budd at a crest of his powers following a mid ‘80s succession of evocative atmospheric staples such as ‘Abandoned Cities’ (1984) and the 1986 works ‘The Moon and the Melodies’ with Cocteau Tins’ Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie, and solo side ‘The Lovely Thunder’. Its nine parts sweep supine minds from the sylvan soothe of its title piece thru the airborne lustre of ‘The Child with Lion’ to a pair of glorious Eno co-productions, the feathered pulse of ‘The Real Dream of Sails’, which also benefits from Guthrie’s sublime engineering, and angelic chorales to ‘Totems of the Red-Sleeved Warrior’. The blissed effect would be less effective, however, without the inclusion of the occluded temperament to ‘Algebra of Darkness’, while ambient romantics will swoon hard for the curtain closing finesse of ‘The Kiss’, up there with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s poignant cinematic pieces.