Harold Budd

小简介
1936年，氛围音乐作曲家Harold Budd出生在California。于26岁起开始他的作曲生涯，很快的，在随后的几年中声名鹊起。1966年从University of Southern California的作曲专业毕业之后作品便逐年减少。1976年他辞去了工作，和英国先锋人物Brian Eno一起专心录制新作品。两年后Harold Budd发行了
，从此建立了自己强大且独特的个人风格。之后更拉拢了Brian Eno，两人交集不断，合作出
和
以原声钢琴小品为主线的两张专辑。
　　
　　拿Brian Eno相较，Harold Budd则更注重器乐所营造出的氛围气息，简约而前卫。背景下合成的婉转碎音由钢琴带出，宛如袅袅升起随即消散的青烟。
融合了popular jazz和avant-garde。与早期作品一样，亦会存有非洲、巴西等地民俗的听感体验。不同于现在许多的氛围音乐家让音乐随自己的情绪恣意延伸，渐而丧失核心的做法。Harold Budd更像是画外音，以诗人的口吻带人一步步潜入情境之中，让结构完整得如同不自知而落入的圈套。
仅有四曲，均由波澜不惊的和声堆砌，再以竖琴的弹拨来配合反复，制造出空、净、思、远的绝妙意境。
The American ambient/neo-classical composer who has most closely allied himself with the increasingly sympathetic independent-rock underground — through his collaborations with the Cocteau Twins Robin Guthrie — Harold Budd is also one of the very few who can very rightly be called an ambient composer. His music, a sparse and tonal wash of keyboard treatments, was inspired by a boyhood spent listening to the buzz of telephone wires near his home in the Mojave Desert town of Victorville, California (though he was born in nearby Los Angeles). Though interested in music from an early age, Budd was 36, already married and with children of his own, by the time he graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Musical Composition in 1966. He became a respected name in the circle of minimalist and avant-garde composers based in Southern California during the late 60s, premiering his works The Candy-Apple Revision and Unspecified D-Flat Major Chord and Lirio around the area. In 1970, he began a teaching career at the California Institute of Arts, but continued to compose while there, writing Madrigals of the Rose Angel in 1972. After leaving the Institute in 1976, Budd gained a recording contract with the Brian Eno-affiliated EG Records, and released his debut album The Pavilion of Dreams in 1978. Two years later, he collaborated with Eno on one of the landmark albums of the ambient style, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirrors. After recording two albums for Cantil in 1981 (The Serpent [In Quicksilver]) and 1984 (Abandoned Cities), Harold Budd again worked with Eno on 1984s The Pearl. A contract with Enos Opal Records resulted in one of Budds most glorious albums, The White Arcades, recorded in Edinburgh with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins. Budd left Opal after 1991s By the Dawns Early Light, and recorded two albums for Gyroscope: Music for Three Pianos (with Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz) and the lauded Through the Hill, a collaboration with Andy Partridge of XTC. In the mid-90s, he recorded albums for New Albion and All Saints before signing to Atlantic for the release of The Room in mid-2000. In 2004 Budd decided to retire, claiming he had said all he wanted to, and that he didnt mind disappearing. His final outing, Avalon Sutra/As Long as I Can See My Breath, appeared on David Sylvians Samhadi Sound imprint as a double disc. The album featured 14 new pieces, some recorded solo, some recorded with saxophonist Jon Gibson, and some with a string quartet.
His collaboration with Eraldo Bernocchi, Fragments From the Inside, issued on Sub Rosa arrived in spring 2005.