Gary Boyle - Light Again the recordings 1977 -1978 Progressive Voyages Review.

This great little set continues the musical journey of Gary Byle after Isotope fell apart Gary was signed to Gull records where he recorded two very different albums in The Dancer (1977) Electric Glide (1977) these albums saw Gary widening his vision and collaborating with new musicians to create new musiç .

These included Gary Moore,Simon Phillips, John Giblin and old Isotope keyboard player Zoe Kronberger, Ken Shaw, Along with Rod Argent amongst others.

Another difference here is that mix of both acoustic and electric playing, there are fiery Rockers like Cowshed Shuffle and The Dancer that are counterpointed he likes of Pendle Mist and Maiden Voyage. This all conspires to show Gary's ongoing development as a musician abd his giving confidence in his own abilities. Certainly on Dancer and Cowshed Shuffle we hear a definate fire to his playing.

Gary is often likened to John Mclaughlin for his incredibly precise, Attacking not to mention Fast playing style, Obviously at that time in the 1970’s there were a lot of fusion groups around each trying to stand out from the crowd , With the likes of Mahavihshnu Orchestra and Al Di Moela being at the forefront whilst britiish groups like isotope, Hummingbird and the like were trying to get the public’s attention against the growing swell influence domination of Punk and New Wave groups that were attracting much of the media attention at the time.

Sadly Gary and his ilk were marginalised with musicianship being viewed as a dirty word amongst the growing status of Punk and New Wave, obviously there was still a remnant of people who wanted more than three chords and a badly played racket, These folks were however largely in the minority with the result being good albums like The Dancer fell through the gap, zas did a lot of progressive music, where is stayed on the sidelines until times changed fir the better around 1983/84. Thing go round in cycles of about 5 to 7 years usually.

So it is great that Esoteric have this rich vein of overlooked and forgotten albums that can have the efforts appropriated towards.

By then sadly Gary had been dropped by his label who went into liquidation shortly afterwards.

Gary's next album Electric Glide was different again, with very much more of a who's who of British jazz fusion appearing, Gary Moore who was playing guitar for Colosseum 2,Robert Awahi (Chris Rea) Max Middleton and Phil Chen (Jeff Beck) Gary was able draw upon this phenomenonal talent pool in making the album.

The opening track of which Morning Father Joy's is a lively acoustic guitar led piece with some tremendously speedy playing and almost blues licks in the mix,the interaction with Ken Shaw of Nucleus is excellent I really like this track immensely itcsound like it could have come from Al Di Moela its that good.

Grumble is another interesting track in that ring track that has Gary Moore who is on blistering form here over a funky backing with a great bass from John Giblin of brand X and the drums of Simon Phillips who is on excellent form too, Its another great song as is Grumble which is basically a bass solo with Gary and Simon Phillips in support.

I like that Gary has the grace to share the spotlight as this makes the albumnall the stronger as a result. It really begs the question of why did I ignore this album on it original release? A situation that this release has allowed me to rectify now.

In addition there are several extra tracks including a bbc session which has a certain young Geoff Downes playing on, Which is really good to have As this set in conjuction with the recently issues Upward Curve set gives the the entire Isotope BBC recordings usually only available on an very costly import cd ok it o er a few cds but that's still acceptable as it off such great performances.

So all in all this is another winning set that allows you to rediscover again the remarkable talents of Gary Boyle and his post Isotope work.

Info here:Gary Boyle: Light Again - The Recordings 1977-1978, 2CD Edition https://share.google/c8iJ5tOW7NszmGsjg

Author John Wenlock-Smith Saturday 11th July 2026.