"Travelling The Meadows of Englewood" - The new album by Anthony Phillips & Guillermo Cazenave. Review by Alan Hewitt.

Well, I really have got my reviewer's head on this time round! This album, "The Meadows Of Englewood" began life after a jam session between Ant and Guillermo which ended up as the title track on this album- all thirty six minutes of it!

There really is a great sense of fun about this project from some of the intriguing track titles; "Peggy In The Sky Without Diamonds", and "The Agent Mulder Never Resolves A Single Case" to name but two. However, musically the album has everything you would normally expect from an album by Anthony Phillips - beautiful music and two songs, although one of these is already known to fans as "Lucy: An Illusion", the other, "She'll Be Waiting". The former is different however, as it is live and the vocal performance is greatly improved.

The second song will also feature on the new "Private Parts & Pieces" album and is one of the best songs Ant has ever committed to record, in my opinion. "The Agent Mulder..." is a haunting piece of synthesiser music by Guillermo, worthy of the TV series from which it draws its character and which could have appeared on "Slow Waves, Soft Stars", and I cannot praise it higher than that!

"Sotilege" and "Picaresca" are the real musical heart of this album, the former being another beautiful keyboard piece accompanied by some superb guitar playing by Guillermo. "Picaresca" is another Ant classic; almost ten minutes of twelve string guitar improvisation which rates highly among those Anthony has created over the years.

Weighing in at over 74 minutes of music, there is something for everyone on this album and the overriding sense of pleasure that emanates from the music makes this a must for Phillips completists and lovers of good music. The album sadly is so far only available on the Spanish Astral record label.