Harold Budd - Lovely Thunder

Label: Editions EG
Format: LP
Year: 1986
Condition: EX/NM

I'm posting this fresh-in OG pressing of one of Budd's lesser known works from the mid-eighties not just because it deserves a little light shone on it, but also because it features an abstracted version of one of his Cocteau Twins collaborations, 'Memory Gongs' (here titled 'Flowered Knife Shadows'). With those CT reissues from last week drawing a little attention to some of the darker corners of their catalogue, let's consider this my attempt at some kind of tenuous thematic consistency. Very tenuous, though no less interesting for it.

As for the rest of the record? Not so much a story of two halves, more Part 1 and 2 - the A recalls Budd's work with Eno, particularly The Pearl, though losing some of the Fourth World elements Eno brings to the table in favour of a little more melodrama. And it's that aspect that's turned up to 11 on the flip, which comprises one single 20-min+ song of cinematic, immersive, almost apocolyptic-sounding synth&strings&drone. It structurally brings to mind Richard Pinhas' Iceland, where a series of shorter songs explore a range of sonic motifs that are fully realised into one longform piece at the conclusion of the record. The emotional range is similar too - a wander through a desolate landscape, where all thunder is lonely (no surprise Budd is a poet with titles like this). This is heady, serious business. One for the damned among us.