Released in August 1987, the seventh album in the Private Parts & Pieces series Slow Waves, Soft Stars was to enter new territory for the series with a number of tracks on it featuring keyboard-based pieces and synthesiser soundscapes alongside acoustic guitar pieces.  At the time of its release it was seen in some quarters to fit into the then-flourishing market for New Age music, which in turn led to Ant enjoying a higher profile as a solo artist for the first time in several years.

A Wider Canvas

By the autumn of 1986 Ant had released a total of eleven solo albums, his most recent release being the sixth album in the Private Parts & Pieces series Ivory Moon which had been released in the US by Passport Records in January of that year.  As he came to start work on assembling what would become the next album in the series, Ant felt that this project should take things in a new direction as he recalls: "I'd done the guitar album (Twelve) and then the piano album (Ivory Moon) and a free slot came up where there was no TV work.  At that time I didn't have the resources to do a large-scale album and I still only had a small set-up with just the 8-track and a small mixing desk so there was no question of doing anything big.  There were quite a few tracks that I thought would be nice to put together and try to make a complete thing out of them in the same way that I did with A Catch At The Tables, in contrast to the previous two releases where people had asked for a collection of solo instrumental pieces.  It was time for something with a more interesting and wider canvas."

The wider canvas that Ant wanted to feature on the album included a selection of mainly improvised synthesiser soundscapes, a number of which had their origins in a library music project called Deeper Mysteries that Ant had written and recorded for Atmosphere Music in July 1983.  The library company had hired a Roland Jupiter 8 synthesiser for him to use for the project and the variety of new sounds that it provided were to prove to be a source of  inspiration as he recalls, "I just threw music from it at the tape machine for three or four weeks, which was wonderful.  I didn't write down any settings, I just used to find sounds and record them."  A total of eight tracks that Ant wrote and recorded for the project would go on to make up the first side of the Atmosphere vinyl LP release of Deeper Mysteries (subtitled "Atmospheric themes and abstract effect music") as ATMOS 011, which was issued in the Spring of 1984 for use in film and TV productions and not as a commercial release.   

In addition to the tracks which made the final selection for the library project, Ant had also recorded a number of further synthesiser pieces which had ultimately proved to be either too long or nebulous for use as library tracks.  Revisiting the original multi-track recordings of these pieces gave him the idea of adding additional parts to the tracks and creating a five part suite from them with the overall title of Ice Flight.  Two further pieces recorded during the library album sessions (which were eventually titled Through The Black Hole and Pluto Garden) were also ear-marked for the recording of additional overdubs in a similar way, whilst the oldest piece selected for inclusion on the album was the improvised synthesiser soundscape Behind The Waterfall, which had been recorded prior to the library project in March of the same year. 

Ant remembers how the five part suite that opened the album came about: "Ice Flight was all pieces that were either too long, fragmentary or too nebulous perhaps for the Atmosphere album.  A lot of it was prototype material, which was largely improvised and based on the sounds from the Jupiter and I then added things to it later on.  It was quite fun to do that but of course with computers and digital editing it would have been so much easier so it was a challenge but one which I think came out quite well.  Things like Cathedral of Ice, the basis of that was pretty much there and I added just a few overdubs."  The first two parts of Ice Flight (Flight of the Snow Petrel - Glacier Bay and Flight of the Whale-Birds - Blizzard Mountain) were both proceeded by short scene-setting link pieces that came from a long improvised track with the working title of 'Spirals' recorded during the 1983 sessions, which was based around an arpeggio pattern on the Jupiter 8 with Ant altering the sound as the pattern repeated itself.  One section of this long improvised piece was subsequently issued as a library piece on Deeper Mysteries under the title of Icicles, whilst during the later sessions for Slow Waves, Soft Stars Ant added overdubs to another section of the same track to create the third part of Ice Flight (Flight of the Albatross - Ice Island).

Also on the list of the ideas for potential inclusion on the album were extracts from a spontaneous session that Ant had recorded with his friend and guitarist Quique Berro Garcia late one evening in April 1986.  Recording together for the first time since the sessions for Antiques almost five years earlier, the pair of them committed some improvised pieces to tape although as Ant was to subsequently mention in the album sleeve notes it was only later that he realised that extracts from the 'inspired but chequered ramblings' that the pair of them had created that evening were suitable for release.  He recalls: "Beachrunner and End of the Affair were very much of their time.  Quique had come over in early 1986 and we jammed around a bit although I remember that the mood wasn't incredibly positive as neither of us was really sure if there would be an outlet for the music.  End of the Affair was certainly written long before the film of the same name came out." 

