Richard Maxfield / Harold Budd - 'The Oak of the Golden Dreams'

These two records were combined onto one compact disc even though they had nothing really to do with each other besides being on the same label. Maxfield's stuff rangers from 'outer sounds' electroacoustic composition, with very piercing, cutting synthetic electronic music on 'Pastoral Sounds' to cut-up concrète jams ('Bacchanale') to long David Tudory-kinda extended composition (named after and featuring Tudor). 'Bacchanale' is totally the complement to Terry Riley's collaboration with Chet Baker ('Music for the Gift' I believe it was called) and has some strange gaps and discordances that do a good service for the compact disc/digital format. On the other hand we have Harold Budd who I always associated with the dullest side of Eno's output. These two pieces are probably what people mean by 'minimal synth' (a phrase I see popping up in many a description lately). The title track is a total 180 from Maxfield; lush, gorgeous synth layers build up a melodic yet still very eerie presence. 'Coueur d'Orr' is much more akin to if Sun Ra was behind it; the synth swells and rushes are still there but there's a shitload of sax wanking over top, though it's from the soulful Buddha school of wank instead of the ear-piercing dissonance, so you know what? It works. Well.