SLOW DANCE

• Which way the wind Blows The Geese and the Ghost, 1977

All my fellow prog colleagues reviewing this masterpiece are right on target! Firstly, Ant is one of the first and bravest prog artist, with a long history of daring attempts at breaking new ground, some succesful , some less so. From typical pastoral Brit Folk (The Geese & the Ghost") , the whimsical Brit Prog of "Wise" and "Sides" , the sci-fi Prog of "1984" and of course, the massive Private Parts anthology (containing piano only, 12 String only, Synth only, acoustic duets, solos etc..) , this shy, stagefright stricken, very English, cricket loving & ultimately charming prog icon has constantly kept true to his word of doing things his way. "Slowdance" cannot be compared to any of his previous work, simply because it's as close to real symphonic classical music as one could hope to hear in progland. Including orchestral arrangements has not always been a success because of the clash of egos between virtuoso "rockers" and a dedicated group of "serious" music professionals! Why this recording overcomes all the misconceptions is entirely due to Ant's dedication to compose a extensive piece of music that caters to HIS strenghts and HIS vision. Hence, his 12 string guitar stills is the baton wielding conductor, adding lush orchestrations, with glimpses of oboe & flutes , held together with astute use of different keyboards , including various synths which is most courageous under the circumstances. This is a 2 part melancholic suite with a central delicate melody, interweaving pastoral segments with appropriate grandeur where deemed necessary. Never overtly complex for the sheer sake of being "pro" , Ant prefers to keep things "prog" , in his own special way. Even though "Slowdance" is right on the edge of classical music, this nevertheless remains an album of inspired themes, grandiose playing and thorough enjoyment. Obviously, our more agressive progfans might not find this to be their cup of tea, they must realize that we are talking about Anthony Phillips and this is nor wallpaper music nor is it Dream Theater. This remains my favorite Sunday morning album of all time.

Send comments to tszirmay (BETA) | Report this review (#25988) | Review Permalink
Posted Saturday, March 05, 2005

Extremely underrated album. By listening to this album it comes as no surprise AP wrote a lot of stuff for TV programmes, some parts could be used for such purposes quite easily especially for nature documentaries. But I don't mean this in a bad way, although the instrumental music would improve by adding images to it, this is highly enjoyable on audio as well. There's not much Phillips albums I like to listen to from start to finish. Most of the albums of AP have some moments of brilliance but are failing in keeping my attention for all the time due to the lack of variety of instrumentation. But this is different. You can hear lots of classical instruments like oboe or harp, a string quartet, flutes and many layers of keyboards. Listening to this album I was wondering if this could be described as rock music in any possible way. Some parts are pure classical, other parts have electronic or new age tendencies but not much rhythm can be found on this album. Often the name of Mike Oldfield comes to mind but Slow Dance is a lot more soft. This is the kind of stuff which listeners can use to set their mind on ease and to dream. Like the title suggests, Slow Dance develops slowly from one mood to another on two sidelong tracks. Every now and then the delicate music swells to an impressive wall of symphonic sound but mostly this is soft and gentle stuff. Still the overall mood is melancholic. You shouldn't guess this is work of a guy who started his career as Genesis' first lead guitarist as the most dominant instrument is the keyboard. This album made a fan of me. Since then I kept on looking for another Phillips album that was on par with "Slow Dance but there really isn't one. "Tarka", "1984" and the two missing links albums show some similarities for the orchestrations and atmospheric sounds. The missing links albums are more fragmented as the several excerpt have no relation to each other. As you can expect "1984" was meant to be cold and sterile. On SD Phillips takes time for an organic, warm sound full of beautiful melodies. 25 minutes is a long time for an instrumental track, but I don't mind if the music is gripping all the time. Still can't believe this instrumental music doesn't bore me for one second ; quite an achievement. Some of the excerpts are suitable to be played on their own. Too bad you are unable to play these sections separately. Although being released in 1990, the sound of the album is timeless capturing many style elements which were used to create a romantic mood somewhat comparable to some of soundtracks of the seventies which were typical for that era. Sometimes these kind of romantic moods are too much for my liking. Still a great album anyway but you definitely have to be in a very quiet mood for this.

Send comments to Fishy (BETA) | Report this review (#35976) | Review Permalink
Posted Friday, June 10, 2005

Anthony Phillips has made many albuns since the eighties, featuring long instrumental songs covered with synthesizer sounds, beautiful acoustic and electric guitar passages and many other instruments. It is important to state that few rock elements are present in this album and those who do not like this kind of classical ambient music should avoid this work.

Slow Dance is another effort in this vein, an album with only one song of fifty minutes. The song is divided in distinct parts. The overall sound of the album is mellow, with beautiful synthesizer arrangements, mainly string synthesizers. The flute work is very beautiful too. The sound can be barely considered rock, being more a cross between classical and new age genres. The classical parts are the most beautiful parts of this album, drenched with synthesizers and strings.

In the second part there are some more electronic synthesizer passages with the use of sequencers. The sounds become closer to Tangerine Dream works from the 80's, which featured some electronic-sequenced riffs and semi-orchestral lead synths. These parts alternate with the classical-oriented ones and the new-age-oriented ones.

The overall sound of the album is very relaxing and it is certainly a great album to those who like this kind of music. This album is recommended to those prog fans.

Send comments to akin (BETA) | Report this review (#92132) | Review Permalink
Posted Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Well, I can't always give five stars rating. And again I'm going against the stream. When I've marked Beardfish's new album with five stars, two other reviewers gave it three. Not there's majority of five stars, but I'm gonna give it four. I mean there's nothing bad about it, right ?

