Defending the Indefensible: Windham Hill

completely otm

I will defend Windham Hill because of the Liz Story records.

this sounds retardedly stupid

not as retardedly stupid as this:

enjoyable music made by an interesting, disparate community of musicians - what's not to like, unless you're of the "music must be convulsive! and threatening and dangerous! feeling good is for pussies!" school, in which case, turn twenty already and get over it

as for windham hill, no opinion

http://webzoom.freewebs.com/lowendr/c425130w4io.jpg

-- john, a resident of chicago.

Yep. Came out in '72, a few years before Windham Hill was founded.

I listened to some Windham Hill stuff over at a friends house last night. Mostly Mark Isham and Shadowfax. Some of the Shadowfax stuff sounds remarkably modern - the best stuff has an aesthetic that would fit in nicely with the ongoing bealeric movement maybe, although without the electronic elements. Good stoner music. The Mark Isham stuff was pretty bad. I thought it was going to be a Mike Oldfield rip but it was more like a one-man effort at Hatfield and the North type noodling without the finese. You just can't pull that shit off with crappy drum machines and the synths were pretty awful too. All this stuff had someone credited on the cover as playing "talking drum".

After that we listened to a couple of early 80s Phillip Glass albums and that made the Windham Hill stuff seem kinda dreary and unambitious.

there is some cool stuff on windham hill imo. michael hedges especially is really good

I'm into checking more of it out. Any more specific recommendations? I think my pal had at least one Michael Hedges record but we didn't get around to it.

if you like some shadowfax, or just the new age exotica beachcomber vibe in general, check out tri atma or do'a.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41TZSH3223L._SS500_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4154D0P1XXL._SS500_.jpg

meanwhile, i had never heard the first shadowfax album, watercourse way, until this year, and that album is great! great guitars, great prog, a looooooong way from where they would end up.

'breakfast in the fields' is hedges' first (and is one of the earlier windham hill releases iirc) and is excellent. aeriel boundaries is other really good one - they're is some incredible guitar playing on those.

i also like a later one - 'oracle', came out in the mid-90s maybe, around when his profile was the highest. but those first two ones especially are really good

Funny. I was thinking about bringing up Windham Hill on that What's the Sound of the 2010s Gonna Be thread.

Good call on that. This could finally be Windham Hill's day in the sun. Pick em up on vinyl while they're still cheap!

I did some googling this morning and I really want to hear that first Shadowfax album now. I'll try and check out those other recommendations too. Thanks for that.

i said that a few years ago that new age would be next for collectors. after they have all the prog and psych records, private press crystal healing records are the last frontier.

there's a lllottt of pristine new age records out there too for cheap right now

This is true. New age heads seem to have keep their shit pristeen, and they offloaded en masse for CDs.

See: every thrift store on in North America.

LOL. My buddy (who's 59) has a whole shelf of this stuff, all in absolutely immaculate condition. I don't think he's played any of it since the late 80s though. Until last night, that is.

Something about the new age mentality inclines one to fastidiousness. Same goes for jazz fusion and obscure European prog.

Yeah, well, he has tons of that too. We were listening to Weather Report till 2am. He put Windham Hill album on (I have now forgotten the artist) and if he had told me it was something new from the Boards of Canada I would've belived him.

Okay, that was easy. I have now secured a copy of the first Shadowfax album, which I will listen to tonight once I've got myself into the correct frame of mind. YES!

I remember seeing a Windham Hill solstice CD at my (Calvinist, ultra-conservative) sister's house once, which shocked me since I thought it would be too pagan for her, but perhaps she considers solstice adequately neutral.

At first blush the new Jim O'Rourke sounds pretty WH.

Local store had a 50 cent sale, picked up Tim Story - Untitled, my first windham hill record

there's a subdivision kinda place near me called Wyndham Hill. looks like this:
http://c3321017.r17.cf0.rackcdn.com/660399_1.jpg
i like the george winston records I've heard.

hot thread:

WINDHAM HILL RECORDS I GOT TODAY

In 1989 or so, they put out a "new folk" compilation called Legacy that was pretty great: Blue Rubies, Bill Morrissey, John Gorka, that kind of thing.

