Sky — The Great Balloon Race
This reissue is fairly sparse, compared with the others in the Sky reissue series. As all we get here is just a CD, with no bonus tracks, but I’m guessing this is purely down there been no unreleased material or live footage for this period. Though as you’d expect with Esoteric you get a classy looking colour inlay booklet, and this features original liner notes. As well as a new six page write-up about the album, and the band at the time from Sid Smith.
It’s fair to say that Sky’s most known & respected for their sonic output between the late 70’s & early 80’s. By this point in their career founding member classical guitarist John Williams had left the band, though still on board were bass player Herbie Flowers, and drummer & percussionist Tristan Fry- who had been involved in albums such as classic albums as Sky, Sky 2, and Sky 3.
The album takes in nine tracks with a running time of forty two minutes, and sound wise it’s somewhat of a departure from their early pop/ prog renditions of classical pieces. It moves from moody late 80’s Mike Oldfield-like pop prog with slight world music & easy-listening leanings. Onto blends of stabbing ‘n’ bright 80’s synth work, and soaring though pop tinged jazz. Through to dramatic & jaunting synthetic orchestration runs. Onto moody to buoyant 1980’s TV series like themes. Though there are still some classic guitar flourishers here and there, courtesy of Williams’s replacement Kevin Peek.
The whole album sounds very late 80’s in its use of instrumentation, production & all round sound. So really it’s down to how much you enjoy that edge to your pop-prog/ light-yet-virtuoso instrumental music to how much you will enjoy this. For my part I find the album a mostly enjoyable & varied work, with all of the tracks having a nice balance of moody & melody. I can’t see myself returning to this as much as say Sky or Sky 3, but as 1980’s instrumental music goes this isn’t bad.