ANTHONY PHILLIPS

Archive Collections Volumes 1 & 2 ESOTERIC Genesis founder’s box set of remastered, rare, and unreleased songs.

So quiet, unassuming, and gentlemanly is Anthony Phillips (and with a sense of humour that would delight most eight-year-olds and Goons fans alike), it’s easy to take for granted the fact that the guitarist has a lifetime of music to enjoy beyond the two albums he made as a teenager with Genesis.

This latest instalment in the ongoing reissue campaign of original Phillips albums and archival material gathers together the two Archive Collection volumes, originally released in 1998 and 2004, unearths so many layers of demos, alternative takes and the neverbefore-released The Masquerade Tapes, that it should garner its own true crime podcast (that same forensic approach extends to the liner notes and essay by noted Phillips archivist Jon Dann).

While those who bought the original Archive Collection volumes may well bridle at dipping into their pockets for a collection of reissued and remastered demos and offcuts, they will surely be assuaged by the presence of the aforementioned The Masquerade Tapes, an album almost lost to the ages, much like the treasure at the heart of Masquerade, the iconic ilustrated Kit Williams book that inspired it.

There’s an intriguing backstory to the latter record. It was conceived by producer Rupert Hine as a vehicle to transpose the book into a piece of musical theatre with the help of Phillips (Hine hoped that the end result may have starred Kate Bush when it eventually hit the West End). The theatrical aspect came to naught, though the songs show what it could have been. Mostly piano based, it’s a curious blend that’s both enthralling (the excellent piano piece that is All Horrors Of The Night and the thrilling guitar playing of Penny Pockets, which is peak Phillips) and the less easy to like songs like Yellow Carpet, which sounds like a Queen demo and has a curiously over-busy drum machine to take it to its crescendo.

It’s a minor gripe though – the rest of this lovingly collated collection is a moment to savour, an idyll as time rushes by.