Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror

Budd plays acoustic and electric piano, and Eno handles other instruments, treatments, production and the cover art; thanks go to Bob and Daniel Lanois, Eugene Bowen and Roddy Hui. Budd told Sound On Sound in 1986 that it was the first time he saw Eno use the studio as a primary compositional tool, and that the treatment shaped what he played; he called the album naive. A 2022 Theatre of Noise analysis of the Grant Avenue approach describes printing processed signals to tape and feeding them back, but it is an analysis of the sound, not an account of these sessions.

AllMusic's Dave Connolly called it a lovely, evocative work, Pitchfork's Liam Singer gave 8.4, and the Austin Chronicle's Michael Chamy wrote that Budd's melodies open the gate to a world of colors, textures and images. PopMatters's Tim O'Neil dissented, finding it intentionally banal. It was reissued in 2004 in the Original Masters series.