Harold Budd & Hector Zazou – Glyph, 1995

An underloved record from two masters. Trip hop feels like a radical genre departure for both Budd and Zazou, and yet it instantly makes sense upon first listen. Both leave their stylistic fingerprints all over Glyph–Budd’s melancholia, Zazou’s sinister sensibility–weaving haunted ambient jazz into fizzed out drum loops. Trumpet arrangements by Mark Isham, guitar by Barbara Gogan (with whom Zazou also collaborated on a very good trip hop full-length that I’ll be posting at some point), and poetry recitations by Budd. Attains startling heights of opiated beauty (“Reflected in the Eye of a Dragonfly,” featuring a wash of pedal steel guitar courtesy of BJ Cole; sinuous grooves on “Pandas in Tandem” and “As Fast As I Could Look Away She Was Still There”). Does exactly what good trip hop is supposed to do, and then some.

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