Harold budd cocteau twins
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What was the first step where you felt like you came into your own as far as making something that felt like yours?
While in the Army I played drums with Albert Ayler. That was an amazing education and for things other than just music, in spite of everything else. You toot your horn, you play your drum and you do it right, otherwise you’re going to go and shoot guns. The only art I could see was published in books and there were plenty of artists, painter types who were in the Army band and they tooted just well enough but their real life was Marcel Duchamp or God knows what else. Join the Army, learn about art. Ridiculous.
After two months of shooting guns and getting shot at, being beat up, going through it, I remember last day in basic training I had pneumonia, but I couldn’t not stand in line because otherwise you’d have to go to the hospital and then you’d have to do basic training all over again. Standing in the big fog and this really deliciously handsome soldier, very gay, came down the street with a paper in his hand, and he’s whispering to the sergeant. The sergeant c
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Remembering the one-of-a-kind composer.
Harold Budd. Photo: Matthew Budd.
1936–2020
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Harold Budd, who passed away in December of complications from COVID-19 at the age of eighty-four, was one of the great composers of our time. He was also one of the most underrated. Budd played numerous instruments, most notably the piano, with a style that was utterly unique. His delicate piano figures could seem simple, but they are far more complex than they initially appear. His music is often described as placid, calming, diaphanous—but it is also intense and occasionally disquieting.
It is difficult to write about him in the past tense. I interviewed Budd several times over the past fifteen years; he was also a friend. When I last talked with him, in a café in South Pasadena before the pandemic began, he shrugged off being in his eighties, and seemed fueled with youthful energy. He was writing new music and had recently finished a multipart work that debuted at the Toledo Museum of
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Harold Budd: American Vision
Despite having waited eight years to create the follow‑up to his 1988 solo album, experimental composer Harold Budd composed and recorded the new album, Luxa, in just 11 days.
Since the late '70s, it has become a habit for recording artists to take longer and longer to write and record their music. Peter Gabriel, most famously, may take several years to record an album. At the other end of the spectrum, there are still a few bands and artists who will write and record an album in a matter of weeks.
And then there's Harold Budd. The American ex‑minimalist, ex‑college lecturer, experimental ambient composer, solo artist and bon viveur may have taken eight years to release Luxa, his first solo studio album since The White Arcades (1988), but the speed and working methods with which he created his new album beggar belief. Luxa is a full 62 minutes and 32 seconds long, contains 16 pieces, and the music on it was written, played, recorded and mixed in just 11 days. On top of this, Budd still had time, according to engineer Michael Coleman (who rec
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