1 post tagged “windham hill”

Continuing my thread of guys who have played brass instruments on David Sylvian albums, here is Mark Isham, as promised, from his first solo album, Vapor Drawings:

That's Isham playing everything, unless there are some drums in there that I can't hear, which would be played by Peter Van Hooke.  Vapor Drawings was released in 1983 on William Ackerman's Windham Hill label, which both brought New Age music into the mainstream and instigated the New Age backlash.  A Sunday Doonesbury cartoon at the time lampooned New Age music by positing the album title Air Pudding--not very far removed from Vapor Drawings.  Skimming through this album again I have a hard time finding a focal point in the music; it all seems like background music.  It's no surprise, then, that in the intervening two decades Isham has built a career as a movie soundtrack composer, with dozens of titles in his œuvre and no signs of slowing down.  He can rock out more than you'd think, though; I once saw him lead his band through a heavy fusion set at Washington's late Bayou nightclub.  And of course his trumpet is always a delicious embellishment, as in David Sylvian's "Red Guitar"--

When you want that "trumpet heard from afar while sitting in an outdoor Parisian café at twilight, waiting for a lover who is not going to show, or mourning one who has just left forever" sound, Mark Isham's your man.  How could I go on about David Sylvian and Mark Isham and not present the pinnacle of their partnership, the song that secured universal recognition of Sylvian's genius (if there is any justice in the world), the sublime "Orpheus"--

"I wrestle with an outlook on life that shifts between darkness and shadowy light."  Jackson Browne has apparently expressed in his lyrics every nuance of emotion that Bob Lefsetz has ever felt, but I get more out of that single line from David Sylvian than from all the Jackson Browne I've ever heard.  I have to stop now, before this becomes the All David Sylvian, All the Time blog.  But I do reserve the right to bring him up again.  Soon.