Studio - 2. Sky 2, 1979-1980.[Muscic Club] July 1980.

Originally released in North America as...

John Williams guitars	Herbie Flowers bass	Kevin Peek guitars	Francis Monkman keyboards	Tristan Fry percussion

Released: April 1980

Peak position in UK charts: 1 (July 1980)

Availability: A remastered CD was released in February 2005 on the Castle Music label (part of the Sanctuary Records Group and should be fairly easy to find. In case of difficulty, you can always try HMV (No, I don't make money from suggesting them).

I seriously advise against buying the 1994 Music Club edition (which is also the basis for various European and Australian pressings), of which multiple copies float around on eBay at any given time) because it doesn't sound as good.

In the meantime, click on the track title to hear/download an MP3 sample from the track (roughly one minute in all cases). I don't include the full tracks for a multitude of reasons, and never will.

Short Review:Encouraged by the response to their album and tours, this double album was far more representative of a Sky concert, including studio recordings of several pieces which were already aprt of their repertoire. Existing fans were not disappointed, and the huge success of the Toccata single got them many more. Anyone buying the album having heard the single was in for a surprise, though. The sheer energy of Hotta, the descriptive power of Sahara, not to mention the silliness of Dance of the Little Fairies and Tuba Smarties, showed that this was a band capable of a lot more than making noise to a (in my opinion) badly arranged piece of one of the most famous classical pieces ever. And then there's the sheer majesty and complexity of FIFO, probably the pinnacle of Sky's output before or since. I prefer to think of it as a sonata for rock band, the finale of which, as Francis says in the notes, deserves to played out LOUD! And the icing on the cake, side three of the original LP version, featuring each musician as virtuoso, playing relevant classical repertoire entirely straight (just as they did during live performances). Magical! Agree? Disagree? Have your say in the Forum!