MISSING LINKS, VOLUME 4 - PATHWAYS & PROMENADES

23 crystal clear tracks (which could easily be called "a disperse recollection of 23 music composition essays from different years", to be precise and understanding its context better), running for over 66 minutes and each one of these unique in their almost brief/ephemeral/airy personality. Freed from any kind of frivolous and unecessary decorations, over the top artificial climaxes nor artificial sound engineering tricks, What you see is what you get.

Anthony Phillips' Missing Links Vol. 4 (2009) if taken as an album in the Prog universe is up front, emotional and yes totally personal. The kind of work which could have been easily forgotten in a highly prolific composer's archives as unfinished works or probable future ones, that is evident even in its album title.

The music as such is all Anthony Phillips, he has established his idiom since The Geese And The Ghost (1977) and even though he kind of fitted in from day one in the, then in diapers, New Age labelling, these exctracts, essays or missing links have a closer to that tag intention and those same sonic results which will eventually permeate most of his later works.

As for rating it, well..., it travels smoothly from 1 to 3 (literal way of rating in this site's guidelines, not your guts!) stars. As for it going upwards or actually urging you as reviewer to get it right now, hardly. As for it to maybe become essential one day or better than other of his 4 stars works or someone else's ? No & no.

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