Robert Reed’s Sanctuary II will be released on June 10 – and he is debuting an album trailer with TeamRock.
Multi-instrumentalist and producer Reed is joined by Toto and Mike Oldfield drummer Simon Phillips on the follow-up to 2014’s Sanctuary – which was Reed’s personal tribute to Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and saw him playing all the instruments himself.
He has produced, mixed and engineered Sanctuary II himself once again, with help from the original Tubular Bells production team of Tom Newman and Simon Heyworth.
Reed says: “There’s a well-known interview with Mike Oldfield in which he said that he was so disappointed that nobody had carried the torch forward that he had lit with Tubular Bells – creating long form music, completely hand-played with real instruments, music that relied on emotion and melody, music you could lose yourself in.
“What I am trying to do with the Sanctuary albums is to carry that ideal forward.”
On working with Phillips, Reed adds: “I wanted to do something different on this new album. I had played all the instruments on the first, so this time I decided to use real drums.
“There was one person at the top of my wish list, and it was Simon Phillips. I grew up listening to Simon’s playing on Mike Oldfield’s Crises album, and went to see him play with Mike at Wembley.
“I could never have thought, then, that one day he would play on my own album. I feel amazingly lucky. His trademark sound is perfect for the album. It really has taken Sanctuary II to another level.”
The album will be released in a 2CD/DVD format, with CD1 featuring the new album, CD2 boasting unreleased tracks, remixes and Tom Newman’s alternative mixes and the DVD containing the 5.1 mix of the album and various promotional videos and interviews. A vinyl version is also in the works.
Sanctuary II can be pre-ordered now from Reed’s website, while the vinyl version will be sold via Plane Groovy.
Digital EP Marimba – taken from the album – will be available from April 18 from Reed’s Bandcamp site.
