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Review: By 2004, Harold Budd was a sufferer of chronic "no, really, this is my final album" syndrome; he had claimed Avalon Sutra as his artistic curtain call, which would reach its apotheotic height under the David Sylvian and his label Samadhisound. The reality was that Budd did go on to record many another album, including a Philip Glass tribute and a solo piano album, Perhaps (2007). But this, his intended retirement, was probably his most interesting. Florid neo-noir soundscapes - mured behind soft-saturated limits of sax and trellised piano - glean an unusual sense of a Lynchian underside to domesticity and normality. A soundtrack to a part-corrupted life, this "Arabesque" record transitions into utter serenity by the time of 'Little Heart', whose faint triangles and swelling pads nail an impure and contradictory sense of alterity, resignation and peace.