Sky 2 is the second album by English/Australian instrumental progressive rock band Sky, released in 1980. Despite being a double album it reached number one in the British Album charts, and at the time was the fastest double album to receive platinum status in the UK, while the instrumental single "Toccata" peaked at 5 in the British Singles Chart.

Francis Monkman played guitar on the 20-minute rock suite "FIFO" because, in his words, "I felt it necessary to inject a grunge element". "FIFO" stands for "First In, First Out", and is a song about computer processing.

The track "Vivaldi", is Sky's own version of an earlier track by fellow progressive rock band Curved Air, of which Monkman was formerly a member. It originally appeared on their 1970 album "Air Conditioning".

As of 2016, the album has never been released in its original, complete form on CD - perhaps due to the album's length (either just under or just over 80 minutes depending on the exact speed the recording is played at). Various record labels have attempted to solve this problem by editing tracks to be shorter, or even omitting album tracks entirely, but all have stopped short of actually reissuing it as a double CD, much to the chagrin of fans of the band.

This version omits "Gavotte & Variations" and "Andante" from the original album.

This version contains all tracks from the original album, although "Scipio" has been faded out early, omitting some repeats, in order to fit the album onto one CD.

Largely follows the track list of the 1992 Freestyle Records CD, except all movements of "FIFO" are combined into one track, and some track lengths are slightly different.

Almost the same as the Success pressings, except for some minor track length differences, and the fact that the early fade edit of "Scipio" from the Music Club issue has been used. The Merlin Records cassette, released at the same time as this CD, however, contains the full album in its original track order, albeit still with the edited version of "Scipio" ("Tuba Smarties" is the last track on side one and "Ballet-Volta" is the first track on side two).

This version contains all album tracks, including the full length version of "Scipio". However, "Gavotte & Variations" has been edited to omit the final variation instead.

The CD in this version is sourced from the masters of the 2005 Castle reissue and as such contains the same edited version of "Gavotte & Variations".

...
Wikipedia