It's been more than 20 years since pianist Harold Budd's first full collaboration with guitarist Robin Guthrie's former group, the Cocteau Twins, on The Moon and the Melodies. Primed by their atmospheric collaboration on the score to Mysterious Skin, they pick up where they left off, sans the voice of Elizabeth Fraser, on a pair of matched CDs, After the Night Falls and Before the Day Breaks. Guthrie lays down his signature deep-echo guitar arpeggios and shimmering electric glissandos while Budd drops piano notes, each placed with the elegance and thought of a Zen garden. The latter, whose 2005 retirement appears to have been greatly exaggerated, has lately been stripping away the electronics and making an introspective solo piano music, often born from melodic fragments and languid improvisations. It's nice to hear them framed by Guthrie in an electric gossamer where melodies flutter like tattered cobwebs in the echoing wind. So it's not surprising that some tracks have a tendency to vaporize. Songs with a bit of grounding like "Seven Thousand Sunny Years," with its spare rhythm track and refracting guitars, tend to hold up a little better, while "My Monochrome Vision" just wanders into the drone zone. Of the two albums, After the Night Falls is more structured and formed, although Budd and Guthrie do wait until the last track of Before the Day Breaks to unleash a welcome slice of contrasting aggression with "Turn on the Moon." Totaling 81 minutes between them, I'm not sure why the albums couldn't have been condensed into a single disc, making a tighter, less diffuse statement. Yet both have more than enough moments of sublime melancholy and deep ruminations to provide a soundtrack for that long lonesome film in your mind. --John Diliberto