A Song for Lost Blossoms
Harold Budd & Clive Write
Track listing
- Pensive Aphrodite - 32:17
- A Song for Lost Blossoms - 4:41
- Forever Hold my Breath - 9:52
- At This Moment - 6:46
- Of Many Mirrors - 4:24
- The Saint of Whispers - 9:47
- Blind Flowers - 7:02
Mastered by Clive Wright
Original release - 2008
Notwithstanding his three subsequent collaborations with Robin Guthrie and his beautiful, unexpected work Perhaps, A song for Lost Blossoms is considered by many to be the first true "Harold Budd" CD since he announced and abandoned his retirement with the release of 2004's Avalon Sutra.
Recorded over the period of 2004 to 2006,, A Song for Lost Blossoms feels the spiritual successor to that Avalon Sutra. "Forever Hold My Breath" uses the same, breath like rhythm of a sample from Akira Rabelais's that was used on "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath" and one gets the sense that Budd has a deep affection for it. (A second CD included with Avalon Sutra is an hour long version of "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath.)
The opening piece, Pensive Aphrodite is over a half hour in length and shares quite a few qualities with "As Long As I Can Hold My Breath". Many reviewers have been critical of that piece's length, specifically pointing to a quality of aimlessness that I think misses the point. Many of Budd's listeners use his music to reflect, to meditate and to create. Over the long, slow, morph of style, substance and theme in Harold Budd's career, many works have referred to and overlapped each other. To view these as "treading over the same territory" is to misunderstand how Budd's music is always about exploration and often about memory. The impatience of expecting each new work to be innovative does not serve the listener and, in truth, would be impossible over a career of Budd's length and breadth.
That said, Anna LaCazio's spoken word poetry over the title track is disappointing. Spoken word over Harold Budd's work, even when he has attempted it on his own behalf, has always been jarring.