Prince cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQQYSWpxc4w

Denny Zeitlin recorded two albums for Windham Hill - the laconically named Trio is a solid album.

kinda sorta loving that "when you were mine" cover

apparently by the blue rubies. discogs sez: Susan Maunu on vocals, Mitzi Johnson on 16-string Renaissance lute and John Loose on percussion

guess john sat this one out. want to live inside this song.

Never in a million billion years did I think I would ever be excited about anything the Windham Hill label — but here I am.

The first few Will Ackerman records are all very reminiscent of the oddball folky weirdo acoustic guitar noodlers (John Fahey and Leo Kottke, most obviously). Really been getting a lot out of them lately.

Picked up a couple Michael Hedges albums too (Breakfast and Aerial Boundaries). They're nothing if not technically impressive. Good tunes in there, too.

The only George Winston I've heard (Winter Into Spring) was so reminiscent of Keith Jarrett's 70's solo piano stuff for ECM that, being a fan of that stuff, I took to very easily.

Will Ackerman's 'Passage' been getting a lot of play around these parts, love Windham Hill vibes

yes! i think i found it for 50p somewhere and just liked the cover a lot, and it turned out to be a really present surprise

I think I put it on in a friend's apartment many years ago and straight up asked if I could have it. She gave it to me!

Every Ackerman album up till like 86 or so has worthwhile moments, though admittedly it's diminishing returns after 83's Past Light (the last one I like unreservedly). There was even a late 90s one my dad had that I remember liking but can't remember which one

Scott Cossu and Eugene Friesen’s REUNION is gorgeous

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L6FL1bedwe4

Agree with the Mark Islam love, too. Amazing composer and trumpeter

I have been returning to Aerial Boundaries a fair bit of late. This old fella needs the calm. I could probably do without the flute but it's used pretty sparingly.

i'm of the opinion sparing use of flute is almost always a good thing, except where Joan Baez and most Jethro Tull are concerned.

I spent way too much time making radio masters of Windham Hill holiday specials -- yes, this was over 20 years ago, but the trauma remains. ... the only defensible things are: (1) I got paid (2) while listening to this wretched music, I did regularly eat some tasty fried zucchini strips from the 24 hour Carl's Jr

I can guess at why a lot of this stuff is held in such low regard, but the thing that stands out to me is how the good bits i've heard hit the same pleasure centres as a lot of the ECM material I like best does. ECM are obviously hip as fuck. Windham clearly not... but their sleeve design dept was obviously trying to do very similar things. is ECM just german/scandi and thus foreign enough to have some sort of chic strangeness to it that good old American hippies can't also share?

I feel like ECM has been a four letter word among record collectors until fairly recently

I must admit that I've had a deep fascination with this mid-80s Will Ackerman album since I first heard it. I was often afraid of going to sleep as a child and would sit on my bedroom floor in silence, wrapping myself in a blanket and staring out of the window up at the moon for as long as I could. Maybe it's because the title evokes those memories — but even so, it still strikes me as a somewhat unique album for his 80s output. It's got a certain melancholy to it that just seems unique.

I think the thing with Windham Hill is that it was very hit or miss. For every solid Ackerman or Hedges album they released, it felt like there were two or three albums that were the exact kind of overly syrupy stock new age dreck that got the new age label a bad reputation to begin with.

And yes, I remember back in the late 90s and all through the 2000s working in record stores, admitting to liking ECM stuff was. . . well, an admission.

yeah ... I still kinda cringe at a lot of ECM stuff

That's your problem! This stuff is great

The two Interior albums are excellent Japanese ambient-pop outliers on WH, especially the first one produced by Haruomi Hosono.

breaking out the 1984 sampler on this icy Saturday

Winter’s Solstice got a play this year, still love that Qualey version of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”