HAROLD BUDD/BRIAN ENO Ambient 2/The Plateaux Of Mirror (Editions EG/Virgin)
The second release in Enos Ambient series, The Plateaux Of Mirror takes the formalism of its predecessor, Music For Airports the slowly dripping, minimal piano loops that sound like stalactites forming and cross-pollinates it with pastel shades of melody. As barely there and everywhere as the listener wishes it to be, theres a clean elegance to the intertwining treated piano patterns of First Light and the title tracks seductive, gently swaying cadences. The (con) trick, of course, is to not concentrate on the music, otherwise youll be infuriated at just how little is actually going on here.
The delicately tangled jangle piano cobwebs that form An Arc Of Doves could be the soundtrack to Budd and Enos own peculiar kind of East End knees-up, and the shuddering, tremulous power chords of Not Yet Remembered seem to have leaked in from a Chicago album. Wind In Lonely Fences, by happy contrast, sounds more like the clanking and jangling of strange boats moored in alien harbours. (Well, you describe it then!) Whatever it evokes in your minds ear, The Plateaux Of Mirror functions best when its allowed to diffuse through space like spray.