Anthony Phillips
Gypsy Suite

THE REVIEW

Dutifully, I complete the review of this "composite" album by Anthony Phillips, whose second part combines, for evidently commercial reasons, the first two movements of "Tarka," an album I have already fully reviewed and which was also born from the collaboration with the guitarist and composer Harry Williamson. Commercial reasons truly incomprehensible for the hacking of a masterpiece (unified) like "Tarka, mah.

Coming to Gypsy Suite, released in 1995 but composed several years earlier—twenty, according to their biographers, I am certain it will greatly please guitar lovers in all its forms, well developed here and especially in the first movement "First Light" which will moderately remind one of the early Genesis, a band Anthony founded at the dawn of the mythical '70s.

The other movements are all a shining demonstration of the undoubted qualities of the two masters, especially "The Crystal Ball," perhaps the most successful track of the batch, where Anthony takes up the 12-string guitar while Williamson settles for the 6-string: the combination, devoid of further musical embellishments, is truly effective and rhythmically invaluable.

I stop here, also because I write about a mere thirty minutes of substantially homogeneous compositions aimed at a limited, yet refined and directed audience.