Twilight 22 - Biography
By Eric Brightwell
Twilight 22 were an electro group in the early 1980s. The project were led by Gordon Bahary, a gifted musician who’d previously played with Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hankcock. After a couple of hits and one album, they disbanded.
At just sixteen, Long Island native Joshua Gordon Bahary sat in on the recording of Stevie Wonder’s 1976 landmark, Songs in the Key of Life. Wonder was impressed with Bahary and as a result, he was one of three sequencer and synthesizers on Wonder’s ambitious Journey through the Secret Life of Plants. He also programmed sequencers and played synthesizers on Herbie Hancock’s Feets Don't Fail Me Now. Through Hancock he met Gordon met a singer named Joseph Saulter. As a drummer Saulter had made a bid for Motown with his Los Angeles based band, Rhythm Ignition. Saulter and Gordon’s next act was together as the electro act, Twilight 22.
In 1983, the group (bolstered by a trio of backing vocalists) unleashed their first single, “Electric Kingdom.” With Bahary’s high level of technical proficiency, the single stood out from many other electro singles both on account of its relatively bleak tone and ostentation keyboard playing. “In the Spirit” and the dynamic, kettle drum-employing “Siberian Nights” followed. During the same period, the duo released “The Dark Side,” which sounded rather like Herbie Hancock’s “RockIt” or Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F.” All were classics as was the full-length, Twilight 22 (1984-Vanguard Records). Unlike most of the peers, not every song was electro, such as the funky R&B jam, “Mysterious” or the jazzy “In the Night.” Despite the promise and success, Twilight 22 split up shortly after the album’s release. As with electro acts like Cybotron and Afrika Bambaataa, Twilight 22’s “Siberian Nights” was resurrected as a sample in a popular bass song, in their cast Tag Team’s hit, “Whoomp There It Is.”
Saulter went into stage acting and the video game industry, co-founding The Urban Video Game Academy. He’s currently the President of the DeKalb Council of the Arts, CEO of Entertainment Arts Research, Chairman of the Diversity Advisory Board at the International Game Developers Association and a member of the faculty at the Art Institute of Atlanta. He also continues playing music, returning to drums in a jazz act. He’s currently working on a solo record entitled Unbreakable. Bahary has also remained active in music; in 1993, he engineered, produced and played on former Cosby Show child star Raven-Symoné’s Here’s to New Dreams. In 1996, he released a New Age syntheziser album, Genesis: The Creation of the Earth (Electric Kingdom Records).
