Peter Phillips

Anthony Phillips was one of the original founding members of Genesis featuring Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, and Michael Rutherford. Following "Trespass", Genesis' second album, Phillips left (purportedly due to stage fright) and was replaced by Steve Hackett. Nothing was heard again from Anthony until 1977, when he favored us with his first solo, "The Geese and the Ghost". Much of this recording sounds like a lost Genesis album, understandable since Phil Collins does a lot of the singing, and Michael Rutherford is present on guitar, bass, and keyboards, and also shares composer credits with him on major parts of this album…

In his 1919 essay “The Uncanny,” Sigmund Freud defines the term as follows: “the ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.” To this end, a feeling of uncanniness distinguishes itself from just being afraid because of its relation to what we already know, a disturbing variation of what we expect to see when we look in the mirror or the kind of horror that comes from inside the house. The uncanny valley, for instance, describes the creepiness that seeps in when we encounter an almost but not quite perfect replica of a human being (robots, computer animations, the list goes on).

Sides is the fourth solo album from former Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips. A first listen, Sides might only seem to be an adequate Anthony Phillips effort. Although it boasts two bona fide King Crimson members (Giles and Collins), the first half of the album consists of wry but forgettable numbers like the pop of "Um & Aargh" and the divorce kiss-off of "Holy Deadlock." But on the much better second half of the album, Phillips shows his more orchestral side on the instrumentals "Sisters of Remindum" and "Nightmare," as well as his distinctive arpeggiated guitar style on "Magdalen." And as always, the wonderfully whimsical and punning cover art by Peter Cross is reminiscent one of what the world lost when we all switched to cramped CD covers.

Peter Serkin, whose recorded output is dwarfed by his father's in sheer size but by no means in artistic distinction, is spotlighted in a new release playing Mozart: his complete RCA recordings of the composer. When his set of Piano Concertos Nos. 14-19 was released in 1973, High Fidelity's reviewer wrote: "I have heard no other pianist who seems to follow every pulse of this Mozartean vitality quite as beautifully as Peter Serkin, and the combined efforts of Serkin fils with Alexander Schneider and the English Chamber Orchestra on this RCA set form very simply one of the most important contributions to the Mozart discography." The new box also contains Serkin's distinguished mid-1970s recordings of the Clarinet Quintet and Piano-Wind Quintet K 452 with members of his distinguished ensemble TASHI.