Now to the album. As a lot of Anthony Phillip's work, it's very quiet. You can even use it as an Ambient Music (special term used by me, sometimes), but that would be waste. This thing has one thing that I appreciate a lot. And I'm not afraid to call it Melody. By the way, I'm probably gonna not use track-to-track style (heh) here. Music here is nice, slow (dance) and pleasant. You're going to love it. Did this first part of first track just ended after five minutes, or is it continuing ? In these collected songs (which are long) is it always hard to tell (for me). It's different rhytm, using other instruments, but something here is similar. Well, everything here is similar to everything elsewhere here, because of theme of this record, but I mean ... yes, this should be one themed track. Even I didn't realise that songs has changed from part 1 to part 2 on a first spin. ENDing now. Nice synth work (or I'm confused and it's real orchestra). Recommended.

Send comments to Marty McFly (BETA) | Report this review (#229493) | Review Permalink
Posted Sunday, August 02, 2009

A rare example of perfection within the confines of an album suite, 'Slow Dance' is the 'Thick As A Brick" of ambient-oriented progressive music, a must own pair of movements that touches everything from pastoral classicism to infectious worldly beat to electronics and back again, creating a feel ... (read more)

Report this review (#251958) | Posted by Anteater | Friday, November 20, 2009 | Review Permanlink

Sublime quality in every way, Slowdance is phonically superior over almost 90% of all music in the history of mankind. Being ultra romantic without being lame, Ant Phillips created this piece of art that flows effortlessly over 50 minutes and after listening session, it only leaves a huge impr ... (read more)

Report this review (#247407) | Posted by Jadittir | Saturday, October 31, 2009 | Review Permanlink

8.8/10 Great Slow Dance is full of shockingly good melodies and mixes various moods into an overall very nice, melodic experience. The entire album may have reached masterpiece status had Ant picked the right use of intrumentation, especially synths. There are moments in this song that sti ... (read more)

Report this review (#144344) | Posted by The Lost Chord | Saturday, October 13, 2007 | Review Permanlink

A bona fide Prog masterpiece!!! They don't get much bigger than this. Very few musicians have even attempted to pull off something this grand. Fewer, still, have succeeded. Well, let's call this a brilliant success. From the opening chords, to the final etherial escape, this CD will keep you r ... (read more)

Report this review (#84003) | Posted by Mcgraster | Monday, July 17, 2006 | Review Permanlink

I can't really add much to what has already been said by previous reviewers of this CD. Everyone loves it! All I can say is, to those of you who have not heard this magnum opus, you don't know what you're missing! Unlike many virtuosos, who write music that showcases their particular talent, e ... (read more)

Report this review (#72067) | Posted by | Thursday, March 16, 2006 | Review Permanlink

I listened to this again this morning, just to be sure that I wasn't hallucinating. Nope - I'm not! This is, to be sure, one of the finest syth/orchestral tracks out there. It's 50 minutes of awesome, melodic sounds. Woven together by layers of sound, booming basses and lilting piccolo's keep ... (read more)

Report this review (#71891) | Posted by | Tuesday, March 14, 2006 | Review Permanlink

At almost 15 yrs old, this CD is beginning to show signs of age. Since most of the music is synth driven, the present-day listener will be able to detect some "retro" sounds coming from ANT's stack of keyboards as technology has improved so much since 1991. That said, the music itself continue ... (read more)

Report this review (#50415) | Posted by | Friday, October 07, 2005 | Review Permanlink

This is Anthony Phillips' best album. But I'm not grading this on a curve. This piece deserves 5 stars. It stands up against any other ***** work on this site. This is a complete album. No vocals here, very classical in nature, it's grand, and sweeping. Every time I play this album for other ... (read more)

Report this review (#42712) | Posted by | Saturday, August 13, 2005 | Review Permanlink

I'm, torn between giving this a 4 which I think it deserves and a 5 just to help bring it wider attention which it very much deserves. If anyone heard Geese and wants Ant's other best and most consistant work this is the one. The first part is absolutely beautiful and has definite greatness as ... (read more)

Report this review (#25989) | Posted by | Monday, April 11, 2005 | Review Permanlink

It is impossible not to like this album - especially if you like symphonic music, Vangelis, The Enid and suchlike. However it is not a typical Anthony Phillips album - there is more Classical music influence here than in his classics like The Geese And The Ghost, Wise After The Event, Private ... (read more)

Report this review (#25987) | Posted by EMinkovitch | Tuesday, February 22, 2005 | Review Permanlink

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this album hasn't gotten more traction. It's brilliant. I read one review of this album somewhere that concluded with "Watch your back Mike Oldfield!" - he wasn't kidding. SLOW DANCE is such a monumental piece of music, it's got to be listened to!!! W ... (read more)

Report this review (#25986) | Posted by | Friday, February 11, 2005 | Review Permanlink

This is the one of three PERFECT Anthony Phillips albums (The Geese and the Ghost, and Antiques being the other two). A totally instrumental album, Ant draws on all his best stuff, save his solo piano playing. Divided into 2 parts, the album thunders and whispers, it exhilarates and saddens. T ... (read more)

Report this review (#25985) | Posted by | Thursday, December 16, 2004 | Review Permanlink

This album is one of Ant's very best. The music is soundtrack-like, like it's predecessor Tarka (Tarka was actually meant to be a soundtrack). There's no singing on it: the music is a mix between electronic instruments (synthesizers) and acoustic instruments like oboe, trumpet and harp. A mix ... (read more)

Report this review (#25984) | Posted by Moogtron III | Thursday, August 05, 2004 | Review Permanlink

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