Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror by Harold Budd & Brian Eno

Full-length release by Brian Eno & Harold Budd.

Released in 1980 by E.G. Records.

grain of salt
Ambient 2 is probably not as famous as its predecessor, Ambient 1: Music for Airports, but this release has a very interesting collaborative partner, Harold Budd. Several of the Ambients were full-on collaborations for Brian Eno, including this one. Harold Budd has an impressive track record all on his own, so it makes this release all the more special for it.

Here, the tracks are more frequent and shorter than on Ambient 1, flowing with beautiful, improvisatory, Budd-esque piano phrases. About those piano phrases...the sound of the piano is so much better on this album than it is on Ambient 1. Eno's original piano sound on Ambient 1 sounds a bit more synthetic than this, and while it's not synthetic enough to make you cringe, it's not as full-bodied and nuanced as the piano on this record. There's nothing terribly wrong with the piano, whether synthetic or real-life, on Ambient 1..this one is just better. It makes this record sound more classical in a way--maybe in a cinematic sense. I'm more convinced by this record that Brian Eno and Harold Budd are bona fide composers rather than ambient minimalists.

This album clocks out around 40 minutes, and those 40 minutes go by quickly. It's just as strong, if not stronger, than the much-attempted contemporary ambient album. It's perhaps less daring than the work of a contemporary like Wolfgang Voigt, but it still does many different things, and there is a sense of motion and direction in the music, which is more often than not absent from ambient albums.

Eno sometimes describes his music as film-based or cinematic, and though this album isn't titled quite like his earlier work Music for Films, we know very well this music would fit nicely with film. Nothing is overstated in this music. Everything is merely suggestive, which lends itself to mental visuals.