Esoteric Antenna are pleased to announce the release of Ant's new album Private Parts & Pieces XII: The Golden Hour.

The Golden Hour is the first new volume in the long-running Private Parts & Pieces series since City of Dreams in 2012 and Ant's first new solo album release in five years.  The album features some beautiful and evocative pieces including the four-part 'Wychmore Hill Suite' and a vocal version of 'Roads In Between'.  It also includes guest appearances on two tracks by guitarist Quique Berro Garcia, who has contributed to previous volumes in the Private Parts & Pieces series including Antiques, Slow Waves Soft Stars and Dragonfly Dreams.

Ant describes The Golden Hour as "a very traditional Private Parts & Pieces album of old, a collection of pieces of disparate background hopefully constituting a cohesive whole".  The track listing for the album can be seen here.

The Golden Hour is out now and is available to order from Cherry Red and Amazon.  The album is also available on Bandcamp.

Dale Newman - vocalist on Ant's album Sides and latterly his "Guitar Tsar" (maintaining Ant's collection of stringed instruments) - has recently released Red Skies, a collection of eight songs and his second album release in 2024, which is now available exclusively on Bandcamp.

The album features a further selection of some of the older songs from Dale's extensive repertoire, which he has revisted and reworked for this new release.

Red Skies is available now on Bandcamp, where you can also find Dale's previous EP releases Wild Flowers and Somewhere Down The Road together with his albums Old Flames and Dale Newman.  In addition, all of Dale's releases on Bandcamp are now available as a bundle at a special price.

Released in August 1987, Slow Waves, Soft Stars was the seventh Private Parts & Pieces album which saw a move towards a wider canvas following the release of the previous two albums in the series that had comprised pieces for solo instruments.  

With the album featuring a number of improvised synthesiser soundscapes alongside acoustic guitar pieces, it was seen at the time of its release to fit in with the then-growing market for New Age music.  As a result Ant's then-record company sought to capitalise on this by doing some promotion for it, which in turn raised his profile as an artist for the first time in a number of years.

The story of the album is detailed in a new feature, which can be seen here.

Reviews of Private Parts & Pieces XII: The Golden Hour have now been published on Progressive Rock Central,  Velvet Thunder and by the German Genesis Fan Club (in English and German).

A review of the album also appears in issue 150 of Prog magazine, which also contains a six page interview feature with Ant by writer Daryl Easlea as the subject of The Prog Interview.  Copies of this issue of the magazine can be ordered here.

Update: The interview feature from Prog is now also available to read here

October 2019 saw the release of Strings of Light, Ant's first solo album release in seven years which featured twenty four pieces of music across two CDs.  The tracks on the album saw Ant utilisting the many beautiful and rare guitars in his collection to make Strings of Light one of the finest instrumental guitar albums in his long and acclaimed career as a musician and composer.

The original release of the album was as a 2 CD & 1 DVD digipak which has sold out and now a 2 CD Jewel Case Edition of the album is being released to make Strings of Light available once more.  The audio content of this new Edition is the same as the 2 CDs from the original release.

The 2 CD Jewel Case Edition of Strings of Light is available to order now from Cherry Red and Amazon.

Update: A review of the 2 CD edition has been published in Issue 149 of Prog and can be read here.

First released in September 1990, Ant's two-part instrumental suite Slow Dance has gone on to become one of his most highly regarded album releases.

In June 2017 Esoteric Recordings released an Expanded and Re-mastered edition of the album, which went out of print some time ago.  Now a new 2 CD Jewel Case Edition of the album is being released to make Slow Dance available once more.  The audio content of the Jewel Case Edition is the same as the 2 CDs first released in the Expanded Edition, with the first CD featuring the original stereo mix of the album re-mastered for the first time since the original release by co-producer Simon Heyworth.  The second disc contains a selection of 'Slow Dance Vignettes', which includes alternate mixes and variations of themes from the album.

The 2 CD Jewel Case Edition of Slow Dance is available to order now from Cherry Red and Amazon. 

Update: Reviews of the 2 CD Edition have now been published on Progradar and The Second Disc.

Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce the release of an expanded and re-mastered edition of Gypsy Suite by Anthony Phillips and Harry Williamson.

Ant and Harry first met in 1968 but it was not until the summer of 1971 that they had the opportunity to spend time together to write new material based on their joint exploration of unusual guitar tunings.  The first three Movements of Gypsy Suite were the result of these sessions, with a fourth Movement being composed in late 1975 before the Suite was recorded in March 1978.

Gypsy Suite also includes the demo recordings of Movements I and II of Ant and Harry's other major collaborative work Tarka from 1975 and 1976 respectively.  On this new edition they are complemented by a previously unreleased solo piano demo of Tarka Movement III: The Hunt recorded during the 1976 sessions, which has been newly mixed from the original multi-track masters.

Originally released in 1995 and unavailable for a number of years, this new edition of Gypsy Suite has been re-mastered for the first time since the original release and features new liner notes by Jon Dann.

Gypsy Suite is available to order now from Cherry Red and Amazon.

Update: A review of the re-mastered and Expanded Edition of Gypsy Suite is included in issue 147 of Prog and can be read here.