Harold Budd The White Arcades LP (Clear Vinyl)

A classic Harold Budd album originally released in 1988. Partly recorded at the Cocteau Twins' studio with production help from Robin Guthrie and Brian Eno, The White Arcades effortlessly blends glistening synths, limpid piano notes, foggy textures and space, resulting in a beautiful, contemplative whole.

Although its aura is ethereal and unworldly, Budd's music is actually an exemplary form of humanly useful music. When the mundane urgencies of life, or the nonsense of our political culture, get you frazzled, which is pretty much every day these days, you can put on this music and imbibe its stillness and grace. His records are exactly the kind of music you'd play for calm and solace during a bereavement - or at a service sending someone to their final resting place. Harold Budd sounds like heaven on Earth.

On the short-lived moment when Warner Bros. was distributing Opal records, this Harold Budd album probably reached more people than his previous work combined. One can hope so, at least. This album shows Budd at his most stylistically pure: nine pieces that rarely shift from their piano and synth instrumentation, all treated with much echo and coloration. Budd is after beauty, not menace, but with the mystery that follows it. From the pulse of 'Coyote' to the grand thunder and rolling clouds of 'Balthus Bemused by Color,' this is a solid album, one for thinking, studying, or whatever one does when the ambient comes.