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Harold Budd’s collaborative ventures have not only made him a better artist but, says Paul Rigby, have also enriched his life His poignant performance on Ambient, Vol.2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (1980) with Brian Eno. His collaboration with the Cocteau Twins on the uplifting The Moon And The Melodies (1986). His starkly arctic solo outing on The White Arcades (1988). All of these masterly performances feature the keyboard-lead ambience of Harold Budd. Only, they don’t.

He’s not a pianist. “No, I cannot play the piano,” said Budd. “I can play what I play, I can play me, but I have a dyslexia when reading music. I’m not a professional musician. I hack away at it and the piano is convenient. By no means would a proper pianist consider me one.” And he doesn’t play ambient music. “The word ‘ambient’ doesn’t ring a bell with me.

It’s meant to mean something but is, in fact, meaningless. It’s not relevant for me. My style is the only thing I can do well. I don’t think about genres. I don’t think about labels, they don’t have meanings.” But look, if you walked up to the guy in a bar and said, ‘Hey Harold, love the ambient music,’ he’d disagree with you there and then and possibly dampen your joie de vivre into the bargain but no more.

Cheerfully bounce up to the man in the same bar and praise his ‘New Age’ music, though, and he’ll put you in traction. “Twenty years ago, I was labelled ‘New Age’ which absolutely infuriated me. I didn’t go on a shooting rampage or anything like that and, in comparison, the word ambient doesn’t upset me. ‘New Age’, on the other hand, that really got to me.

It pissed me off.” So what and who is Harold Budd? Breakaway Audio Enhancer Serial Keygens. He was very nearly a cowboy.

Not really a John Wayne type. Conexant Modem Driver Ubuntu. Budd is rather too slender and lacks the requisite gait for that job but his childhood spent in Victorville, on the southwestern edge of the Mohave Desert region of California, could have driven the young Budd down a different path. “I was going to go to an agricultural college to be a farmer or rancher. Boyhood fantasy.

Not too far fetched. At that time, I wanted to drive a car, shoot a gun, ride a horsethe desert was a blank canvas.” This was ‘just before’. Just before he realised that the desert was robbing him of the awareness of the outside world and its many riches and just before he discovered that maverick talents could make a difference. People like Orson Welles and Jackson Pollock didn’t live in places like Victorville.

“Victorville was a small, shitty little desert town. Now, it’s a big, shitty desert town. Those days are not missed.”. Harold Budd.photo from promoarchive.com/ Photofeatures.

Oh and just in case any amateur psychologists out there decide to equate the desert emptiness, the multi-tonal silence, the vast space and the sky that went on forever with his musical development — think again. “Absolutely not,” asserted Budd. I respond to great architecture, great painting and so on. I respond to stimulation and then re-interpret that in my own way.” Musically speaking, jazz was Harold Budd’s first love and his first introduction to art. Although his attempts at jazz drumming were a disappointing cul de sac, his subsequent Army draft would change that. “For me it was a life changing time,” said Budd. “I had no education and no money.