“Endlessly moving, always alive” no better words can describe this album than Windsor Riley’s own. There’s no way around it, The Move Of Life sounds lame on paper. A late ‘80s release, on another nameless record label, trying to peddle harmless instrumental music that would be at home on the Weather Channel or your local dentist office, should fall intents and purposes be that: innocuous musak. However, I wouldn’t be writing about it if Windsor Riley if he didn’t nail something special here. A twisty, dance-oriented collection of light leftfield New Age, fusion, and minimalism, The Move Of Life achieves a contemporary all-encompassing “Balearic” feeling without ever aiming for it.
Like many nameless artists you’ve seen tucked away in your local thrift shop’s used CD audio bin, complete with generic cover aesthetics, the roster of San Rafael, California’s Music West label doesn’t exactly scream: “I gotta have this!”. I imagine we’ve heard some of the songs on the label soundtracking newscasts, lite FM swithovers, and movie hall entrances, but I also imagine these are the “good” songs we’ve heard that we’ve surprisingly caught ourselves grooving to. It’s obvious once you hear Windsor Riley’s sole release on the label, and anywhere else, that he captures that next level work that some labels were trying to do.
Music West seemed to traffic in a term I’ve heard some record collectors use sparingly: “New Music”. New music, was a genre that wasn’t quite New Age, nor was it jazz, or musak. Blessed with many highly skilled music professionals, it was the genre where the misfits of music — who probably had their own home studio, small collection of synths, samplers, and drum machines — tucked away their personally inspiring compositions that couldn’t easily fit the stratified radio world of Rock, Pop, jazz, and urban music. Slightly nerdy, a bit mannered, it’s a genre with few creators. Much like Coste Apetrea’s own vaporous music, Windsor Riley appears to be steeped in it and knew what’s important to cultivate within.
Windsor Riley notes in his album that creating The Move Of Life was a means to present the “spontaneous synthesis of many types of music [he] grew up with since the 60’s — new music that expresses life energy in a simple, non-problematic form” to simply make music that was enjoyable and uplifting. That in a nutshell was basically the treatise of Music West: to make music that makes a positive connection with the listener. It all sounds a bit clinical, a bit dated, and a bit smooth but it’s obvious there is some care behind the making of it.
The leftfield blend of deep electronics and what sounds like Afro-Caribbean dance music on The Move Of Life’s “Endlessly Moving, Always Alive” could quietly slot it alongside someone’s daring minimal techno playlist. “The Desert Animal” takes a weightless proggy intro into Las Islas De Majorca, transforming very smoothly into a Balearic stormer out of the blue. The really personal touches come when Windsor somehow decides to create a echoey, dub rework of that whole first half to bridge it to its end, forcing you to rethink how something so light can have this deep heaviness to it, as well.
The latter half of The Move Of Life seems to grow into accepting its more danceable elements and creates this delightfully intriguing blend of very light boogie, New Age, and smooth jazz. The title track’s corny components are corny but, a huge BUT, Windsor Riley’s taste level is obviously high, and what shouldn’t work does because the arrangements harken back to some of the best post-disco of a nearer era. What’s there to say about a song like “A World More Light”? Baffo Banfi fans might find something precious here. It’s all of of the same lineage, nerdy musicians geeking out, creating the dance music of their dreams, on they probably never thought they’d have a chance to dance to themselves. Though, what makes this album special is that there are all these other bits of “lame” music that they obviously enjoy listening to actually getting reworked into this, new other something that, somehow, sounds as contemporary and (dare I say it) better than some of the stuff we hear being pimped out.
If you can still find it in your cutout bin, Windsor Riley’s The Move Of Life is well worth your change.