BLU-RAY REVIEWS
This issue, reviewer Stephen Dawson discovers an Irish musical time capsule of the 1980s, of youth, and of a youthful creativity that he characterises as ‘producing a sense of joy’.
Director: Stuart Orme Starring: Phil Collin, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Daryl Stuermer, Chester Thompson.
Some achieve the heights of success quickly. Others, never. And sometimes it takes a while. It took ten albums before Genesis reached number one on the UK album charts. ‘Duke’ managed that in 1980, as did the band’s next four albums.
This Blu-ray is live material from the 1981 world tour by Genesis. Much of it formed the live album ‘Three Sides Live’ released in 1982, sans visuals of course. The tracks are selected from tour concerts in the US and the UK. This version, though, was remixed back in 2009 to be finally released in 2014 with both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound and stereo PCM.
Since the original recordings were made in 1981 at live venues, I think it’s safe to assume that they were analogue. The virtue, then, of using a high resolution 24-bit, 96kHz capture and presentation in both stereo and surround on this disc is in the assurance that everything from the analogue tapes has been captured with full fidelity.
Up-front confession, I’m pretty weak on Genesis. I missed them in my youth. The relative expense of music then ($5.99 for an album, when I earned around $8 a week for eight hours work at Woolies) tended to make one’s interest focus on a limited set of music, especially since progressive rock made for a small sharing circle. In recent years I’ve come to acquire and enjoy ‘Nursery Cryme’, ‘Foxtrot’ and ‘Selling England by the Pound’, studio albums numbers 3, 4 and 5, which are well before 10 and 11, ‘Duke’ and ‘Abacab’ from which most of the tracks on this disc are drawn. It’s fascinating to hear how a group of excellent musicians can deliver music able to work at two levels. On the surface, it’s fully in keeping with that 1980s pop sensibility, which is sketched also in ‘Sing Street’, but the other level reveals the structure and instrumentation of solid progressive rock….except for the ‘Discipline’ era King Crimsonish ‘Who Dunnit?’ which is progressive with no pretence towards pop acceptability.
Unfortunately the excellent concert footage (picture quality so-so, since it’s taken from 16mm film) is interrupted by slice-of life-interludes, including interviews and back-stage stuff. I do wish all of these had been sent off to special extras where they belong, rather than puncturing the flow of the music…sometimes mid-song.
The core of the DTS-HD surround mix is DTS encoded in 24-bits and 48kHz sampling. If you have equipment incompatible with DTSHD Master Audio, that’s what you’ll be getting. You’ll be getting it at the 768kbps bitrate instead of the more common 1509kbps. As those numbers imply, that means lossier compression. Stephen Dawson