Customer Reviews

Shadowdance

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow, I'm surprised there are so few Shadowfax reviews on Amazon ... I know there are a lot of fans out there.

Let me say at the outset that I don't qualify as a Shadowfax fan: never saw them live, don't have most of their albums. (I think I have cassettes of _Watercourse Way_ and _The Dreams of Children_ or something else somewhere, but they never got much play in my house.) I'm also not a big fan of New Age music, much of which is just too limp to interest me. I have a Tingstad & Rumbel album or two, like certain acoustic guitarists like Doug Smith and Paul Chasman, used to listen a bit to Kitaro and Jean-Michel Jarre, but that's about the extent of it.

I've seen folks elsewhere on the Internet declare that Shadowfax's best work was done before this album, but I happened to encounter this one and it hit me just right.

This is New Age music with a beat. "New Electric India" rocks, while "Brown Rice" bops along with a sly grin on its face. On the other hand, "A Song For my Brother" aches, and "Ghost Bird" is suitably haunting. A good mixture of moods, and fine musicianship. Wish I'd gotten the chance to see the band live at some point.

Shadowfax were pioneers of the 'new age' revolution in the 80's (when this CD was released), and this CD has stood the test of time - both in quality and content - akin to their contemporaries of the time (Ackerman, DeGrassi, Story, Winston). The major diff here is that these guys did some 'ensemble' work that was unparalled. It always seemed to me that they were a lot of guys that were into the instrumentals that we all wish we had a lot more of from our 'rock' heroes - Zep, Floyd, etc.

The beautifully crafted 'Shadowdance', 'Ghost Bird', and the re-made 'Watercourse Way' are worth the cost of the CD alone. And then throw in the funky 'Brown Rice' and 'New Electric India' and the epic guitar-wailing 'Song for my Brother', you have got a new age CD and then some.

What more can I say - these guys defined and stretched the limits of 'new age', as opposed to many artists that kept within the bounds and put us to sleep (or at least 'relaxed our muscles and relieved our tensions'). NO, Shadowfax is not some sort of Ted Nugent or Nirvana of New Age - they just had a sound and feeling to their music that lifted us above the 'ambience' of the genre...

Get this CD and you'll know what I mean, and I don't say this in reviews lightly (as I HATE when I do buy on recommendation and I end up hating it). Shadowfax is not for everyone, but it is for anyone who wants some great instrumental music that is above the norm, a touch of new age, and appeals to the soul...

I was in a record store in 1983 when I heard "A Song For My Brother" I immediately bought the album and that was my introduction to Shadowfax and New Age Music. I have since bought this album over twice one cassette and on CD. After that I was hooked on Windham Hill records. Even though I knew nothing about the artists, I would choose an album based on the album cover art. That's how I discoverd Liz Story, George Winston, William Ackerman, Nightnoise and others. This album always remained my favorite, with the haunting A Song For My Brother being the stand out track. I also love Distant Voices and Watercouse Way, but all the tracks are great.

Everything about this CD works. Shadowdance is an intriguing piece of work, New Electric India rocks. A Song For My Brother is heart rending. There is not one song on this album which can be classified as sub-par. In fact, they are all excellent. The work is creative without being wierd.

This is my favorite shadowfax album. It is the first one I heard and most of their albums sound similar, so that might be why I prefer this one.

The music on Shadowdance is more complex and has more depth than on any of the earlier albums. And it is certainly better than the follow up "Dreams For Children". On "Dreams of Children", Shadowfax took a step backwards but recovered on the later albums.

This album was made just as CD's were becoming popular. Like most Windham Hill albums from that time, it is relatively short. It is only 38 minutes long (some of the early Winham Hill albums are even shorter than that).

Shadowfax was one of the pioneers in new age jazz. They were also one of the best. They took the boring lite jazz of the time and merged it with new influences and injected new life into it. There are a lot Eastern influences in the music. Violin played in an Indian style is a major component of the sound.

Shadowfax had a number of inferior imitators. New age music drifted back to it's lite roots. New age jazz and Windham eventually developed a bad reputation, and the popularity has died off. I like to call the style Yuppie Muzak.

