WH-1027 Mark Isham Vapor Drawings

WH 1027 Mark Isham Vapor Drawings
WH 1027 Mark Isham Vapor Drawings

WH-1027 Mark Isham Vapor Drawings

Review

Vapor Drawings is the first album by Mark Isham, the 27th Windham Hill release, and the first electronic release on the label.

“Vapor Drawings was my first solo recording, my first adventure into a large-scale electronic music record. I played almost all the instruments on it — in fact everything except the drums. It was a big challenge and took a lot of hard work. I see it as the first of a series of records that experimented with this genre (whatever that genre might be considered – somewhere between New Age and Fusion) the second of which was Tibet, the third of which was Castalia.”

–Mark Isham

While it is possible to hear the echoes of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis in Vapor Drawings, it stands on its own as a clear new vision of what could be done with electronic music. Humor, pathos, and inspiration are all heard throughout the album, all with lucid orchestral colors.

There is so much to say about Mark Isham that I’ve held off on this review for a long time. Mark has gone on to become one of the most effective and most prolific film score composers in history, while continuing to make beautiful music across genres. I love jazz, I love new age (at least as defined by Windham Hill); I love English art rock (David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Dead Can Dance). I can think of only one person who has crossed all of these boundaries: Mark Isham. In the end, I must send you on your own journey of the man’s work. http://www.isham.com can keep you busy all day long.

Regardless, Windhaming is intended to document the works of Windham Hill on their own merit. Fortunately, Vapor Drawings is as much of a masterpiece as a standalone album as it is the opening album in Mark Isham’s oevre. The music percolates, hums, and marches toward majestic peaks. Coming so early in Isham’s career, one could imagine that he was simply trying new styles in electronic music. But the effect is that the listener is rewarded by a walk through many possibilities.

It probably helps to like electronic music to truly love Vapor Drawings, but the classical underpinnings, organic drums, and emotional appeal give the album a draw much broader than “electronic” would imply. Also, the synthesizers used continue to sound fresh – include any of these tracks on an “ambient” sampler and you would be hard pressed to detect that they are 30 years old.

By the time Vapor Drawings came out, Ackerman had built such a trust level in his taste with Windham Hill, that I bought the album based solely on label and instrumentation. While the later “Interior” albums felt like synthesizer works, “Vapor Drawings” simply felt like music.

The wonderful “Many Chinas” was originally recorded by Isham on the 1976 Rubisa Patrol album (ECM 1081) with Art Lande, Bill Douglass and Glenn Cronkhite. Mark’s influence and horn playing is felt throughout that release, and anyone interested in his early work should seek it out. One of the joys of the Windhaming project is meeting people and learning more about artists I love. It was Record Store Day 2013 that I walked into Grooveyard Records in Oakland CA, and mentioned the Windhaming project to Rick Ballard. Turns out he was the original ECM importer before ECM had a major label partner in the US. A quick run through his bins yielded the Rubisa Patrol gem.

Track Listings

Side One

 

 

  1. Many Chinas 4:05
  2. Sympathy and Acknowledgement 8:17
  3. On the Threshold of Liberty 7:27
  4. When Things Dream 2:43

Side Two

 

  1. Raffles in Rio 4:38
  2. Something Nice for My Dog 2:49
  3. Men Before the Mirror 6:07
  4. Mr. Moto’s Penguin (who’d be an Eskimo’s wife?) 3:18
  5. In the Blue Distance 4:06

 

Samples

Many Chinas

On the Threshold of Liberty

Raffles in Rio

Something Nice for my Dog

Men Before the Mirror

Mr. Moto’s Penguin (who’d be an Eskimo’s wife?)

In the Blue Distance


Credits / Liner Notes

Mark Isham: Synthesizers, trumptes, flugelhorn, piano, soprano sax, Steiner EVI, electronic percussion

Peter Van Hooke: Snare drum and electronic percussion

  • All compositions by Mark Isham
  • All selections Windham Hill Music (BMI) except “Many Chinas” published by ECM Records Verlag, GMBH (GEMA)
  • Manufactured by Windham Hill REcords
  • Windham Hill Productions Inc.
  • PO Box 9388, Stanford, CA 94305

(c) (p) Windham Hill Records 1983

Distributed by A&M Records

WH-1027

Research Notes:

On the Threshold of Liberty is named after the Rene Magritte painting:

Magritte on the threshold of Liberty
Magritte on the threshold of Liberty

It’s a pleasure to see that portions of Vapor Drawings were recorded in the same studio as Thomas Dolby’s “The Golden Age of Wireless.”

On Photographer Larry Bell’s work, which was used for the cover art:

Two large bodies of work on paper, Bell’s “vapor drawings” and the more recent “mirage works”, are also the products of Bell’s use of thin film deposition technology. The vapor drawings are created by using PET film to mask paper sheets, which are then coated. Bell describes the advantages of this process and medium:

Masking the paper with thin PET film strips to expose areas related to the shape of the page plane enabled me to generate images spontaneously. This work gave me a conscious glimpse of the inherent power of spontaneity and improvisation. The work happened intuitively…In a short amount of time I created a number of interesting pieces. I liked this way of working. It was different from tediously coping with the weight and risk of glass. In my mind, I was investigating improbable visuals using improbable means.[7]

The mirage pieces, on the other hand, are collages constructed out of pieces of coated materials that are then arranged and laminated. As Bell says, “I colored sheets of various paper materials, strips of PET film, and laminate film. Then I fused them to canvases and stretched them. Tapestries of woven light differentials resulted.” [7]

You can see more of Larry Bell’s work at Artsy

9 Replies to “WH-1027 Mark Isham Vapor Drawings”

  1. Thanks for the wonderful review – I’m glad you are keeping this website alive. I have found it a great rescource and have collected almost all of the early Windham Hill albums.

    Dan

  2. What an extraordinary resource you’re creating for the world’s Windham Hill fans. I am very much looking forward to reading your reviews of the albums of Montreux – my favorite Windham Hill ensemble of all. Thanks for continuing to update this site.

  3. I’ve just doscovered this website as I am about to embark on collecting the Windham Hill releases I don’t already own. But I digresss….

    “Vapor Drawings” was the second WH release I ever bought (The first was Philip Aaberg’s “Out of the Frame”) and I bought it on the strength of the cover and I’m glad I did. The combination of electronics with Isham’s mournful trumpet make for a very atmospheric album. One of my favourites but then I came to it from a background of electronic music; this proved things could be done differently.

    1. Not sure – but Mark is very active on Twitter and with his own site – it’s quite likely he would answer your question in more details than is on the liner notes.

    2. I saw Mark live at Austin’s beautiful Paramount Theater (front row!) back in 1984 or so, right after this album and before Tibet. Powerful show. I even bootlegged it, and a few months ago finally digitized the original cassette.
      Anyway, I talked to him after the show, asked him what gear he was using. His main synth was the Prophet 5. He also used the Sequential Circuits drum machine from that time (the Drumtracks?). He was the first live musician I experienced who did live looping. It was incredible to see him layer his trumpet into those thick cloudwashes of atmosphere. He used a Lexicon PCM 42 with maxxed-out memory for his looper.
      Playing with Mark that tour were Bill Douglass on acoustic bass and a female percussionist whose name I can’t remember. It was a life-changing experience.

      1. Yugenro!

        As a fellow Texan and Austinite I would LOVE to hear your concert bootleg of Mark’s performance. Any chance your digital files of this performance are still floating around the home office?

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