Vapor Drawings

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Vapor Drawings

Studio album by Mark Isham
Released	1983
Recorded	April-May 1983, at Eastcote Productions, in London, England
Genre	New Age
Length	44:11
Label	Windham Hill Records
Producer(s)	Steven Miller
All Music Guide link Piero Scaruffi link
Mark Isham chronology
	Vapor Drawings	Film Music

Vapor Drawings (1983) is the debut solo album by the American trumpeter/synthesist Mark Isham.

It was the first album released on the Windham Hill label to belong to the electronic music genre. This album focuses more on Isham’s talents as an electronic composer than future releases. “Something Nice for My Dog” is purely electronic and “Men Before the Mirror” only features a brief segment of trumpet at the beginning.

The tone of the album ranges from sweeping and melancholy (“On the Threshold of Liberty”, “In the Blue Distance”) to light and humorous (“Something Nice for My Dog”, “Mr. Moto’s Penguin”). The most experimental piece on the album is “Sympathy and Acknowledgement”. This piece is centered around a complex arrangement of electronic sequences and processed trumpet and piano recordings.

The most famous piece on tha album is a military-style march titled “On the Threshold of Liberty”. Over the years this piece has appeared on several Windham Hill samplers. A reworking of this piece was used as the theme of the 2000 film Rules of Engagement starring Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. “On the Threshold of Liberty” takes its title from a 1929 painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte.

All instrumentation was performed by Isham except additional electronic percussion and snare drum by former Group 87 drummer Peter Van Hooke.