Harold Budd is undisputedly one of ambient music’s greatest proponents. However, as well regarded is a significant portion of his pop output, Budd’s music has always occupied a space for me that includes both distaste and enjoyment. Of late, collaborations with Robin Guthrie, particularly one of my favorite soundtracks in their scoring of Mysterious Skin, have achieved the best aspects of Budd’s sound, coming across as an evocative log of a time and space. Where Budd fails to hit the mark, perhaps due to the nature of his performing media, is where his sound becomes archaic or kitsch-y, being confined to the associations of a type of sound, rather than embodying a life of its own. This release comes in the wake of a number of other ones recorded three to five years ago, the last of Budd’s creative spurs.

His collaborator in A Song For Lost Blossoms, Clive Wright, offers up melodic guitar lines that, at least in theory, are a great combination with Budd’s ambience. In practice, Clive Wright’s contributions seem to mostly enhance whichever side of the hit and miss barrier that Budd offers up here, either seeming tacky, or being an apt foreground to Budd’s better ambient accompaniments.

In this release, there is certainly great merit, that doesn’t necessarily hark back to Budd’s previous output. Again, it is Clive Wright’s contributions that give the better cuts their uniqueness, evoking perhaps Fripp & Eno’s album Evening Star, but not invading its stylistic space. Efforts such as “Forever Hold Your Breath” are breathtaking without needing to move forwards, presenting decidedly measured and languid looped ambient guitar, over which Wright cycles through a number of timeless, improvisationary periods, often using an e-bow to great effect. The sound design of pieces such as “A Song For Lost Blossoms” unmistakably hits the mark and give solid examples of the reasons why Budd has so significant in the ambient music world for the past thirty five years.

However, the opening cut “Pensive Aphrodite” is unforgivably flimsy. Reaching thirty minutes, every negative aspect of both of these composers’ output is showcased, plodding delay-heavy guitar with little justification for its lack of impetus, over uncharacteristically tasteless synthesizer sounds, coming across like a mid-90's nature documentary soundtrack, musical accompaniment for yoga for new-age mums, or a half hour shout out to Clannad. This is a particular shame, because as the opening track of this release, it unfairly condemns the rest of the album, the majority of which is of quality, to insignificance, in the wake of its sheer banality.

However, if this opening piece was omitted (and with the album reaching just below 75 minutes, this could have been more than conceivable), A Song For Lost Blossoms could have been a particularly solid collaboration, with some moments of real beauty. Regardless, of Budd’s recent output, collaborations with Robin Guthrie certainly reach greater heights and are more worthy of listeners’ attention.