A Sense of Distance By Holland Phillips

 

A Sense of Distance

By

Holland Phillips

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

As an instrumentalist Holland Phillips must be one of the finest in the world today, his thoughtful and sometimes reflective compositions always allow one a momentary pause within life’s busy schedule. His music has been a part of my life now for some nine years and more, and it is a simple delight to travel with the artist again on another mollifying musical voyage of plenty, and this time around called A Sense Of Distance.

There is much to love on this new release, one I believe that has brought the very best out of Phillips again, and how pleasing it was to see the first track referencing a subject that I recently qualified educationally with in Greek Mythology, as we listen to a son of Zeus and his mortal wife Danaë on a track created by Phillips called Perseus Rising, a gentle and thoughtful keyboard based composition indeed to start this voyage.

The album is jam packed with splendid treats, one of which is the quite brilliant Through the Rabbit Hole, this somewhat darker creation builds with a sense of mystery and imagination and the possibility of getting lost in a world of confusion, whilst in my view Holland has found the perfect piece in Bittersweet, this is the artist from the days of Save The Dance and Serendipity, it is so good to hear this reflective connection again, sublime keyboard structures that for some reason take me back to the 90’s in compositional structure.

Offerings on this 10 track album also include the enigmatic Behind the Veil, the gentle almost Phil Thornton styled New Age opus called Enchantments, and of course the simply breath taking title track A Sense of Distance, with that mixture of piano and electronic vibrations in a mixture of a calming sense of reality.

It is always a pleasure to review and of course listen to a Holland Phillips album, and within its latter extremities one can find offerings like the uplifting and self-empowering musical narrative of Flying Solo, with slight hints of late 1960’s music and its crescendos of sublime perfection, or you may like do delve much deeper and into moving opuses of intensity like the film score styled Hope Remains.

The vibrant penultimate offering is called On Whistlers Ridge and gifts us as the ever eager listener a moment to cast a glance over a vast landscape of what seems infinite space, in a track of keyboards and light percussion, which must be the most visual piece from the release.

We sadly end this musical journey with the artist and as we do so he gifts us one last musical present entitled For the Love of it. This is perfection, the tone and vibration of the keyboard’s sums up this beauty of an album with succinct ease, and leaves the listener with a sense of complete satisfaction, at its conclusion.

Well it has been so good to see the master instrumentalist back in the seat, and once more producing sublime and quite brilliant new compilations of classic contemporary instrumental magic, I personally could listen to this album for hours on end, and will probably do so, thus I am in no doubt that this truly good release should be a part of your lives as well, therefore I believe that A Sense of Distance by Holland Phillips should not only be a huge chart hit for the artist, but also one that may make some headway in the world of musical awards, it is simply that good.