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| A l b u m D e t a i l s |
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Label: | EMI Records |
| Released: | 1984.02.01 | |
| Time: |
45:18 |
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| Category: | Pop/Rock | |
| Producer(s): | See Artists ... | |
| Rating: | ********.. (8/10) | |
| Media type: | CD |
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| Web address: | www.davidgilmour.com | |
| Appears with: | Pink Floyd | |
| Purchase date: | 2001.05.28 | |
| Price in €: | 13,08 | |
| S o n g s , T r a c k s |
| A r t i s t s , P e r s o n n e l |
| C o m m e n t s , N o t e s |
2006 CD Columbia 80280
2006 LP EMI 355695
2006 CD EMI 3556952
Gilmour's first new solo album since 1984's experimental About Face sees the Pink Floyd frontman return to the style of his 1978 debut, which is more in keeping with the classic Pink Floyd sound. Gilmour's trademark slow-tempo delivery is thankfully intact and his voice is on fine form throughout. The songs are largely excellent, particularly the title track and the intoxicating "Take A Breath".
David Gilmour’s solo career hasn’t exactly been creatively restless; this is but the third album by the Pink Floyd guitarist, and first in 18 years. But that seemingly lackadaisical career ethos hasn’t prevented Gilmour from producing some of his finest work here, an album whose soaring, lyrical guitar lines will be familiar to Floyd fans, yet one also blessed by often surprising nuances and delicate musical textures. Gilmour’s Division Bell collaborator Polly Samson is credited with most of the writing, helping conjure a moody, texturally rich "island" that’s as much musical as it is personally and lyrically metaphorical. "Castellorizon," the impressionistic opening instrumental collage, presages much of what’s to come in subtle ways, with Gilmour’s emotionally-charged guitar lines climbing into realms usually staked out by contemporary Jeff Beck.
Gilmour’s choice of collaborators is equally compelling, from the evocative orchestrations of Polish classical modernist Zbigniew Preisner and expected contributions from Floyd (Richard Wright and proto-Pink mate Rado "Bob" Klose) to a host of guest turns that span both decades and styles: Georgie Fame, Phil Manzanera, Jools Holland, Caroline Dale and Robert Wyatt. The title track is graced by the stately harmonies of David Crosby and Graham Nash while the instrumental "Then I Close My Eyes" spins a hypnotic, bayou-meets-boho ethos where Dale’s gentle cello lines meet the melancholy cornet flourishes of Wyatt to challenge the very notions of genre itself. "This Heaven" finds Gilmour in unexpected R&B territory, weaving playful riffs with ‘60s London scenester Fame’s Hammond organ and finding its lyrical spirituality in simple, personal intimacy, a subtext that wafts through the upbeat airiness of "The Blue" to the spare "Smile," spinning a surprisingly romantic elegy that co! mes satisfyingly full circle on the closing "Where We Start." No man may be an island, but Gilmour has nonetheless crafted a rewarding artistic oasis on this, his finest and most gently personal album.
Jerry McCulley - Amazon.com
Das Warten hat sich gelohnt. David Gilmour legt mit seinem dritten Soloalbum On An Island zugleich ein ebenbürtiges Pink-Floyd-Album vor, auf das wir nach The Division Bell aus dem Jahr 1994 sicher noch länger vergeblich hoffen.
Der Ex-Pink-Floyd-Gitarrist und -Sänger hat sich 22 Jahre für seinen dritten Streich Zeit gelassen, und dafür ein unverkrampftes, entspanntes, überwiegend ruhiges Werk eingespielt. Gilmours Ehefrau, die Autorin Polly Samson verfasste mit ihn die verträumten Texte. Viele Gastmusiker waren beteiligt, alte Weggefährten wie der Ur-Gitarrist der Pink Floyd, Rado ‚Bob‘ Klose, Keyboarder Richard Wright, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Georgie Fame und Ex-Roxy-Musik Phil Manzanera, der auch als Coproduzent fungierte. Und trotz der Orchesterpassagen dominieren Gilmours lyrisches Gitarrenspiel und Gesang, die allen zehn Songs den unverwechselbaren Pink-Floyd-Sound verleihen.
Absolute Höhepunkte sind die eher verhaltene, sparsam arrangierte Ballade „Smile“, die in Ruhe ihre Schönheit entfaltet und der hymnisch angelegte Titelsong. Zwischen meditativ aufgebauten Kompositionen wie „The Blue“ und „A Pocketful Of Stones“ hat er den erdigen Blues „This Heaven“ und den Rocker „Take A Breath“ gestreut. Die wohldosierte Ausgewogenheit ohne Bombast und künstlicher Aufgeregtheit ist hohe Kunst und tut gut. Ein rundes Album und rundum gelungen.
