PRIVATE PARTS & PIECES VII - SLOW WAVES, SOFT STARS

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the rating on this album is so low on this website. Despite running with it to an extent in the US, Ant has always rejected the New Age-label to his music, and I can see why. The whole purpose of New Age music is to remain in one place, to make you relax or be spiritual where you are, to literally not "move" it's listener. This album doesn't do that at all, but you have to be really attentive as a listener to discover it's moving beauty.

There has always been a debate about what the word "progressive" means in "progressive rock". Some have said it was about breaking boundaries between music, to be experimental, to usher on the development of rock as an artform, and in all this "progressive rock" is in juxtaposition to an imaginary "regressive rock". Genesis - the hive from which Anthony Phillips as a solo artist emerges - have mostly used another kind of definition, one less grand, and more descriptive of the thing that actually occurs within the music, that made it different, at least from Genesis' point of view. It's this: progressive rock is music that progresses, that goes from one thing to the next, and doesn't - or at least tries not to - go back and forth between repeating verses and choruses. Genesis has always sought to maximize contrast in going from one sequence to the next. Tony Banks always gives the famous example of the 'A Flower?' moment in 'Supper's Ready', in between the softly romantic 'How Dare I Be So Beautiful?' and the ugly vaudeville 'Willow Farm'. Peter Gabriel described the form Genesis found on Trespass as 'journey songs'.

'Slow Waves, Soft Stars' doesn't leave it's listener in one place, no, it takes the listener on a journey. The playing is sparse. It is not just 'beautiful', as the synth sounds Phillips do have a kind of - for lack of a better word - cheap quality about them. Anthony Phillips clearly is no Klaus Schulze, no Vangelis, no Florian Fricke, no Tony Banks even (although Tony has lost his way soundwise - not compositionally - with the advent of digital synths) and the synths he uses probably sound cheap because they are: as his former bandmates were raking in millions, Phillips was merely trying to survive in the 80s. But as happens on that other Phillips synth-album '1984', his utter quality as a composer shines through in what he DOES with these cheap synths. With them, and by composing great music, Phillips is able to weave a web in which the listener can go on a journey, going from one bit to the next. Contrasts are not stark as in Genesis music, but smooth, small, sometimes hardly noticable, but they are there. It's like Peter Gabriel sings in 'it': 'it never stays in one place, but it's not a passing phase'. You're there, and you remain there - yes, that's the new age thing - but then at the same time you're taken to all kinds of other places.

Is there no contrast? Yes, there is! Because right in the middle, just when you've gotten used to the mechanical coldness of the synth sounds (this is also a contrast: the beautiful warm chords played with the cold synths), Phillips puts them aside completely and plays some utterly beautiful acoustic guitar pieces. This is the warm core of this album, right in the middle, as he leaves this section again at the end to return to where he started to round the album off, making this one one of Phillips' most consistent compositions from his career.

So yeah, safe to say this is one of my favourite Anthony Phillips albums, and I love a lot of his output. It's an acquired taste, as it won't necessarily please Genesis fans, nor will it please the electronic music-aficionado's, nor New Age lovers, nor acoustic guitar-lovers. But whomever is able to dive into it, accept it for what it is, and give oneself over to it, will count it among the great masterpieces from the fringes of the progressive movement.