SANCTUARY LIVE

Following on from the success of the two 'Sanctuary' albums, a decision was made to bring a band together to perform both albums in their entirety and to record that for posterity. The event took place on October 8th 2016 at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, and it was then released as a CD/DVD set. There was no way that Rob could provide all the instrumentation, so brought in friends to help out, including Chris Fry, Martin Shellard, Dan Nelson, Jiffy Griffiths, Tim Lewis, Nigel Hopkins, Simon Brittlebank, Angharad Brinn, Christina Booth, Fran Murphy, Lorraine King and Ffion Wilkins. Now, this is music to be taken in and enjoyed, so although there is audience noise between the songs, everyone is calm and collected during the performances themselves. That everyone does a great job, nailing all their parts so that it comes across as very close to the original studio versions comes as no surprise, so it only leads to the question "so what was the point?".

But, the point of this was showing that music isn't just a studio creation but can be taken out and performed. True, that does mean having quite a few guitarists all playing at the same time at certain points, but I don't really have a problem with it when the music is as solid and strong as it is here. Oldfield also has to surround himself with musicians when he tours just because there are so many layers, and that same is true with Rob Reed. That he isn't spoken about in the same context apart from those in the know is nothing short of sacrilege, as I have enjoyed this and Robert's other albums just as much, if not more, than many of those by Oldfield. Plus any album that has Christina singing on it will always be something to relish. Yet another truly glorious album from the Welshman.