Sorry, the first thing I must do is correct Mr. Jerome Scott. "Shadowdance", the second Shadowfax release on Windham Hill and their third overall, consists of all new 1983 recordings. Where the confusion lies is that Chuck Greenberg, disatisfied with the sound quality of the band's debut album, "Watercourse Way", had the group redo two of its songs for this release.

Now that that's out of the way, I will say that the band was really hitting its stride here. On signing to Windham Hill, the band wisely decided to cut down on the electric sounds of "WW" and go more acoustic for its second album. While they still retained much of that sound for "Shadowdance", they begin to sneak more electricity back in.

The songwriting is more or less split evenly between Greenberg and guitarist G.E. Stinson. The band adds a keyboardist and violinist to the sessions, broadining the reach of the group. Stinson likes the power of his electric, obvious on the opener, "New Electric India" and the one cover tune, Don Cherry's "Brown Rice". Also featuring a scat vocal from G.E., this would prove to be a barn-burner in concert. Another popular track would be the Greenberg's title track. "Distant Voices" and the remake of "Watercourse Way" show off the quieter, more "New Ageish" sound which brought may new fans in. The two remakes do have a fuller, richer production, but I don't quite enjoy the remake of "Song of My Brother" as much. I prefer the orchestration by the Chamberlain on the original as opposed to the solo violin here. But that's just a nitpick on my part. It's a sweeping, soaring composition with a killer guitar part.

The band was moving through is peak period here and getting more popular, too -- the album even made the Billboard pop charts. Possibly the best starting point for new fans, and great for anybody.

Everything about this CD works. Shadowdance is an intriguing piece of work, New Electric India rocks. A Song For My Brother is heart rending. There is not one song on this album which can be classified as sub-par. In fact, they are all excellent. The work is creative without being weird.

the first time i heard this music,i was on fl myers beach, florida.there was an outdoor disc jockey and this album was playing, so i asked who it was. the music has a mystical quality, it's very unique. i've had a hard time tracking it down in the music stores, but i just got a laptop,so now i found it,thank god!!

I can still remember where I was when I first heard this song---on my way to work at Vandenberg AFB at the crack of dawn, on a two lane road through the mountains. A Song for My Brother is so stunningly haunting that I made a special trip after work to get it---and still love it more than twenty years later. It must come out on MP3, I could listen to it over and over all day. Just before I left California, I saw Shadowfax perform at a club high on one of the seven sisters hlls---extinct volcanoes in San Luis Obispo with a bay of windows open over the valley. A perfect song in a perfect setting. Far better than the YouTube recorded in Chicago.

To my sister Happy and crazy John---I still love you!!

The music biz is a tough boat to sail. After failing to win the masses with their debut, the band resumed by assembling a decent but overly cautious acoustic album for Windham Hill. Then, when the band went out on tour, they rediscovered electricity. How were they going to reconcile their progressive inclinations with their new acoustic-oriented label?

We can only imagine the conversations that must have occurred, but some kind of go-ahead evidently came out of it, resulting in a genuinely new sound. Starting with the road-tested "New Electric India" and Don Cherry's "Brown Rice", the band found a new direction right out of the Star Wars cantina in "Shadowdance" -- Greenberg's spritely lyricon coaxed by the chthonic percussion to come out of the hobbit-hole and dance. Add in a couple gentle pieces plus two repainted beauties from their pre-Windham Hill days and Voila! -- the most diverse-yet-compatible album they had yet made, and the harbinger of their larger successes to come.

THE DREAMS OF CHILDREN and TOO FAR TO WHISPER would boldly capitalize on the strengths found here. And the results may sometimes be argued to be better, depending on the listener's preferences; certainly the band came to show more confidence in their world-music-meets-adult-rock format. But here we see the first shiver of discovery, advancing or holding ground in several fronts at once.

It was strange, yet familiar; it was relaxed but energetic; it was electric while rooted in the acoustics of world percussion. Real Shadowfax begins here.