Bill's Been Busy!

 

Simply, Bill Nelson is one of my life long musical heroes. Ever since I head Be-Bop Deluxes Modern Music back in the day I have followed Bill's musical inventions ever since. I was even a fully paid up member of the Bill Nelson Fan Club, which produced the wonderful magazine Acquitted By Mirrors, where apart from Bill's projects I was introduced to the world of Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie amongst others.

I am glad to see that a lot of his work during the 80's and 90's is being re-released via the Esoteric label. They produced a truly wonderful 8 CD box set representing his recorded output through the decades a few years back, which ably demonstrates what an extraordinary body of work he has produced as band leader and solo artist. They also re-released the hard to find 6 CD box set, Noise Candy earlier this year. They have faithfully reproduced the original colourful design, apart from the booklet which is separate and sits inside a flap within the box. I have the original which suffered from the notorious manufacturing problems like disc trays coming unstuck and booklets falling apart. Luckily, I don't believe they have reproduced those.

Currently he is in a hyper productive mode, even though he has suffered from some health problems recently. This year already he has released 4 albums of new material. The quality is very high indeed. He programs each album thoughtfully to give a cohesive feel to each set. His working method is fast, but the amount of consideration, detail and inspiration in all he does is breathtaking. These releases are limited to 500 copies, so you need to get in fast.

I hope his health improves and I know even now he is busy beavering away in his studio producing even more music. I suppose for him that is the best therapy there is!

 

 

 

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Gong SHM Papersleeve Editions

 

 

 

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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October is the month!

 

October has become one of the most important months as regards release schedules. Already announced is the epic 14 disc Steve Hackett box set. Now just announced is the next King Crimson box set. This time it is based around the THRAK album and we have 16 discs in a box simply titles THRAK BOX. The impressive part of this set are the two Blu-ray Discs which are packed to the core with high resolution stereo and surround files of various mixes, permutations and live material all from that period of the band. It does look like Panegyric have again gone to town to produce one of the most spec heavy boxes around.

Panegyric have also just announced that the next Steve Wilson Yes remix job will be Fragile. A lot of us were hoping for Tales from Topographic Oceans, but it will be interesting to see what Mr Wilson does with this first Yes album to feature Rick Wakeman. There are some tasty extras here too, especially a piece called "All Fighters Past" which includes elements that would later appear on Siberian Khatru and Topographic Oceans.

That will do to be going on with!

 

 

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Tony Banks - A Chord Too Far

 

As the season of the box sets approaches, here's one to be going on with. A 4 CD compilation taken from the solo work of Tony Banks. Out of all the Genesis members who embarked on solo careers, Banks had the least commercial and critical success. On the face of it that is very surprising considering his huge contribution within Genesis as composer and keyboardist. Banks has been quite vocal in his dissapointment in his lack of solo success. I would even go as far as to state that he appears quite bitter about this state of affairs. That was quite evident in the recent BBC documentary about Genesis where he seemed quite aloof, especially to Steve Hackett who has enjoyed a solid solo career with his own material as well as his Genesis Revisited projects.

Personally, I am not familiar with any of Banks's solo albums and so decided to take the plunge with this set. Surprisingly I have enjoyed most of what is on offer. You can hear the Genesis DNA throughout which is no surprise but for me there is nothing overly poppy or twee, which did permeate a lot of latter day Genesis. There is even a 17 minute epic here in "An Island in Darkness", which would have made a superb Genesis track. But Genesis weren't really doing epic by then. Mixing songs, instrumentals and orchestral pieces gives a balanced, but broad introduction of the Tony Banks oeuvre. I love Banks' electric piano playing on the Genesis albums and there's plenty here which does anchor some of the songs in familiar territory. But overall this box set is a great showcase for what he has been up to outwith the confines of the band and I think many will be surprised at how good a lot of the material is. Excellent package as well, thanks to Phil Smee for that.

 

 

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Gong SHM Papersleeve Editions

 

Just received this Disk Union box set of papersleeve SHM CD's of Gong's albums for the Virgin label. All apart from Flying Teapot as that languishes in licensing hell! They all have been marketed as new masters, although the Japanese booklets don't appear to mention that as far as I can tell. I quickly compared the Virgin CD of Gazeuse to the SHM and there is a time difference of about 3 seconds, so that is a good first indicator that this is a different master. It is good at last to have a mini LP version of Gong live etc, which includes the complete double albums spread over two discs. The Virgin CD missed off a track so as to squeeze the album onto a single disc. The SHM has the die cut sleeve and all the inserts, as do all the discs which have mini facsimiles of booklets, inserts, posters etc. Now to give them all a listen!

 

 

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Steve Hackett - Premonitions Box Set

 

It was well known for a long time of Steven Wilson's desire to remix Steve Hackett's early Charisma solo albums into 5.1 surround, especially his second Please Don't Touch. Well, that wish has come to pass. In October (hereby known as the month of boxes) there is to be a 14 disc set released of Hackett's solo albums he recorded for the Charisma label. Included are DVD's showcasing surround mixes of Please Don't Touch and Spectral Mornings. Wilson has also produced pseudo surround mixes of Voyage of the Acolyte and Defector from the stereo masters as the multitracks of those albums are missing. The other discs in the set are the remaining studio albums from those years and a number of live recordings.

Going by the early mock ups of the box it does look handsome indeed. Surprisingly, it has Roger Dean artwork adorning the front. More usually connected with Yes and Asia, it is slightly discomfiting to see his artwork related to Steve Hackett. It looks like there will be a nice book to go along with the set and the whole design looks similar to what Universal did for the John Martyn set, with the discs housed in slotted album sized sleeves. Good on Mark Powell for pushing Universal to produce this lavish set. The recent success of Hackett's Genesis Revisited tours will not have harmed their decision either.

So that is one box for October then. What else might be coming up I wonder?

 

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Half Time Report

 

The sun is out, in between the rain showers, so it must be summer. So, we are more than half way into the year and musically speaking what kind of year is it shaping up to be? Pretty good actually. A lot of very strong new music and coming from every direction. Maybe it is me but I get the impression that genre divisions are breaking down even more, making distinctions to what is prog, rock, jazz, folk, classical, pop very difficult. Bands and artists are embracing more openly, influences from other types of music. Recently, folk band The Unthanks performed King Crimson's Starless for the BBC as part of their Glastonbury festival coverage. Can you imagine that happening 5 years ago! Here is a list of my favs to date.

• The Unthanks - Mount the Air
• Snarky Puppy - Sylva
• Steven Wilson - Hand.Cannot.Erase
• Steve Hackett - Wolflight
• Jaga Jazzist - Starfire
• Guapo - Obscure Knowledge
• Sweet Billy Pigrim - Motorcade Amnesiacs
• Karda Estra - Strange Relations
• Lonely Robot - Please Come Home
• Mew - +/-
• IO Earth - New World
• Anekdoten - Until All the Ghosts are Gone
• Mandala - Midnight Twilight
• Wire - Wire
• The Tangent - A Spark in the Aether
• Bill Laurence - Swift
• Von Hertzen Brothers - New Day Rising
• Izz - Everlasting Instant
• Glass Hammer - The Breaking of the World
• Sanguine Hum - Now We Have Light
• Grand Tour - Heavy on the Beach
• The Neal Morse Band - The Grand Experiment
• Gentle Knife - Gentle Knife
• Magic Pie - King for a Day
• District 97 - In Vaults

 

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