What would become the first side of the vinyl release of Slow Waves, Soft Stars concluded with two further synthesiser-based pieces.  The first of these was The Golden Pathway, a track which Ant had written and recorded in August of the previous year as one of the pieces for the Limehouse Productions television play God's Chosen Car Park, which was first transmitted on Channel 4 on 1st December 1986.  The second piece was Behind The Waterfall which, as Ant recalls, was one which would come to cause the album to be seen by some as being in the then-growing New Age genre: "Behind The Waterfall was not done for a TV programme although you might think that it was as it's a bit jingle-like in its own way but I suppose that that's the piece which together with the last two tracks on the album that became thought of as "New Age".  They have drifting textures with not a lot of change on top which is kind of the principle of New Age music with it being more of a background stimulus than something that held your attention or changed and took you with it.  I guess that's why this album was picked up belatedly by the people in the States who thought, "This is his New Age album so we'll do some promotion for it".  However, it wasn't done like that at all, it was just me being me and it was just a random collection of tracks.  I didn't listen to any other New Age music to be influenced by it - I had my influences but they weren't New Age ones."  Interestingly, a review in Billboard of the previous Private Parts & Pieces album Ivory Moon (published in February 1986) had described that release as one on which Ant "plays his own brand of new age music on this solo piano recording".   

Two further synthesiser pieces which would conclude the second side of the vinyl album were sourced from improvisations that Ant had recorded in late 1985 on the Casio CZ5000 not long after he had acquired it.  Both tracks made use of a particular feature of that instrument as he explains: "Vanishing Streets & Slow Waves Soft Stars were keyboard improvisations on the Casio which isn't a fantastic synth but it does have some special qualities and I still use it for certain sounds.  It had a wonderful thing where you could programme waveforms and envelopes to overlap each other so you had a constant series of rising and falling envelopes and the characteristics of those pieces was that you got long sustained notes dipping and before they dip another one comes in so you got overlapping.  I was very taken by this.  I think Vanishing Streets was quite sad and doomy and Slow Waves Soft Stars was more restful."  The two tracks had been recorded one after the other and in order to link them together for inclusion on the album, Ant returned to the original tracks and added some overdubs of additional parts in order to create the crescendo heard at the end of Vanishing Streets.

To provide contrast to the various keyboard-based tracks, Ant also reviewed some existing recordings of guitar pieces for potential inclusion including the lengthy 12-string piece Chinese Walls which he had recorded in the autumn of 1986.  However as he did not have the means at the time to address some of the technical issues with the recording, the idea of releasing it went on hold and the track would not see the light of day for another ten years until it was included on Dragonfly Dreams.  Ant decided instead to complete the selection of tracks for the album by recording new versions of five shorter guitar pieces, the majority of which had been written several years earlier: "They came from the incredibly prolific period around 1979-81 when I used to write so many guitar pieces and half manuscript them.  Some of those ended up on A Catch At The Tables but others didn't appear until Dragonfly Dreams like Quango, which was an old bit of fun from then.  Bubble & Squeak and Goodbye Serenade were from that era in 1980.  In fact I remember going in and serenading a friend's wife in hospital - I took the classical guitar in with me and played that to her and she rapidly deteriorated!  I think Sospirando was written in the early 80s along with Bubble and Squeak and Goodbye Serenade, which is much more elegiac and was originally a solo but was recorded for the album with a quartet of guitars.  Carnival is the one that I can't remember when it was written although it's in partial G tuning which wasn't used much by me or other Genesis guys in the early days."

Ant recalls that the recording of some of the guitar pieces for the album took place in the late autumn of 1986 before work on the album was paused for the recording of what would become Denis Quinn's debut album Open Secret, which Ant engineered and produced in December 1986.  Once the initial version of that project had been completed he returned to work on Slow Waves, Soft Stars adding additional parts to the synth-based tracks earmarked for the album during January 1987.  There was a further pause in work on the album whilst other projects were completed before the final sessions for the album took place in early March with the recording of Goodbye Serenade and Bubble & Squeak.  In contrast to the other guitar pieces which had been recorded to 2-track, these final pieces for the album were recorded on 8-track, which afforded the opportunity for overdubbed parts to be added in particular to Goodbye Serenade.  With these final pieces committed to tape, work on assembling the album was completed by the end of March 1987.

The album artwork & credits

For the album cover Ant selected a photo that he had taken where an unusual effect with sunlight had been accidentally created.  He explains: "The photo on the front was taken in Portugal where I actually got the exposure wrong but that shows that sometimes good things can come out of mistakes.  It was not my idea to have it on the front, it was my idea to have it on the back but as soon as Passport saw the New Age angle for marketing the album it seemed more obvious to make it the image for the front cover.  The title was not obvious either although now it seems self-evident and seems to fit the mood.  I remember reading some prospective titles out to Peter Cross and his wife together with some other friends and there were two titles - Flights of Fancy and Slow Waves, Soft Stars and they thought Flights of Fancy was better!" 

