By the Dawn's Early Light

Harold Budd | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 21, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: All Saints
• ASIN: B000CQJZ4O
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,505 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Poem: Aztec Hotel

2. Boy About 10

3. Arcadia

4. Dead Horse Alive With Flies

5. The Photo of Santiago McKinn

6. The Corpse at the Shooting Gallery

7. Albion Farewell (homage to Delius, for Gavin Bryars)

8. Poem: Distant Lights of Olancha Recede

9. Down the Slopes to the Meadow

10. She Dances by the Light of the Silvery Moon

11. Blind Bird

12. Saint’s Name Spoken

13. The Place of Dead Roads

14. A Child in a Sylvan Field

15. Boy About 10

16. Wings

17. No Name

18. Advent

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound and Lyrical: A Composer's Commitment, April 28, 2007

By 

James A. Winchell (Walla Walla, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: By the Dawn's Early Light (Audio CD)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps Budd's best effort?, July 5, 2006

By 

Brad Torgersen "Full-time nerd, part-time sol... (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: By the Dawn's Early Light (Audio CD)

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".

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rich in texture, September 6, 2000

By 

martin (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Dawn's Early Light (Audio CD)

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.