Defending the Indefensible: Windham Hill

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”