release date: Dec. 4, 2020
format: digital (9 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,56]
producer: Robin Guthrie
label: Soleil Après Minuit - nationality: Skotland, UK / USA
Track highlights: 1. "Some Smoke" - 2. "Perfect Fire" - 4. "November Day" - 5. "After Dark" - 7. "Harlequin Delight" - 8. "Very Slender Homage"
Final collaborative project between Scottish dream pop master Robin Guthrie and American composer and minimalist Harold Budd. The album is not a bunch of brand new compositions but actually a collection of more than seven years old recordings, which now see the light of day. Possibly, they were intended as another joint work between the now 58-year-old Guthrie and 84-year-old Budd, but it now appears as their last joint work, as Budd was hit by COVID-19 before the album came out and eventually died from complications related to the decease on Dec. 8, 2020 - only 14 days before the album release. As noted in the accompanying liner notes, the album is "Written and performed by Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd during a rainy Summer in Brittany, 2013". It isn't directly mentioned that the album was recorded over a single day or over a matter of sessions, but most often they basically worked in the moment with the recorder running, and while the music was created and performed from start to finish. Perhaps this music wouldn't have been released had Budd not passed away so abruptly 'cause fact is: these compositions are seven-year-old recordings with which Guthrie now choose to pay tribute to his long-time musical playmate. And Harold Budd may not have heard the album in its entirety and with the tracks precisely ordered as they appear here - but Budd heard it all, because he was there himself.
As usual, it's the gentle atmospheric sounds that dominate Guthrie and Budd's music. Since these compositions they have released more than a handful of joint albums, either as musical scores for feature films or as their own releases. They are both listed here as performers and composers of all music, and as usual only Guthrie is credited as album producer. It's another chapter in a common ethereal ambient style that clearly touches on new age and doesn't walk on entirely new paths. The elder Budd is a classically-schooled pianist and composer, and he has early admitted to an improvisational and minimalist expression, which has proven to go quite well with Guthrie's preference for an airy guitar sound. Their final recordings together in terms of chronology was their collaborative works resulting in the 2014 soundtrack White Bird in a Blizzard for the film of the same name directed by Japanese-American Gregg Araki, who had also made "Mysterious Skin" in 2005, for which Guthrie and Budd introduced their collaborative work. In addition to these soundtracks, together they composed and made After the Night Falls and Before the Day Breaks released simultaneously in 2007 as two individual releases, and later they released Bordeaux in 2011. That same year, they also released Winter Garden as a joint project with Italian musician Eraldo Bernocchi.
Another Flower is, as the title suggests, another distinctive work from Guthrie and Budd - another flower. Perhaps, this was a metaphor Budd used about their compositions or works - we don't know for sure. Guthrie came up with the title after Budd's death - it could also be a reference to Budd himself, as a flower that was here, it was seen, admired, and is now gone. Musically speaking, it's not the large and complex compositional structures that characterise their compositions, but it's music created in a shared moment and in a warm, friendly common expression. You could object that they cling on to the same colours, the same airy timbres, which in way they do, but these are tones that contain something valuable by being created as common breaths expressed in music, and which show themselves as a unique and living organism.
Although new age as such is not really a favourite genre of mine, the album here expresses something quite unique. It's the evidence of both musicians' fondness for the instantaneous - the moment of creation, and they both allow / invite one another to contribute without one or the other dominate the soundscape, or you end up sensing one over the other, and that's a great strength and quality to be able to strike a common note when improvising. When one leads, the other follows suit, and they set out in a common unknown direction with equal vigor to a common end.
Another Flower may not be a work that indicates new paths or inspires new styles, but the music clearly has its merits, and occasionally I feel the music strikes an expression that reminds me of other big names of ethereal music, such as Palle Mikkelborg or Ryuichi Sakamoto, but always without giving impression of plagiarism. When I shut my eyes, I can easily conjure up internal images of underwater footage from Luc Besson's "Le Grand Bleu", which had music by Éric Serra. It's done sincerely and beautifully, and it's perhaps Guthrie and Budd's greatest swan song. At least I haven't heard them perform better than on this album.
Recommended.
