Customer Reviews

Ambient 2: Plateaux of Mirror

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Rarely do I ever give an item on my reviews 5 stars. This review may not even be read as this album is a lost treasure. I just have to say, I don't know what it is that this album does to me. It puts me into some very, very calm zoned out mode. I can't explain it, maybe this is how people feel after serious meditation and yoga. Just so relaxing and mellow. Honestly, my stress and worry are put aside when I put this CD in. I just can't put into words the mood/zone it puts me in, almost a spiritual feeling. Odd that music can do that huh? Especially these 3 songs on this CD make me feel like I just popped a valium: Not Yet Remembered, First Light, Failing Light.
When I need to balance out my thoughts, return to my inner peace. I play this CD. WHich has to be my all time favorite CD. It even makes my mean cat sit down and stretch out and close his eyes (honest). Picture yourself on a fall day, it is dreary and overcast, there is a breeze, leaves blowing past you, and you are sitting on the edge of water, like a river or lake, and feel this incredible sense of well being ..If you check it out, just remember it is ambience and instrumental.

By 1980, Brian Eno had found his own voice and had his technique firmly in grasp. Having spent the better part of the '70s developing looping mechanisms and then laying the groundwork for ambient music with historic recordings such as "No Pussyfooting" (a collaboration with Robert Fripp), "Discreet Music", and "Music For Airports" and fusing these ideas with David Bowie's paranoid idiom (on Bowie's Berlin trilogy, amongst the most powerful music Bowie has ever done), Eno was at the height of his powers. It is into this regard that "The Plateaux of Mirror" was recorded. A collaboration with minimalist composer and pianist Harold Budd, this record is quite different from the rest.

What Budd provides is a stronger sense of evocative composition than Eno does-- this frees Eno to focus on technical details and technique. The result: a melancholy sort of record filled with moody interludes and tracks. Its far more theme-driven and less loop-driven than Eno's previous or contemporary work. This lends itself well to listeners who aren't really overly enamored with the idea of loop-based music. The work is particularly superb on the melancholy "First Light", the dark "Not Yet Remembered", and the noisy and mysterious "Wind in Lonely Places".

If there's a fault with this record, its that it has a bit of a sameness to it that prevents it from really shining, but its some beautiful music, and a great entry point into the catalogs of either Eno or the lesser known (but often equally brilliant) Budd.

My dad first turned me onto Brian Eno. I bought "Here Come the Warm Jets" and loved it. After that I decided to start acquiring more of his discography. I was quite suprised when I bought this cd and stumbled into his ambient phase. Well, let me tell you, it was quite different from his past forays of loud guitars, electronic treatments, and quirky neurotic vocals that I had been accustomed to. Yet, the change in direction was in no way lacking from the quality that I had herd on his past records. It was just a different genre.

I can't really describe ambient music so I will simply use Brian Eno's own words "background music that is herd over the tinkling of forks and knives". It's definitely intersting but you have to be in a peaceful state to appreciate it. I have often found the best way to enjoy this cd is to put in on in a dark room and lay down. When you are calm you can appreciate the slow crawling pianos, soft noises, and slow building crescendos and waves of sound.

This may not exactly be your cup of tea, but if you are into trying something different I say give it a shot. I did and I really enjoyed it. Of his ambient pieces this is probably my favorite with "The Pearl" as a close runner up.

I've just recently become a fan of Brian Eno's ambient music, and it's all great, but this record in particular is truly outstanding. Harold Budd's piano playing and Eno's production and treatments complement each other perfectly, giving rise to a truly spectacular ambient music experience. Eno's goal for ambient music was to create music that was rewarding to listen to either at low or normal volumes, and that's certainly the case here. I love all kinds of music, but ambient music can't be beat as a background for working or reading (which was the intention). This music is also good for meditating or for having in the background when talking with friends. It's relaxing, lyrical, beautiful, and uplifting. I've known about Eno for a long time, but I wasn't familiar with Harold Budd before the Ambient series; I'll have to look more deeply into his catalogue. Strongly recommended.

A personal favourite of Elvis Costello's, and now of mine. This is music that drifts by without you noticing all of its compositional intricacies, but which, particularly with the way Eno so brilliantly utilized Budd's minimalist piano techniques, manages to break your heart and bring a tear to your eye without you ever having had to pay direct attention to the music. One of the best in the 'Ambient' series. Favourite tracks: "First Light", "Above Chiangmai".

After Ambient 1: Music For Airports, Brian Eno decided to immediately bring another ambient artist in for the second album of the series. The choice was Harold Budd, a pianist who had played minimalist music in the past and had recently released his first album, The Pavillion of Dreams, produced by Eno. On Ambient 2, Eno is seen as the producer and overseer, while Budd is the solo performer.

And to be sure, Budd takes the spotlight extremely well. Very little in the ambient world can compare to Budd's playing. He is classically trained, and thus tastefully restrained, but at the same time his versatility is great and he never seems to do the same thing more than once on Ambient 2. At times he focuses his energy on the subtle melodies, while other times letting the notes loose in harp-like glissandos. What stays constant is his talent. Every note seems to matter. Some notes ring out, sounding warm yet hollow, while others feel like necessary side notes in decorative flourishes. Signposts and hooks however are few and far between. In fact, a lot of the album feels improvised, mostly due to the pacing, which says all the more for his talent and restraint considering how easily the music can melt into an environment.