By way of contrast the back cover of the album featured a portrait of Ant by photographer Tif Hunter which had been taken a number of years earlier as Ant remembers: "The photo on the back was taken with a fisheye lens on a boat on the way to France in 1981 for a friend's stag party.  We had lunch in a restaurant and then played cricket somewhere near Boulogne and the French stood by in complete disbelief!  We pretended we were the Australian touring team on the way over and signed autographs."  The decision to put the photo from Portugal on the front cover was only made after the credits for the album had already been written out and they were not amended to reflect the change.  This meant that on the original release and all subsequent re-issues the front cover photo was credited to Tif Hunter and the back cover one to Vic Stench of Thrombosis before it was finally corrected for the 2016 re-issue of the album that was included in the Esoteric Recordings Private Parts & Pieces V - VIII release.

The credits for the album also confirmed the presence of the enigmatic Ralph Bernascone on Bubble & Squeak, where he was credited with frying pan.  Despite some fans questioning the legitimacy of this and Ralph's other contributions over the years, Ant confirms that this was a genuine appearance: "He is there on that track.  He appears on most of the albums although people have doubted it over the years.  During the guitar sessions I needed to eat and before dinner one night I just felt that the track needed something a little extra and it lacked that sort of sizzling quality.  I knew that one of Ralph's songs was I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles so I said just before supper as this lovely smell was pervading the house, "Ralph, why don't you come in on this track?"  He's low in the mix but he is there."

Release of the album

Passport Records had recently established The Audion Recording Company as a new subsiduary label which was described as being "a new home for electronic music" and "a place to explore and enjoy the electronic arts".  Slow Waves, Soft Stars was released on 7th August 1987 by Audion in the US and became the first of Ant's albums to enjoy a simultaneous release on LP (SYN 308), cassette (SYNC 308) and CD (SYNCD 308), with the latter representing the first time one of his albums had been issued on that format.  The album would also receive a one-off release in Brazil where it appeared on the SBK label (320.037).

The original release of the album had some variations in the way the track listing was presented compared to later editions of the album.  Whilst the subsequent CD re-issues of the album would treat all tracks as individual pieces (thereby making a total of 18 tracks), the original treated the five parts of Ice Flight as one track and also presented both Through The Black Hole and Pluto Garden as well as Vanishing Streets and Slow Waves, Soft Stars as two tracks instead of four, which in turn gave the original release of the album a total of 12 tracks.

On the left is the track listing for the album from the original CD release with a total of 12 tracks.  

All subsequent re-issues would see tracks 1, 7 and 12 indexed into separate pieces, making a total of 18 tracks on the album.

On the right is the label for the original Audion vinyl release of the album.

Through The Black Hole and Pluto Garden from the album would go on to be included on a sampler release for Audion issued later the same year called The Best of Both Worlds (SYNCD 108), which featured selections from a number of album releases on the label.  In respect of the two tracks from Slow Waves, Soft Stars the sleeve notes for the sampler stated that, "Using electronics to enhance his already legendary guitar composition, Anthony Phillips' instrumental works define the genre he helped found."

The Best of Both Worlds (subtitled The Second Audion Sampler) released later in 1987 included two tracks from Slow Waves, Soft Stars.

Promoting the album   

In order to promote the release of the album Ant gave some interviews including one with broadcaster Kimberly Haas for a half-hour US radio programme in the syndicated series Totally Wired which was broadcast on more than 60 stations.  Subtitled "Strings of the New Age", the programme examined how musicians from a diverse range of backgrounds were finding a new audience in the New Age boom.  In the programme Ant observed how things had changed since the days of The Geese & The Ghost: "The big joke is that ten years I was an old fart and now I'm writing 'new age' music apparently, which I do find amusing - it just shows how crazy it all is.  It's great to be able to play an acoustic guitar and not be called a filthy bourgeoisie or some of the other childish rubbish that we had in the UK."

Ant would on to give further interviews during the course of a visit to New York in October 1987, including one with writer Rick Davies for the US edition of Home and Studio Recording magazine and another with broadcaster John Schaefer for an hour long edition of the long-running radio programme New Sounds, which had featured Ant's music in the very first edition back in September 1982.  As well as talking about Slow Waves, Soft Stars and the previous albums in the Private Parts & Pieces series, Ant also played a live version of Carnival in the studio for the show, which was broadcast on WNYC Radio in New York on 1st December 1987.   

