Windfall Light: The Visual Language of ECM [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Windfall Light follows upon Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM as an entry point in bookform to the engaging universe of ECM, the Editions of Contemporary Music, established by Manfred Eicher back in 1969. 40 years later it occupies a most respected place in the (serious) music industry.

Horizons Touched was a prismatic testimonial of the spirit animating the ECM project through the eyes of many of the musicians and collaborators who were part of the ECM story. What I learned from that book is that ECM is unlike any other record label. In fact, to see it only as an economic venture - with a mission to efficiently push "audiocontent" into the market - would be to misunderstand what ECM is about. Remarkably enough, ECM in itself is a work of art, a breathing and living whole that links a community of artists to a community of music lovers, driven by an ethos of love and respect for the music and the creative process from wich it emerges. For me personally moving into the ECM orbit has resulted in a genuine revolution in the way I listen. There is something in the way in which ECM brings music in the listener's personal sphere that forces us to take notice, to become an active part of the unfolding musical process rather than simply a consumer. The distinctive and authoritative ECM sound plays an important role in drawing the listener into the music. But it's not only a matter of sonics. Also the careful packaging, with imaginative artwork on cardboard sleeves and CD booklets, prepares us by creating, in all kinds of provocative and counterintuitive ways, the right mood.

Windfall Light is a book about the ECM artwork and covers. It supersedes the earlier ECM Sleeves of Desire : a Cover Story, published in 1996 and no longer available. As with the previous volume it's Lars Müller who is responsible for the editing and publishing of the book. In a short essay, he explains how the book has been conceived as a visual score, punctuated by five short texts, challenging the reader through an idiosyncratic rhythm of CD covers, session pictures, double spread cover photos and a few stills from JL Godard movies. The final section of the book is devoted to a full catalogue, showing each and every of the more than 1000 covers produced over the years.

What becomes clear from browsing through these pages and trying to make sense of this giant visual puzzle, is that there is, yet again, no "system". There are covers with pictures, with abstract graphic work, with text. There is colour and there are grey tones. There are sharp pictures and there are blurry images. There doesn't seem to be a trick to bring us, listeners, systematically in the right mood to listen to a particular piece of music. Most often the connection with the music is obscure. What we see is often provocatively un-photographic. We see a lot of scenes from nature, but hardly any genuine landscapes. Urban settings return on ECM covers in many guises, but pictures of architecture or cities as a whole are far and few between. There are motto themes but visually they are distinctly minimalistic. We see great expanses of (most notably) water and sky. The subarctic north is very present in its mineral pureness. We see urban non-places, filled with shadows and fleeting silhouettes. There is snow, that strange and amorphous element that is able to poetically transform our lifeworld overnight. ECM covers seem to tickle our receptivity to the music by withdrawing rather than to make a statement. Sometimes there is only the faintest hint of what the image is about. It speaks of transience and fragility. "The contrast of light and darkness, of proximity and distance, of clear etched contours and fuzzy boundaries presents the visible world as a reduced form of a richer reality that remains - and has to remain - invisible" (Hilmar Frank on Caspar David Friedrich).

Resting probably on the success of Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM and knowing that ECM-followers are a devoted audience, Lars Müller leaves us with a somewhat lesser volume here. Yes, the poetic imagery is in each and every full CD cover size reproduced here from the ECM's Contemporary Music series, but keep in mind, a) this is a softcover edition of a book with 447 pages, and b) the words have gone mostly missing. Usually, one associates such economy of means and words with some advertising catalog.

Before rushing to 'punish' the review/author, bear in mind that I'm only keeping with the spirit of ECM, and it is ECM and ourselves that I'm trying to be of service.