THE ATLANTIC YEARS

A two disc compilation encompassing nine albums from their first LP to Love Beach. It is obvious a lot of thought has been put into what to include in this release because the track choice is superb.

On the first CD we are treated to Take a Pebble, Knife Edge, Tank and Lucky man from the first album; Tarkus from the second album is included in its entirety. Then we have a 14 minute edited version of Pictures at an Exhibition, this has been skilfully done and is a big improvement on the original in my view (I'd qualify that by saying that I was never fond of the Pictures album anyway). Disc one rounds off with the Endless Enigma suite. I personally would have preferred The Barbarian instead of Tank but the selection on this CD is simply flawless.

The second CD starts with From the Beginning also from Trilogy, and continues with Karn Evil 9 again presented in its entirety, with the two sections of First Impression being edited together seamlessly (almost). Jerusalem and Still You Turn Me On from Brain Salad Surgery are also included. This is perhaps overkill since all but 1 track from Brain Salad Surgery is on this compilation, albeit Toccata is from the triple live album.

From Works volume 1 we have Fanfare for the Common man and Pirates which again are the highlights of that album. Another miscue in my view is that Fanfare is presented in a specially edited format which does not work quite as well. I'd argue they should have gone for the single version or included it in full.

Although I believe in Father Christmas is from the Works Vol 2, it's pretty much a Greg Lake solo track and strongly associated with him, it should have been left off in favour of another track from the Works 2 album. As it is the only other Works 2 track is Honky Tonk Train Blues. There is a single track from Love Beach, Canario which is surprisingly strong in fact.

All in all this is a superb collection and for anyone trying to get to grips with the band this is an excellent first step (in fact probably only step). For an avid fan like me it was still good as I got the best from the first three albums without buying these separately. There are extensive and well compiled liner notes as well.

With a flawless selection on disk 1 it's 5 stars; disk 2 is slightly less effective and gets only 4 stars from me, this gives a rating of 4.5 stars.