Ingeborg Schober - Amazon.de
Als David "Ich war Pink Floyd"-Gilmour alt zu werden muss ein hartes Los sein. Wir stellen uns das ungefähr so vor: Riesiger Landsitz, Sonntagnachmittag. Gilmour hat Besuch von seinem Enkelkind. Kaffee und Kuchen. Enkelkind: "Opa,Opa, erzähl mir vom Krieg!" Gilmour: "Ach, der Krieg! Ich erzähl dir was Besseres! Ich war bei Pink Floyd!" Enkelkind: "Och nee,Opa, nicht die Geschichte schon wieder!" Gilmour: "Okay, also damals, 1914, als der Erste Weltkrieg ausbrach, gab es Pink Floyd schon seit 23 Jahren. Wir füllten die größten Hallen, und Roger Waters trug immer meinen Gitarrenkoffer..." Enkelkind: "Opa, nicht flunkern!" Gilmour: "Jedenfalls, noch während des Ersten Weltkrieges hatte ich ein paar großartige Ideen zu einem tollen Soloalbum, das ich gerade fertig gestellt habe." (Er geht zur Stereoanlage. Es ertönen Sphärenklänge, Keyboardgewaber, irgendwann Gilmours Gitarre.) Enkelkind, die Augen verdrehend: "Das ist so langweilig, Opa!" Gilmour, verzückt zur in der Tat todlangweiligen Musik Luftgitarre spielend: "Diiieee-diiiee-dell-diiiee!" Enkelkind: "Chhrrrrrrr!" Gilmour: "Nanu!? Einfach eingeschlafen!" -- Tobias Schmitz
stern
The title of David Gilmour’s third solo album may be some clue as to his whereabouts since Pink Floyd’s swansong The Division Bell. That period of near-silence has now given way to a flurry of solo touring and glorious charitable reunions, which are enough to make you forget it’s been over a decade since we last heard anything new from the band or its remaining members. All this has changed now with the arrival of On An Island.
Immaculately crafted with sundry high-profile guests, the album rolls along gently, only cutting loose on "Take A Breath" (reminiscent of "Yet Another Movie"). Lyrically, don’t expect any Floydian angst here; Polly Samson’s words are dominated by familial contentment and emotional warmth. This may understandably jar with the expected lyrical subjects, but it adds another facet to Gilmour’s persona. Musically, all of the trademark soaring mercurial guitars and crashing epics are in place, and there are moments of pure Floyd on the title track and "The Blue" both of which feature Richard Wright. These two tracks are the standouts, alongside the gentle "Smile", and rank among Gilmour’s best work, and help make this album as essential as anything from his former band’s catalogue.
Thom Allott - Amazon.co.uk
To think that David Gilmour waited 22 years to record his third solo album is a pretty solid indicator that he's not the kind of bloke to merely cash in on his name. After all, he's the guy who sold his house for four million English pounds and gave the money to charity. Perhaps now that the Pink Floyd reunion happened and he and Roger Waters are at least civil to one another, the Floyd enigma can finally find its way into the annals of history and rock legend. Of course, this brings listeners to On an Island. Those wanting something edgy and dramatic will have to wait. Some of the more misanthropic Floyd heads (and there are many) will give voice to their ire that he's written six of these ten tunes with his wife, Polly Samson, who also plays a bit of piano and sings here. You can hear them now -- "She's the new Yoko Ono!" -- at which point the pair will rightfully smile, quietly and bemusedly. Musically, On an Island is mostly a laid-back, utterly elegant English record. It has the feel of taking place between twilight and dawn. There are a few rumblers here to upset the balance of tranquility and stillness, like flashes of heat lightning across the dark skies, but they only add dimension to these proceedings. Produced by Gilmour, Phil Manzanera (who appears on keyboards a lot), and Chris Thomas, the album features guest spots from the likes of Richard Wright, Robert Wyatt, B.J. Cole, Floyd/Sly Stone drummer Andy Newmark, Georgie Fame, David Crosby and Graham Nash, Jools Holland, Willie Wilson, and many others.
The set opens with "Castellorizon," a moody showcase with Gilmour's guitars backed by the orchestral arrangements of Zbigniew Preisner as conducted by Robert Zeigler. Preisner's arrangements throughout are wonderful and not quite as dark as one might expect, given his track record. Atmospheric and dramatic, it offers a lovely if off impression of the album. The title track, which follows, is all breezy strummed chords, keyboards by Wright, and dreamy vocals with Gilmour backed by Crosby and Nash. It's a slow, textured, and spacy love song. "The Blue" follows suit; it too is so utterly full of air that one can hear the wind rustling through the palms. Wright's backing vocals lend a slight PF "Echoes" slant (as does the Hammond organ); the instrumentation just shimmers, hovers, and floats the track along. There are rockers here, though -- "Take a Breath" features chunky razor-wire chords, Leszek Mozdzer's piano, and Manzanera's synth work winding around one another, and the mood is wonderfully plodding, dramatic, and futuristically "heavy." On the gauzy wee-hours instrumental "Red Sky at Night," Gilmour plays sax as well as guitars, and it gives way to "This Heaven," a bluesy stroller that's given deluxe organ treatment by Fame. There's a delightfully nocturnal feel that makes the track feel a bit sinister, but really it's the sound of eros making itself heard, and Gilmour contributes a biting solo and fills amid the drum samples and strings. Wyatt appears on the back-porch spacehead soundtrack-like tripnotica of "Then I Close My Eyes." His and Gilmour's wordless voices slip under and around the considerable space between instruments -- which include Wyatt on cornet and percussion as well as Cole playing a Weissenborn guitar, Caroline Dale's cello, a pair of harmonicas, and of course Gilmour's high-register blues twang. The set ends on a gentle note in "Where We Start" -- so much so that it may make some scratch their heads and wonder where the cranky, diffident Gilmour has wandered off to, but others will be drawn into this seductive, romantic new place where musical subtlety, spacious textures, and quietly lyrical optimism hold sway.
