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Curious Music Announces Limited-Edition Vinyl Release of
Luxa by Harold Budd
Also available as lossless FLAC-DL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Russ Curry, russ@curiousmusic.us
Title: Luxa
Artist: Harold Budd
Catalog: curio 10
Release Date: April 12, 2018, FLAC-DL out now
Format: 2 x 180-gram black vinyl, FLAC DL
Curious Music is pleased to announce the release of Luxa by Harold Budd on limited-edition double 180-gram vinyl and FLAC DL. The vinyl is released on April 12, 2018, available for pre-order now. The FLAC DL is out now and is available exclusively at the Curious Music web site – curiousmusic.us.
Luxa was composed and performed entirely by Budd, recorded with engineer Michael Coleman in 11 days in June 1996 at the tiny Orangewood Studio near Mesa, Arizona. The album was originally released on CD only by All Saints Records in 1996.
Luxa contains Budd’s distinctive piano signature while maintaining the balance between pretty ambient music and an evocative, starker use of space and silence. A number of the album’s 16 tracks are ornamented with a variety of African and Indian rattles, shakers, gourds and bells, creating a contrast of depth and rhythm. “Chet,” the longest album track, uses silence as a kind of languid loop. While “Paul McCarthy” balances piano and bells in a strident, elliptical lope. The album concludes with a duo of covers - “Sweet Earth Flying” by Marion Brown, a sweeter rendition of the jazz musician’s solo organ piece, and “Pleasure” from Steven Brown (ex-Tuxedomoon), ending the album on a somewhat cacophonous note. In all, Luxa offers up the very best of Budd, a record that is at once both idiosyncratic and inviting.
This first-ever vinyl release of Luxa has been painstakingly remastered by Tim Story and comes in a high-quality limited edition of 500 copies on 2LP 180-gram black vinyl pressed at 45 rpm. The gatefold sleeve is printed in a deluxe matte finish and includes a beautiful high-resolution, numbered art print. 100 artist proof copies of the art print are individually available as well.
The 2018 remaster is also available in resplendent digital sound as a lossless FLAC DL.
Luxa was pressed at Memphis Record Pressing in Memphis, Tennessee.
“Titles are very important to me. From them come the music ideas. A good piece can be ruined by an awful title. I think of Luxa more as a decorative thing. An art term. From there, the music insinuated itself.”
- Harold Budd
"Luxa is a minor masterpiece that demonstrates that there’s still life in ambient music, and that it’s still possible to make a meditative musical work that’s neither New Age kitsch, nor weighed down by the numbing repetitiveness and sterile conceptualism that’s hampered the minimalist and ambient genres for so long."
- Paul Tingen, Sound on Sound, January 1997
“Relaxing, warm music, like sun on a red tile floor.”
- Ted Mills, AllMusic
ABOUT HAROLD BUDD
Harold Budd was born in 1936 in Los Angeles and grew up in the desert town of Victorville. While serving in the army, Budd encountered jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler which resulted in a stint as Ayler’s drummer. From the 60s through the early 70s Budd studied composition and produced a number of avant-garde pieces including “Lovely Thing” and “Lirio”, a 24-hour piece for solo gong. Budd subsequently taught at the California Institute for the Arts from 1970-76. Budd’s 1972 piece “Madrigals of The Rose Angel” came to the attention of Brian Eno and resulted in the release of the album The Pavilion of Dreams on Eno’s Obscure Records label. This album included appearances by Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars and Marion Brown. Budd has continued to release a string of solo and collaborative albums including The Serpent (In Quicksilver) (1981), The Pearl (1984, with Eno), The Moon and the Melodies (1985, with the Cocteau Twins), Through the Hill (1994, with XTC’s Andy Partridge), Avalon Sutra (2004), Bordeaux (2011, with Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie), Bandits of Stature (2012), and more. In 2013, Harold finished a year-long project with the video artist Jane Maru which resulted in two albums, Jane 1-11 (2013), and Jane 12-21 (2014). Harold’s music continues to influence many generations of musicians, from U2’s sampling for “Cedars of Lebanon” on the album No Line on the Horizon (2009) to an anthology of 13 contemporary ambient musicians paying homage to Harold in Lost in the Humming Air (2012). Meanwhile, Harold continues to create and innovate. His book of poetry, Aurora Teardrops (2015), marked his seventh such book.
Harold lives in South Pasadena, California.
ABOUT CURIOUS MUSIC
Curious Music was founded in 1988 by Russ Curry, releasing numerous CDs and records, promoting tours and administering licensing and publishing agreements. After a period of dormancy lasting nearly 16 years, Curry rebooted the label in 2017, with a focus on creating unique, high-quality limited-edition vinyl packages and digital releases. Current and upcoming releases include the work of Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Tim Story, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and Kate St. John. Objective Objects by Dwight Ashley and Dieter Moebius will be released Summer 2018.
Our mission is to inspire and nurture the curious spirit – one curiosity at a time.
Features:
- 2 x 180-gram black vinyl limited to 500 copies
- Deluxe matte varnish gatefold sleeve
- Includes numbered, hi-resolution art print
- 2018 remaster by Tim Story
- Pressed at Memphis Record Pressing, Memphis, Tennessee
- Pressed at 45 rpm