- -- Release information ----------------------------------------------- -- -
Artist : Fish
Album : Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors
Genre : Rock
Year : 1990
Label : EMI
Cat# : 7 93634 1
Source : Vinyl
Bitrate : VBRKbps
Size : 80,1 MB
Runtime : 45:56 min
URL : n/a
- -- Tracklist -------------------------------------------------------- -- -
01. Vigil 08:44
02. Big Wedge 05:19
03. State of Mind 04:42
04. The Company 04:06
05. A Gentelman's Excuse Me 04:15
06. Family Business 05:13
07. View From the Hill 06:37
08. Cliche 07:00
- -- Release notes ---------------------------------------------------- -- -
Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors (1990) was the first solo
album that rock singer Fish released after he departed
Marillion in 1988. Although the recordings for this album
finished as early as June 1989, EMI Records decided to delay
the release until early 1990, to avoid collision with
Marillion's album Seasons End (September 1989). However, the
track "State of Mind" was released as a single as early as 16
October 1989, more than three months ahead of the album.
Further singles from the album were "Big Wedge" (the actual
lead single, 27 December 1989), "A Gentleman's Excuse Me" (5
March 1990) and "The Company" (18 July 1990, only released in
Germany).
The album was recorded at Townhouse Studios, London, during
the first half of 1989, and produced by Jon Kelly.
The cover art was by Mark Wilkinson, who had illustrated all
Marillion albums and singles while Fish was their singer and
went on to design almost all Fish solo covers. The front
cover features a close-up from a larger, very detailed
painting/collage inside the gatefold LP cover and the CD
booklet. The painting contains many references to the lyrics,
political allusions as well as "hidden" messages only
understandable to fans (such as the faces of Marillion's
keyboarder Mark Kelly and manager John Arnison). The central
element is a "hill" consisting of junk consumer goods in a
post-apocalyptic landscape, on top of which a couple clad in
pseudo-oriental clothes stare into the distance, holding an
hourglass. The man's cape, flapping in the wind, resembles
the east of Scotland, with the Southern Uplands (Fish's home
region) lit by light beams apparently emitted by the
hourglass û a reference to Fish's interest in Scottish
culture. Only the couple and the top of the hill are on the
front cover. The TV sets and the Amiga 500 computer set the
couple is standing on show pictures of Fish's face; on the
larger version inside, these are replaced with faces from
Ingres's painting The Golden Age.
The album is not a concept album, however, several of the
songs refer to "the hill" û a metaphor for greed and
consumerism. The songs deal with the themes that Fish has
always been passionate about û personal and social politics û
but in single-song format. "State of Mind" and "Big Wedge"
stand out as the most overtly political songs: "State of
Mind" strongly articulates the growing civic disillusionment
in the late Thatcher years, "Big Wedge" is an explicit
criticism of capitalist greed, American society and policies
(the cover of the single features Uncle Sam offering a wedge
of dollar bills to the viewer). Incidentally, the lyric had
earlier been vetoed by Marillion as "anti-American", they
feared it might have hampered their entry into the U.S.
market with the next album.[citation needed] Other songs
express a more general disgust with materialism ("Vigil",
"View From The Hill" and "The Company", the last of which is
also a coded account of Fish's disillusionment with and
departure from Marillion). "Family Business" refers to
domestic violence, the bonus track "The Voyeur (I Like To
Watch)" to TV voyeurism. Finally, "A Gentleman's Excuse Me"
and "ClichΘ" are love songs.
The phrase "wilderness of mirrors" is originally from T. S.
Eliot's poem Gerontion, but has since become a widely used
metaphor for disinformation in spy fiction, where Fish picked
it up.
A number of the lyrical concepts on the album (most
particularly, the Voice In the Crowd motif) can be heard in
Marillion demo sessions released on the 1999 remaster of
Clutching at Straws. These sessions were part of the writing
process for Marillion's fifth studio album with Fish, which
never came to fruition. Many of the musical ideas developed
on those demos can be heard on Seasons End, the first
Marillion album with Steve Hogarth.
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