Harold Budd - Lovely Thunder

Label: Editions EG
Genre: Ambient
Format: LP
Year: 1986
Condition: EX/EX

Features an abstracted version of one of his Cocteau Twins collaborations, 'Memory Gongs' (here titled 'Flowered Knife Shadows').  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.