The Pearl is the second collaborative studio album by Harold Budd and Brian Eno, released in August 1984 by Editions EG and produced by Eno and Daniel Lanois in Hamilton, Ontario. The Pearl is similar to Budd and Eno's previous collaboration, Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror (1980), consisting mostly of subtly treated piano textures, but with more pronounced electronic treatments and nature recordings. The album has been well received by music critics, and is considered by some as a landmark work in ambient music.

Production

The Pearl was recorded in Hamilton, Ontario in 1984 by Harold Budd, Brian Eno, and Daniel Lanois. The trio shared a house during the recording sessions and worked on the record seven days per week. The music was recorded over two weeks, and then it took 8-12 months to finish production and decide which tracks worked best together.

Comparison with Ambient 2

Budd believes both Ambient 2 and The Pearl are similar in terms of sounds and timbres, and those similarities were conceived even during the onset of production. The former album was produced effortlessly, and the duo thought they could produce similar music again with ease.

| rev2 = Robert Christgau

| rev2Score = A−

| rev3 = Tom Hull – on the Web

| rev3score = B+ ()

Contemporary reviews were positive. Electronics & Music Maker felt The Pearl had more unity than Ambient 2, and enjoyed the peculiar mix of Eno's melancholia and Budd's optimism.

Ambient 2 and The Pearl are often discussed together by critics in retrospect as landmark works in ambient and both Eno and Budd's repertoire. In 2014, The Guardian wrote that the albums earned them the title "godfathers of ambient". Pitchfork described Budd and Eno's collaborations as evoking tension "between gentleness and threat, between intimacy and uncertainty, between the thrill of a hint and the human desire to see the whole picture".

Track listing

Personnel

  • Brian Eno – composition, production
  • Harold Budd – composition
  • Daniel Lanois – production
  • Russell Mills – cover art, design
  • Christina Birrer – photography

References