Winter Garden

Italian producer Eraldo Bernocchi invited ambient/minimalist piano pioneer Harold Budd and former Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie (who had collaborated earlier on several projects) to join him in Tuscany for this recording, on which Budd contributes the most sonically central piano parts and Bernocchi and Guthrie add sumptuously ethereal background noise. The result is both blissfully soothing and consistently interesting, although the most interesting things are actually happening in the background, among the steam clouds and wispy layers of sound that provide aural context for Budd's noodlings. Much of what Budd plays is based on pentatonic melodies, which sound nice no matter what you do. (This is a trade secret of new age musicians: stick with a pentatonic scale, and nothing you play will sound wrong.) But those simple melodies are highly effective, and the floating accompaniments are absolutely gorgeous: there are electronic effects in there, but what are most audible are the shimmering guitar chords and seemingly infinite piano echoes that Bernocchi and Guthrie shape and reshape as they drift away into the distance. The end result is utterly gorgeous and deeply comforting music.