Okay, don't have much time this morning to review my late night of listening and watching last night.
I listened to A Trick of the Tail, and Wind & Wuthering, and a few tracks from the 'B' sides extra disc. First I must say that I have never heard the vocals be so clear that I thought Phil Collins was singing in my house! And the drums, wow! Track 1 Dance on a Volcano is incredible, track 2 Entangled (acoustic songs for those of you who don't know) is crystal clear, and perfect use of the rear speakers for the Mellotron and one acoutic guitar out of the 3 I think they used on this song... that song ends and I am anticipating Squonk kicking in; it does, and literally startles me with the drums and guitars crashing in from all speakers.. and guys I mean, it made me jump a little! Now I am beginning to think I finally have an SACD that stands up to Dark Side of the Moon! And I have a lot of them. The album in it's entirety is all new to me from a listening perspective because of how clear the vocals are, and there are sounds that I never could here before because they were lost in the mix. This album, as well as most of there 70's albums were always some what rushed because of the expense involved. Nick Davis has been able to spend the last few years perfecting what Genesis intended in the first place, but couldn't because of cost limitations.
Wind & Wuthering. Track 1 Eleventh Earl of Mar - far from one of my favorite tracks... but it just climbed the ladder on that list! First of all, the beginning of the track fills the room with massive singing guitars and a subtle bass track, it is beautiful! Again, amazingly clear vocals. On both these albums so far, I am able to clearly understand the vocals that are being sung by PC, as before they were a little muddy sounding. Not anymore! Next track One for the Vine, excellent effects with the chords, done well in surround and sounds beautiful. Listening to this album can really let you know how professional, or I should say you can easily identify these musicians as perfectionists, even if you don't like their music. Wind & Wuthering is brilliant sounding, all the way thru the amazing Afterglow which raps up the album.
The rest tonight I hope. My ears couldn't take anymore last night!
A quick note on the video extras - I watched all of the interviews on each disc, they are really good and offer some good insight of to what they were thinking during the different periods. As far as the film footage, they used somewhat inferior bootlegs on Trick & Wind.. so don't expect much there. There is a 3 dates with Genesis on I think the And then there were three.. extra disc. Though the film quality is not perfect, I found it to be a very interesting documentry put out by I believe the bbc. The duke video disc has the one hour concert from the Duke tour, nice to see but I am hoping that this concert gets restored and they issue the complete show some day, remixed in surround and all. The music videos are a nice addition to each of these respectively as well. All in all, don't expect a ton with the video portion or you will be somewhat disappointed. I bought these first for the sound, which I consider an A+.
I bet there are going to be fair weather fans that will buy these for the simple reason that they are SACD's, and will be pleasantly surprised at what they've been missing all of these years. Genesis after all, has always considered themselves an albums group.. most just know them for there very few radio songs, which doesn't even scratch the surface into their brilliant work.
