What does it sound like?:
This release is volume 12 of the Private Parts and Pieces series, the first new addition to it since 2012’s City of Dreams. It’s a collection of 23 mostly short, sometimes all too short, mainly instrumental pieces accumulated over the years that drifts along in a rather pleasant way on a warm summer’s evening. While there’s just one song featuring vocals, the remainder, although often disparate in nature, meld together to form a cohesive overall musical mood. The highlight for me is the opening four part Wynchmore Hill Suite, which brought to mind Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge period. Sometimes one track does rather tend to blur into the next, but if you’re going to treat the album as one continuous piece that’s no bad thing really, although I wish some of the musical themes had been extended and explored a little further as they end just as they seem about to get going. An interesting laid back album full of inventive musical ideas that’s well worth investigating, although it does seem to run out of steam a bit in the latter stages.
What does it all *mean*?
Phillips is something of a cottage industry, putting out albums as and when it suits him with no outside pressure to deliver.
Goes well with…
Lazy summer days.
Release Date:
31 May
Might suit people who like…
Previous albums in this series.
Well, I’m the target market for this, for sure. Thanks for notifying. Your description could certainly apply to quite a few of his albums. The ‘themes could be explored a little further’ critique also applied to Penguin Cafe Orchestra, I always felt. Any cross-reference with Hergest Ridge is going to win me over.