VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR
The Charisma Years 1970-1978 UMC
Twenty discs and much more from venerable prog provocateurs.
When the last Van der Graaf Generator retrospective, The Box, was released in 2000, it boasted four CDs and seemed like a huge, barely digestible feast at the time. Twenty-one years later the band’s cult status continues to broaden and some fans’ pockets and appetites have deepened. With 17 CDs, three Blu-rays containing remastered albums, bonus tracks, extremely rare video footage, BBC sessions, new stereo and 5.1 surround remixes,
THE MIXES EMPHASISE VDGG’S BOLDNESS AND ASPIRATION.
and even a 68-page book, this latest box set is very much the desirable dish of the day.
There are so many morsels to savour. The previously unreleased 1976 concert, Maison De La Mutualite, Paris has them perilously close to breaking apart as they lurch headlong through their repertoire with unrestrained savagery, occasionally with David Jackson’s sax getting lost in the melee. Nevertheless, as songs charge off the map the bristling energy and premeditated belligerence are exhilarating.
However, the undoubted high points have to be H To He, Who Am The Only One, Pawn Hearts, Godbluff and Still Life presented in muscular new stereo mixes brimming with hitherto unheard embellishments and truly revelatory surround sound versions. Mixed by Stephen W Tayler, the
5.1 enriches and expands the listening experience, drawing listeners deep into the albums’ labyrinthine construction. Subsonic bass underscores those Pioneers Over C as they leave the planet, their voices smeared across speakers as the doomed crew are lost to time and space.
Pawn Hearts was always an experimental beast gnawing at the leash and here it slips free, rushing into vivid new territories. A cathedral-like ambience ricochets and rumbles with Guy Evans’ monumental drumming; previously submerged piano eagerly surfaces; Robert Fripp’s fragmentary guitar snaps into closer focus; swarming voices sweep to the precipice and beyond where ghostly saxes swirl and shimmer.
Some will argue the earlier mixes are sacrosanct and any alterations to original producer John Anthony’s endeavours to bottle VdGG’s lightning are tantamount to heresy. However, it’s important to understand here that what Tayler has achieved isn’t ‘better’, simply different, creating a distinctive perspective with its own virtues and authorial presence. And of course, we still have the option of enjoying both.
Perhaps more than anything, these new mixes emphasise and exploit VdGG’s boldness and aspiration in which their brand of rock music was only ever a jumping-off point rather than the intended destination. This mighty box set demands we listen with new ears and white knuckles.