Phillips 66

Esoteric Recordings releases of a newly remastered 5CD clamshell boxed set comprising the two original ‘Archive Collection’ albums by celebrated composer and Genesis founder member Anthony Phillips. Aside from his work as a solo artist, Anthony has been a composer of music for television for many years, going back as far as 1976 and those compositions form the backbone of these collections.

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…

A sublime survey of sacred music of the high Renaissance, Hyperion's 2018 release Amarae Morti offers transparent performances by Peter Phillips and the a cappella chamber choir El León de Oro. Covering music of the Franco-Flemish and Iberian schools, the program follows a trajectory from darkness to light, from somber motets by Dominique Phinot, Orlande de Lassus, Nicolas Gombert, and Manuel Cardoso to glorious works by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Cristóbal de Morales, and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. There is a consistency of subjects in the program, which includes settings of the Lamentations, Media Vita, the Regina Coeli, and the Magnificat, revealing different treatments of these familiar texts and varying levels of complexity and contrapuntal mastery, which culminate in the magnificent polychoral works of Victoria and Palestrina.

This release is the last in a series of nine Josquin mass recordings by The Tallis Scholars and their director, Peter Phillips. The series began in 1986, and Phillips has been the group's director since it was founded in 1973. The Tallis Scholars are, thus, a well-oiled machine, and they're capable of a flawless vocal blend that's hard to match even among England's superb collection of small choirs (the Scholars are ten strong). There are other ways to sing Josquin, but their hyper-clarity works well in his music, for it brings out the music's striking, Bachian complexity. This particular album, despite its ultimate position, is especially good, for in the Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie and Missa Faysant Regretz, it's best to have no distractions from the strikingly bold underlying structure.

The graphics for this Tallis Scholars release mention scholarly disagreement over the Missa Mater Patris, long attributed to Josquin but "recently shown to be by the little-known Noel Bauldeweyn," writes director Peter Phillips. "Or is it?" he adds. He sketches out the controversy, pointing out that the mass does not resemble any of Josquin's other compositions in the genre; he doesn't answer his question. However, you might take the album as a rejoinder to those questioning the authenticity of the mass. Its possible removal from the Josquin canon rests entirely on this musical evidence, so Phillips is entitled to adduce musical evidence of his own: the genuine Bauldeweyn mass included here sounds nothing like Josquin but is basically a work in 15th century style with a bit of imitative counterpoint thrown in.

When you're a musician used to a certain creative groove, it's disorienting to have this rhythm disrupted. But that was just the position Grant-Lee Phillips found himself in spring 2020: Months before the release of a new full-length, Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff — an album he was already previewing on an early 2020 tour with John Doe and Kristin Hersh — the pandemic led to the cancellation of tour dates and other promotional plans.