Harold Budd, Lovely Thunder (side A)

1986's Lovely Thunder features an impressive cast of collaborators, including Simon Raymonde, Robin Guthrie, Michael Hoenig, and even cover art by Wire associate Russell Mills. Some of the album is standard/pretty ambient tracks that remind me of Budd's other work from this era. A couple of tracks here do stand out as special within the constrained genre. "Ice Floes in Eden" features occasional low-frequency thuds that almost leap out of the otherwise floaty mix. A notable track is "Flowered Knife Shadows", Budd's collaboration with the Cocteau Twins. It features the reverb and processing for which the Cocteau Twins were known by 1986, inside of a composition that is recognizably Budd's. The pressing is better than many others on EG, but Mills's cover art, while tasteful, has not aged as well as his work with Dome.