The promotional duties in New York also included Ant's one major TV appearance on the VH1 TV show New Visions (broadcast on 25th October 1987), where he was asked to act as the guest host for the programme, introducing a selection of promo videos (including ones by Mike & The Mechanics and Peter Gabriel; the latter being referred to by Ant in the show as "my old tennis coach") and talking about the new album as well as performing two of the guitar pieces from it.  With no prior experience of presenting or talking to camera Ant found this a difficult proposition as he recalls: "On this particular outing for the VH-1 programme it was a situation where visiting musicians had to select their favourite videos from a given list and they were then edited in afterwards but you had to talk about each one with a preamble to a phalanx of cameras.  You were in a room with three cameras and lights and nobody else - you have to talk to the camera and make your own running.  There were no notes or autocue and so if you had no experience it was an extremely arduous task.  There was also no time for preparation either.  I literally met the guy who was putting it together the previous night for dinner, he gave me the list of videos and I had to go away and make my choices and think of something to say.  I knew I had to play a couple of pieces which I didn't play terribly well - not surprisingly as I wasn't used to it!  I played Goodbye Serenade and Carnival - the latter was very difficult and quite a challenge live."

With no autocue to fall back on, Ant had made some rough notes on the key areas that he needed to mention during his sections in the programme, which he then did his best to recall.  Feeling that the best way to get through the recording was to use humour, he told the viewers at the start of the programme that he was in the US for the Stinging Nettle Throwing Olympics at Poughkeepsie, recommended that on no account should anyone buy the album (which he described as being an 'old age' release) unless the listener wished to end up floating out to sea, gazing up at the moonlight and later claimed to be writing a novel about the enigmatic Ralph Bernascone.  At the request of the programme's producer, Ant also related the story of the Genesis gig in the spring of 1970 where the band found themselves playing to just one person.  After the band had played the first two songs of the set, Peter Gabriel turned to the solitary member of the audience and asked, 'Are there any requests?'  Although the references in his monologues may not have been familiar to all of the viewing audience, the camera crew in the studio found them entertaining and gave Ant a round of applause after he had delivered one of them.

Ant was encouraged by the response that he received whilst promoting the album in the US as he recalls: "I found that the whole attitude in the States whilst I was there was not without criticism but it was wonderfully receptive.  I hadn't really existed as an artist in the UK since around 1981 and I felt quite defensive much of the time and suddenly there was respect and there was nothing to apologise about.  With this sort of attitude I did feel a sense almost of rebirth but it didn't last.  When I came back the plan was that I was to do a full-scale album and enlarge on it and on the basis of which I was lent money by my management to upgrade the studio which I did and then Tarka came along in the meantime.  But then Passport went bust the following summer so the whole thing went to pieces." 

Looking back, he reflects on the possibilities the increased interest in New Age music may have offered at the time: "You could argue that I should have found a way to capitalise more on the New Age boom as it was an opening.  Although I know that some people didn't think much of the idea of New Age, my argument was always that any way that helps get the music out to more people shouldn't be ignored and I couldn't seem to make much headway at the time.  I think one thing you could say is that my music is at its most interesting when there's some light and shade and has contrasts to it and one of the major things behind New Age was fairly flat contours and there is a skill to that.  There's a skill to not having very much going on with a strong mood but with little changes and not trying to do too much and probably I'm often trying to do too much musically.   We did approach a fair few people with the hope of getting a new outlet but with little success.  I think this may well have been the one chance I had since The Geese & The Ghost to reach a large number of people."

Reissues of the album

Slow Waves Soft Stars was one of the twelve back-catalogue albums included with Ant's deal with Virgin Records that were re-issued on CD in 1990 and 1991.  In the UK the albums were released in four batches of three titles each but Virgin Records in Japan elected instead to issue them in two batches of six.  Accordingly, Slow Waves, Soft Stars (as Virgin VJCP-23053) which had been remastered for the re-issue by Ant and Simon Heyworth was the final title to be included in the second batch of CDs that were released in Japan on 21st March 1991.  In the UK the album was included in the final group of three CDs (alongside Twelve and Ivory Moon) that were released some three months later on 24th June 1991, where it appeared as Virgin CDOVD 326.  These re-issues represented the first time all three albums had received a domestic release in the UK having only previously been available as imported titles.

The release in September 2016 of Private Parts & Pieces V - VIII (ECLEC 52561) as part of the Esoteric Recordings series of re-issues from Ant's back catalogue afforded the opportunity for some previously unreleased variations of tracks on Slow Waves, Soft Stars to see the light of day on Private Parts & Extra Pieces II, the CD of additional material that accompanied the four albums in the set.  These included further extracts from the pieces that Ant and Quique recorded in April 1986 (under the titles of End of the Affair II and Beachrunner II respectively) and new alternate mixes of Pluto Garden and Cathedral of Ice that allowed them to be heard in a different form. 

This feature is based on the sleeve notes for the 2016 release of Slow Waves, Soft Stars included in the Private Parts & Pieces V - VIII release, with additional previously unpublished information.

Copyright © 2024 Jonathan Dann.