Thom Jurek - All Music Guide
Given the fact that he's always operated in a sort of vacuum, it's not surprising that David Gilmour would take more than two decades between solo albums, but this disc -- his first since 1984's About Face -- is as timeless and distinctive as anything the Pink Floyd guitarist has ever done. Gilmour challenges himself (and his listeners) in a number of ways here, beginning with the Byzantine structures of the angular opener, "Castellorizon," on which he weaves some of his more passionate leads into a multi-instrumental mesh crafted by Polly Samson (his chief collaborator on The Division Bell). Unlike Gilmour's more conceptually driven works, On an Island draws from a number of musical streams, ranging from the leisurely jazziness of "Then I Close My Eyes" to the warm, surprisingly feisty soul vibe of "This Heaven" (on which longtime Van Morrison sideman Georgie Fame's Hammond organ is the primary flavoring). Gilmour calls upon a number of stellar guest stars -- David Crosby and Graham Nash harmonize beautifully on the title track, while Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner adds orchestrations that enhance the drama of several tunes, notably "Where We Start" -- but it's always clear whose hands are on the controls. Gilmour doesn't grip them too tightly, however, so this Island journey remains bucolic from beginning to end.
David Sprague- Barnes & Noble
The men of Pink Floyd have always taken their time, turning out stately epics at a less than hectic clip. Accordingly, 22 years separate ON AN ISLAND from ABOUT FACE, the previous solo album by Floyd axeman/singer David Gilmour. On the latter, Gilmour was still trying to distance his own sound from Floyd's, but with that band mostly a memory in 2006, he was free to honor its legacy, much as Paul McCartney's later albums acknowledged the Beatles' work. The template for ON AN ISLAND seems to be tracks like "Breathe" from DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. The mood is an overwhelmingly mellow, spacious one, with Gilmour's trademark double-tracked vocals and plangent, liquid guitar tones flowing gracefully across almost exclusively slow-to-mid-tempo arrangements. But with Roger Waters missing from the equation, there's a notable lack of misanthropy in Gilmore's lyrical sentiments. The themes are more in keeping with the life of a fabulously wealthy elder statesman of British rock: placidly philosophical, with a luxurious air that finds its parallel in the elegant layers of guitar and keyboard lines that color the album in shimmering pastel shades. DVD Features: Track List Royal Albert Hall, London, May 2006 1. Take A Breath - Live Abbey Road Session, August 2006 2. Astronomy Domine New York Session, April 2006 3. On An Island 4. This Heaven 5. Smile 6. Take A Breath 7. High Bopes 8. Comfortably Numb.
CD-Universe
When Pink Floyd played Live 8 last summer, it was the band's first
appearance in more than two decades with Roger Waters, who masterminded
Floyd classics like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. That show
briefly rekindled hopes for a new album from the reunited lineup, but
fans will have to settle instead for On an Island, the third solo album
-- and the first studio recordings in twelve years -- from Floyd
singer-guitarist David Gilmour, who became the group's de facto leader
when Waters split in 1985.
On an Island suffers from the tendencies that plague all of Floyd's post-Waters works: It's a crawling headphones record that puts germs of ideas -- leaden riffs, astral soundscapes, hazy psychedelia -- where fully realized songs ought to go. To its credit, it's more inviting than the band's last two studio albums, 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason and 1994's song-doctored The Division Bell. Where those records mixed slick adult rock, heavy atmospherics and stodgy ruminations on interpersonal miscommunication and the fall of communism, Island merely feels like the night thoughts of a studio pro. Also, it's warmer: Slow-burners like "The Blue" are bong-ready reveries full of art-house orchestrations and impressionistic patter about moonlight and rippling water. Two sturdy rockers -- "Take a Breath" and the slyly catchy "This Heaven" -- show off Gilmour's still-vital, melodically fluid guitar work, but it's telling that one of On an Island's most arresting moments is also its simplest: the acoustic charmer "Smile," one of the rare songs free of interstellar murk and the omnipresent vocal reverb. The same isn't true of the title track, on which David Crosby and Graham Nash's supporting harmonies are processed into oblivion. Gilmour sounds like his own man here, but you wish he had someone -- anyone -- to push him beyond these new adventures in tedium.
CHRISTIAN HOARD (Posted: Apr 12, 2006) - Rolling Stones
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