Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd, After the Night Falls and Before the Day Breaks

reviewed by dave heaton

We start during that time of mystery when the night is upon us and continue through to daybreak, on these two thematically linked CDs from Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd. Guthrie and Budd are legends both, for their way with atmosphere but also how they integrate that into composition. Budd playing a lone piano still generates an amazingly involving mood (as on recent CDs like 2003’s La Bella Vista), and Guthrie’s solo work shows the universes he can still create (long post-Cocteau Twins) with a guitar, without abandoning melody. Together they created a remarkable score for Greg Araki’s film Mysterious Skin, and here they’ve made music that leaves as strong a mark – quietly.

After Night Falls is in some ways the louder of the two, less hazy. (Makes sense I guess, since the sun’s presence is still lingering in our minds.) Budd’s piano opens the album, and is more at the front overall. As it proceeds it drifts and drifts – listen to “Open Book”, the way they present an immaculate wind, while Guthrie’s guitar plays slowly, gently behind. The CD ends with “Turn off the Sun”, still light but majestic, almost strident in tone, with drums coming in and Budd playing exuberantly. It’s a style that will be echoed in the close of the next CD.

Before the Day Breaks is hazier overall. “A Formless Path”, one track is titled; at times it feels that way, but of course there are still forms at work. Compositions are played, but quietly, almost imperceptibly sometimes. There’s other times when Budd’s piano composition is surrounded by layers of atmosphere from Guthrie’s guitar, which sometimes sounds like one guitar and sometimes like several. And often like something else entirely. That strangeness is evident throughout the CD, even at its prettiest moments. Notes are inverted (not the technical term) from what you expect. This comes to a head in “Turn on the Moon”, the final statement, which I find both unsettling and soothing. A contradiction perhaps, but true. The piece builds in a weighty way, leaving us with the image that the sun truly is slowly, gloriously rising in the sky. It feels like a monumental occasion, like this collaboration of geniuses.

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