After the release of the three Art Bears titles, Belle Antique now release a set of Henry Cow albums in SHM CD. These are all the albums they recorded, apart from Desperate Straights which was more a Slapp Happy album. Anyway the set I have has been packaged in one of those nifty promo boxes that Disk Union supply in their shops if you buy the whole series. Like the other series of titles they have done, the packaging is first rate. The quality of the card, paper and printing makes these vinyl reproductions as good as anything I have seen from the Japanese. They do reproduce the vinyl album package to an amazing degree of detail.
Their are a number of bonus tracks on each disc, which are culled from the 40th anniversary box sets of a few years back. The credits state digital mastering by Kazuo Ogino, who did the same for the Art Bears and Bruford titles, which Belle Antique also released. So I suspect as they are licensed from ReR Megacorp they have utilised the digital files used for the latest available remasterings and tweaked those. However, to my ears they do sound more detailed and natural. As the volume on these like the others is relatively low, the dynamics are pretty good. So soundwise and packaging wise, Belle Antique are doing an excellent job with these recent series of reissues. They may be a bit pricey as most Japanese CD's are. But in this case you do get what you pay for!
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