Lovely Thunder

Harold Budd | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 31, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Editions Eg Records
• ASIN: B000003S33
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #303,950 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

On first inspection it might appear that nothing so plosive as thunder threatens the peacefulness that comprises this album. But as early as the second cut, "Sandtreader," remote booms impose the corporeal on the ethereal. This tension typifies the nexus of new age, ambient, and avant garde synonymous with Harold Budd. He recorded Thunder at the studio of the Cocteau Twins, the mid-'80s band whose foreboding atmospherics anticipated trends in "shoegazing" pop and ambient electronica; the record benefits from the Twins' palette of shimmering yet Gothic textures. Released prior to the CD's advent, the album is best heard as two halves: a handful of aural soundscapes and a 20-minute-long mélange of synthetic chorus, B-movie modulations, and gaseous sonics, wrapped up in the evocative title "Gypsy Violin." --Marc Weidenbaum

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great, if too short album, August 2, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lovely Thunder (Audio CD)

Classic Harold Budd. If you liked the Pearl or Apollo, you'll like this one. The tracks kind of blend into each other and unless you're really listening you won't notice one end and another begin. Unfortunately it's all over too quickly. It's a roughly 45 minute album that seems like 20.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars area to keep you, April 27, 2002

By 

"hirofantv" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lovely Thunder (Audio CD)

This music is the apotheosis of ambience but remains exactly tense ednough to keep you paying attention. Of what you're paying attention to, though, the music has no idea. The long piece (20:45), GVypsy Violin, that ends the cd, is so clean that it almost feels like your thinking itself is what sustains a high note for 4 measures.... For me, this is ideal music to listen to while I write. The other songs, too, provide mood with misty or glacial electronic music of not attack but flow. Harold Budd himself doesn't use the term "ambient" to describe his music, but it's beautifully permissive.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine ambient album, March 28, 2000

By 

Jmark2001 (Florida) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lovely Thunder (Audio CD)

If you liked "The Pearl" then you will like this one. Harold Budd doesn't have Brian Eno on board for this one, but he seems to have been able to color his pieces almost as well as Eno could have done. Simple, altered piano pieces with undertones of rumblings, drones, hums, etc. "Gypsy Violin" is not too long to my ears. I found it to be one of the most enjoyable pieces on the album. A good addition to your ambient collection if you like your ambient music to be brooding and contemplative (which I do).