The Pearl
The second Budd and Eno album, made with Daniel Lanois in Hamilton, Ontario: eleven pieces of piano held in a haze of treatments.
Harold Budd, 1984
- Released
- August 1984
- Recorded
- 1984
- Studio
- Grant Avenue Studio, Hamilton, Ontario
- Label
- Editions EG
- Producer
- Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois
- Length
- 42:59
Most of the record was cut in a two-week session at Grant Avenue, a studio with a 24-track machine and a desk with no automation. Budd, Eno and Lanois shared a house and worked seven days a week, and finishing and sequencing took eight months to a year. Budd said they never settled on a method. He recorded Dark-Eyed Sister alone at a small studio and Eno added the rest without him; Lost in the Humming Air was a single take, with Eno playing humming tones on a Yamaha CS-80 from the control room while Budd improvised. The palette included acoustic piano, a Yamaha electric grand, Fender Rhodes and a Casio 202.
Budd thought it more of a unity than Plateaux, with every piece seeming to belong. AllMusic's Ned Raggett gave it four and a half stars and Robert Christgau an A-minus, while Uncut in 2005 found its tasteful abstraction tedious. U2 sampled Against the Sky on Cedars of Lebanon in 2009.
Track listing
- Late October4:42
- A Stream with Bright Fish3:55
- The Silver Ball3:23
- Against the Sky4:46
- Lost in the Humming Air4:02
- Dark-Eyed Sister4:39
- Their Memories3:52
- The Pearl3:08
- Foreshadowed3:47
- An Echo of Night2:26
- Still Return4:19
Personnel
- Harold Budd composer
- Brian Eno composer, producer
- Daniel Lanois producer
- Russell Mills cover art and design
- Greg Calbi lacquer cut, Sterling Sound
More from Harold Budd
The Pavilion of Dreams (1978), Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror (1980), The Serpent (In Quicksilver) (1981)
Sources
- The Pearl (album), Wikipedia
- The Life of Brian, Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music (1984-10)
- The Serpent and the Pearl, Electronics & Music Maker, via More Dark Than Shark (1986-07)
- The Pearl, EGED 37, Discogs