Harold Budd, a modern poet of the piano, has been playing music since his teens, yet it was not until his late 30s that he found his true voice as a composer. And it was only in 1978, with the release of "The Pavilion of Dreams", his first record, that the work of this genial Californian began to find an international audience.

In the early 60s, under the spell of John Cage amd Morton Feldman, he produced an indeterminate, improvisatory music, moving on, as the decade progressed, to a much more spare and minimalistic style: pieces consisted of quiet drones or simple instructions to the performers.

Brian Eno having heard a tape of Budd's 1972 release "Madrigals collaborated with him on The Plateaux of Mirror, the second record in Eno's Ambient series: Budd provided the electric and acoustic piano parts and Eno the crystalline studio treatments. This was followed in 1981 by The Serpent (In Quicksilver), a piano-based, solo mini-album, and in 1984 by Abandoned Cities, two brooding side-long pieces, originally written for an art gallery installation, in which Budd revealed the darker side of his musical temperament. The same year, Budd and Eno worked together on The Pearl, refining their approach on Plateaux with 13 poetically titled and exquisitely crafted glimpses of enchanted landscapes and underwater domains.

Since then Harold Budd has worked with The Cocteau Twins, Andy Partridge of XTC, and has continued to release a steady flow of solo releases as well.