I have at last listened my way through the Japanese SHM CD editions of the Gong catalogue. To my weary and aged ears they are a very good improvement over the old, worn out Virgin issues. Not hard really! But Gazeuse is the star of the lot. It was a very well recorded and produced album anyway, but the remastering brings out a lot more detail and separates the instruments a lot more that you hear stuff I hadn't heard even from the original vinyl. Francis Moze's bass is very prominent and the percussion is crisp with Pierre Moerlen's kit very well presented. Gong Live etc was also a bit of revelation in terms of detail, though not sure why the second disc started with Oily Way rather than Radio Gnome Invisible, which should have been the first track on record 2, if both discs were representing the original vinyl discs. No matter, it sounds the best I have heard digitally. Angels Egg and You are no better than the remasters, though maybe sounding less processed. I think they suffered a bit from the use of no noise processing, which doesn't seem to come through as much on these discs.
So overall, these discs are a nice upgrade compared to the existing CD's. Not too difficult as mentioned as they date back to the 90's apart from Angels Egg and You. The Japanese have done a very nice sympathetic remastering here and together with fantastic packaging these are the best digital versions available.
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