Illumination

I have been a Phil Keaggy fan since the 80s and this set of tunes takes you back to that great guitar driven style of music. This collaboration with Rex Paul is brilliant and I have become a fan of his work too. Get this album ASAP. You'll love it!

The guitar solo and album is BACK! Sterile, polished CCM just got a shot in the arm! ...And fading out the end of the song during those aamazing solos! Oh ya. Thank you for reviving this great musical art form.

Absolutely awesome, a guitarist dream record . Rocking out to the sweet sounds of a musical journey. A must have album.

Any Keaggy fan will get the title. This long awaited collection makes me smile with hope from ear to ear. Being an avid guitar player AND a believer this really hits home. The music and production and message is as good as it gets. Thank you Phil and Rex for this offering.

Long time of Phil Keaggy's work, but this work is something special even amidst Phil's extensive catalogue. For one thing, the recording and mixing gives everything a real full sound. This is especially thankful with Phil's older work that is on here. It gives the songs a lot more of a modern edge (in a good way) which highlights just how good those songs really are. Again, musicianship along with guitars that seem to sing from deep in the soul...alongside lyrics that keep reminding me of the truths that I shoud already know (but need to hear them again and again)....this is really a must buy for any Keaggy fan or rally any fan of good and true music.

Illumination, the new album release from Phil Keaggy and Rex Paul, is the kind of album that comes along once in a great while: a put-the-car-windows-down on a summer’s day, and bury the volume dial kind of album. It’s an inspired collaboration that will leave many listeners cheering...and hoping this is just the first of more albums to come. Along with every moment of incandescent, power guitar playing (and this album is brim full of them) there are as many moments of true, accomplished song craft. Four Keaggy classics are performed anew for this album, “Time,” “Let Everything Else Go,” “Spend My Life With You,” and “Full Circle,” and they’ve never sounded better. Vocally, instrumentally, they’re a sonic tour de force. Youthful and shimmering. What is more, they blend seamlessly with seven other songs that round out the eleven tracks on the album. That is a measure of how much Keaggy and Paul are “working off the same page” through the song cycle on Illumination. And this is the less surprising as five of the tracks on the album are new songs that Keaggy and Paul wrote together, yielding moments that are like cut-gems in music. Two favorites for this reviewer are “Glorify Your Name” and “I Believe,” a song which had it’s beginnings in 1971 when Keaggy was touring with the power trio Glass Harp. To hear it fully realized here is something special. “Vintage guitar tones,” as Rex Paul has said, and a Trevor Rabin production style, grace this album throughout. This album soars. And what a fine gift it is to hear his singing and playing. His performance on “You Never Know” is one I keep returning to. The ready friendship of these two gifted guitarists and songwriters is something that comes through so clearly in their playing and singing. They compliment one another as though they’d been playing together for years. Some albums convey a special feeling, an atmosphere, that listeners want to experience again and again. Some recordings sound better each playing through, with more to discover. Illumination is just that kind of album—and all the more welcome for it.