Sail the World

Sail the World was written in 1994 as contract work for the soundtrack to the BBC's coverage of the Whitbread yacht race, a round-the-world sailing competition. Unfortunately, the music is about as exciting as one would expect from the incidental music of televised coverage of a bunch of boats moving rather fast. Anthony Phillips plays more keyboards than guitar here, and an unfortunately dated synthesizer sound predominates; the use of electronic percussion on all but two tracks is a similarly uninspired production choice. There are a couple of pleasant tunes here -- the near-ambient "Icebergs" is probably the best of the lot -- but overall, Sail the World is of interest only to Anthony Phillips completists and those who are utterly mad for televised yachting.