Harold Budd
The Pavilion of Dreams

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on” William Shakespeare

Swirling the Bard in the glass and sipping his truths, in the stillness of a clear winter evening, I find myself fused to the cold marble of the pavilion of dreams; daydreams with a view of the starry sky.

Distant stars pulse from the free forms of an electric piano and a sidereal harp while the secretions of a divinatory sax draw fluid constellations, like shimmering images reflected in the waters of a lake rippled by celestial breezes or floating marimba. The Aquarium finally empties its amphora and the Sagittarius launches its arrow.

Penetrating caresses of mezzo-soprano and prayers of a moved harp squeeze into an eternal embrace, as if they were the last tears left in the world. Elective affinities of beings lost forever that double and triple, hover mid-air, and then dance, dance, dance among the crystals that have fallen from a discreet and grateful piano...

...Grateful to be there and to be there now...

And the voices layer, sediment, and imprint themselves in the sweetness of madrigals suspended in half-sleep and of gazes that are not there and are not now.

And then the clairvoyance of the final fantasy, the joy and mystery of images created by the smoke rings of the unconscious. The piano tail glides free yet steady over the pages of a sophisticated canon in which all the instruments flicker and burn with bluish glimmers of will-o'-the-wisps in vitro.

An ambient that bridges the gap between spleen and the Ideal, a chamber avant-garde that turns its gaze to the sky of our lives and shows how dreams are made of the same stuff as us.