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By the Dawn's Early Light
by Harold Budd
Product Group: Music
Studio: Opal/ Warner Bros
ISBN: B000005JB8
EAN: 0075992664929
UPC: 075992664929
Binding/Media: Audio CD
Release Date: 1991-07-23
SKU: CD040x0003
Condition: Acceptable
Comments: ** MISSING REAR ARTWORK **, Jewel case replaced, front booklet gently worn. Light marks on CD do NOT affect play! Excellent Music! Fast Shipping. CD40
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Editorial Reviews
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Album Description
By The Dawn's Early Light was originally released in 1991 and marked renowned experimental-ambient composer Harold Budd's return to ensemble writing. There is an irony inherent to the title, the National Anthem overtones contrasted with the genocide of the Native American populations, a significant inspirational well from which this work was drawn. Budd, who grew up in the Mojave, knows how to generate an effectively sparse, time-before-time ambience. This resonates powerfully through mournful viola, vertigo-inducing harp lines and guitarist Bill Nelson's drifting, lonely soundscapes. Available for the first time in more than five years and featuring new artwork.
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Amazon.com
Always an outlier, Harold Budd enjoys confounding conventional wisdom about ambient music, new age, what have you. Hence his decision in the early '90s to record an album, for Brian Eno's Opal label, devoted to the American landscape--an album of often vaporous melodies intent on figuring the land's geography and history. Budd's a self-admitted devotee of soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone, and his titles alone help conjure the mythical west ("Distant Lights of Olancha Recede," "Place of Dead Roads"), as well as its odd, modern developments ("Aztec Hotel"). Occasional spoken material, a kind of existential cowboy poetry read by Budd, benefits from guitarist Bill Nelson and pedal-steel player B. J. Cole, not to mention viola, harp, and the composer's own array of keyboards. --Marc Weidenbaum
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Customer Reviews
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My favorite Budd cd
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-03-01
I don't think I could add much more about this cd to what has been written by other reviewers.
My brother and I just got back from Nevada looking at ghost towns in the middle of empty barren landscapes. This cd was the background music to that trip and fit perfectly.
Highly recommended.
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Profound and Lyrical: A Composer's Commitment
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-04-28
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
This disc represents a high-water mark in the soon-to-ebb tide of Harold Budd's inspiring career (he announced his retirement last year). Deeply affecting and emotionally brilliant, the ensemble playing evokes memories of longing, caring and compassionate non-attachment to things unattainable. Several tracks feature the composer reading his own poems over intermittent accompaniment and, unlike some of my relatives who find them odd or incongruous, I find the content and tone of the artist's voice and poems a resonant sign of his commitment to the overall composition and the "subjects" of his work: the desert, the Native Americans, childhood and the unsurpassable feeling of intuition that links all living and non-living things.
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Perhaps Budd's best effort?
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-07-05
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I know, I know, hard to make that statement, given Budd's remarkable work over the years; especially with Brian Eno. Still, if I had to pick out a single Budd album to give to a non-Budd listener, as an example of Budd in top form, I'd go with this one.
Budd's signature piano blends beautifully with Bill Nelson's guitars, B.J. Cole's slider, Mabel Wong's viola, and Susan Allen's harp. Intentionally evocative of the dusty Southwest which Budd called home as a boy, the album also features a series of Budd's quirky spoken word poems, which begin and end the album in appropriate fashion.
The highpoint, in my opinion, is 'Saint's Name Spoken', featuring Budd on piano and vocals and Bill Nelson on string guitar. Slow, melancholy, evocative, it's right there with some of the best blue Jazz and, yet, is not jazz at all, but something else entirely.
Like most of Budd's work, it's not easy to describe this album, suffice to say that it is among my top ten ambient/instrumental albums of all time. I can't say enough good about it.
I often play this back-to-back with Budd & Eno's ambient classic, "The Pearl".
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Not Your Father's Boring Piano Solos
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-01-11
I orginally bought the CD for track 13 b/c I kept hearing it on somafm.com but upon listening to the entire CD, it was well worth the money. Budd has a way with the keys and the depth of the heartfelt emotion is reflected in the beauty of the music.
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Rich in texture
Rating  (4)
Date: 2000-09-06
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
When I first bought this CD some seven years ago, I was immediately put off by the viola that somehow dominates many of the tracks. I put the CD on the shelf and never listened to it until recently. What I found now was a richly textured Ambient/Minimal CD, packed with very emotional pieces. It sounds alot like Harold Budd, but since he gets som extra help from other musicians, this turns out to be something more. I can see parallells between this and for instance Gavin Bryars "After the Requiem" as well as the instrumental extension of David Sylvian's "Gone to Earth", where Bill Nelson's guitar playing is featured as well.
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