Bread Of Haven

Eleven years after his first ambitious homage to Mike Oldfield, Robert Reed is back with the long-awaited fourth instalment in his Sanctuary series. With a little help from Oldfield collaborators Les Penning, Tom Newman and drummer Simon Phillips, the Magenta and Cyan mastermind tells Prog about his mission to keep long-form music alive.

- Grant Moon

Back in 1983 a young Robert Reed travelled from Wales to Wembley for a show by his hero, Mike Oldfield. At the end of the 20-minute Crises, supertalented drummer Simon Phillips let loose in a virtuosic display that made a lasting impression on Reed. He bought a bootleg tape and played that drum solo to death.

“Whenever I send Simon my stuff, I always think I'm not challenging him enough,” Reed tells Prog more than 40 years later. “I told him I thought I was insulting him by not telling him to play something bonkers. He said, ‘No, I love playing your stuff because it’s just melodic.”

Phillips has now played on all but the first of Reed's four Sanctuary outings (five if you count 2021’s The Ringmaster). The project sits outside his well-known work with Magenta, and sees him proudly embrace his love for his hero’s early work. Phillips, Oldfield’s former producer Tom Newman and Ommadawn co-musician Les Penning add to the authenticity.

The latest entry, Sanctuary IV, takes the listener for another glide across Oldfieldian melodic-rock vistas – plains of beautifully made instrumental music adorned with Penning’s Celtic pipes and Reed’s glockenspiels, mandolins, pianos and the occasional tubular bell. His mastery of his hero's guitar tone, notably his vibrato, remains uncanny.

The Eternal Search is the mellifluous, 20-minute odyssey taking up the de facto ‘side one’. Its climactic drum part came about when Reed reminded Phillips about that formative Wembley moment, and asked him to let rip in a similar vein. When the drum parts arrived at Reed’s Rhondda Valley studio, he loaded the files, pushed up the faders and, he says, “I was nearly crying. I was smiling so much. The drums just got more and more bonkers – my speakers were shaking. Most drum solos are like someone building a shed, but this was so melodic. I’m so glad I asked Simon to do that.”