And in fact, he did improvise a significant amount. What Eno has said of his producing of the album is that he would often create complex production setups that Budd would experiment with improvising on piano. The two artists would then bounce ideas off of one another. One such occasion is undoubtedly the first song, First Light. Budd's notes are echoed and spread out like ripples over a subtle background of ambient tone. Eno plays the same card later on Above Chiangmai, and equally impressive song with just as much density and detail. But this is one of the few occasions where he tries the same thing more than once, and the album is anything but overproduced. The second song, Steal Away, is conversely left bare, in fact, and it is almost always Budd at the focal point of all of these songs.

The closest Eno gets to the spotlight is Not Yet Remembered. Eno utilizes a synthesized vocal part which Budd wrote and Eno cleverly reversed to somehow miraculously make one of the album's most memorable tracks. Although this vocal part sometimes overpowers the piano, the melody is still the backbone of the song. Budd is the solo performer and the highlight of the album, but The Plateaux of Mirror feels like more of a collaboration than any of the other albums in the series, even Ambient 4 which featured a multitude of guest artists such as Daniel Lanois and Jon Hassell. Ambient 4 is actually foreshadowed here. We hear many drones and electronic touchups meant to represent nature here, and they all came back in full force on Ambient 4. They are much more subtle here, in the form of an occasional side drone or the sound of a bird, but they still add to the experience.

The album follows the same piano based theme throughout, but there is actually a lot of variation. The songs are played mostly on acoustic piano and occasionally on electric piano. These two styles foreshadow many of Budd's later solo albums that used either acoustic or electric piano. Many songs feel content and tranquil, others sad and melancholy. Occasionally a dash of jazz or a romantic suspension is included to add to the variety. The result is an emotionally fluid album that can at once seem to draw on past memories, while evoking a sense of contentment with the present, and also a sense of tension towards the future. Actually, this is one of those rare albums that seems to agree with whatever the listener is feeling at the time.

What is truly striking about Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror is that all of the songs are interesting and memorable. All of them. And we have Budd to thank for that, but Plateaux is also one of Eno's most notable production jobs, and the two stand side by side in its creation rather than Eno taking the backseat. Harold Budd and Brian Eno are both talented, humble artists that know how to work together, and Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror is a perfectly formed album, and probably the best album in the series, because their chemistry works so well.

I own about 5 Eno albums and about 4 Harold Budd albums and several other ambient albums by other artists. This album "Ambient 2" is one of my favorites, not only as an Eno album, not only as an Ambient album, but it is one of my favorites music albums overall. I am a huge fan of ambient, and I have wasted a fair amount of money searching for good albums to listen to, so it is always so refreshing and satisfying to stumble upon an ambient album that is really good. It is hard to shop for ambient albums, because there is such a fine line between good ambient, and ambient that sounds like cheesy new-age music, or just not very good sounding ambient.

I own "Ambient 1" by Eno, but I only like 2 out of the 4 songs on it. On this album "Ambient 2" I like about 95% of the songs, which is about 9 or 10 out of the 11 or 12 songs. I don't think that you will be disapointed with this collection of ambient songs.

Two other albums that I highly recommend are "Thursday Afternoon" by Brian Eno, and "Songs For Lost Blossoms" by Harold Budd and Clive Wright. "Thursday Afternoon" is an excellent ambient album, and "Songs For Lost Blossoms" has at least two really amazing ambient songs in my opinion.

I was not crazy about the following Harold Budd albums: "Luxa", "The White Arcades" and "The Pavilion of Dreams." Overall, I wasn't too thrilled with any of those three Budd albums, but that is just me.

Another great ambient album is entitled "WEB" by Terry Thaemlitz and Bill Laswell. That is a Five star ambient album.

Best of luck shopping for more ambient albums.



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A breathtaking album of ambient music stretching from the First Light of Dawn to the Failing Light of Twilight. Calm, epic and transcendent, this music will refresh your mind like a cold stream high in the mountains.

The cover art shows an image of land and ocean as if one were floating high above it. Perhaps one is looking at a map. You can see lines crossing the ocean and connecting with the surrounding landscape. The music maps out the texture of the albums world, chiming like shining jewels in the night.

Best moments are:

"First Light"
"Arc of Doves"
"Among fields of Crystal"

What incredible work. This album could almost be described as some sort of "spa music". But, it goes well beyond that. Such a simple piece like Steal Away draws such quiet emotion and imagination from within. It's difficult to listen and not feel anything.
The title track The Plateaux of Mirror has such a warm and dream-like vibe. Picture the most lovely, comfortable spring day out in a field of grass, lightly fluttering insects and the slight shimmering of heat. The field bathed in a yellow/orange color.
Each track paints an accurate portrait of it's title. An Arc of Doves gives a truly soft and soaring feeling of a flock of doves in flight. Wind in the Lonely Fences gives a desolate, lost and haunted feeling. It's something from a fantasy. Very unusual.
Fully creative and original. This is "contemplation" music. Background music. But, it is too outstanding to be left in the background. You'll find your original task at hand becoming second priority as you listen.

"Plateaux" is described as having a quality as if "two people decided to suddenly speak a new language made up of coherent sounds but with no pre-existing grammar." Here, the pre-existing grammar could be defined as predictable melodic sequences. Yet "Ambient 2" contains some of the most lyrical pieces of the 4 album series.

The chiming sounds of keyboard or synthesizer are played against either a silent background, fading into quiet, or against a low struck tone that hovers in the background. The feeling is of floating on a lake at night, with the dark bowl of the sky completing a sphere of velvet around you and only the glistening stars for companions.

This is by far my favorite of the Eno collaboration albums in the series. Harold Budd and Brian Eno seem to, indeed, speak a new language that both comprehend and we can marvel at.