THE CHARISMA YEARS 1970-1978

This expansive new boxed set collects more or less everything Van Der Graaf Generator did during their stint at Charisma. First up you get copies of their albums from The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other through to Vital - an absolutely incredible run by any standards. These are present in new remasters which, to my ears, are somewhat superior to the mid-2000s remasters from Virgin, which leaned a little hard into the "loudness war". The improvements are particularly notable on the earliest albums; for example, on the previous remaster of The Least We Can Do I can hear some notable audio wobbling on Hammill's vocals at around 3 minutes into Darkness 11/11, which has been cleared up here.

The cream of the crop of the Charisma era - H to He Who Am the Only One, Pawn Hearts, Godbluff and Still Life - are present both in their original mixes and brand-new stereo mixes, as well as being provided on Blu-Rays offering both old and new stereo mixes and the by now obligatory surround sound mix. A more interesting Blu-Ray is The Video Vaults, compiling a true treasury of VdGG footage from the era. The Belgian TV appearance playing Theme One and A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers is well-known, and the rather shaky audio and video of them playing Godbluff in full in 1975 has also made the rounds a lot, but there's a brace of TV appearances here which have simply never seen the light of day previously.

The various bonus tracks scattered through the box include most of the After the Flood collection of BBC tracks. It's missing the Aerosol Grey Machine era Peel session from 1968, but if you're eyeballing this box and salivating then you're probably also the sort of big VdGG fan who'd be interested in the recent Esoteric rerelease of The Aerosol Grey Machine, which includes a more complete version of that Peel session on its bonus disc. There's also a hitherto-unreleased Top Gear session from 1970 giving nice versions of Killer and Lost.

(Some confusion may arise from the Peel Concert performance of Man-Erg/W/Killer from 23rd September 1971 being tagged as "previously unreleased", when that Peel Concert is actually on After the Flood; the book in the box clarifies that it's "previously unreleased" in the sense that the version presented here is taken from newly discovered stereo masters, so that's not 100% new material, but it is a nice upgrade.)

The first of the live shows is well-known to collectors - it's from August 1975 in Rimini, sourced from an audience bootleg of varying quality (the early sections of A Louse Is Not a Home are quite shaky, In the Black Room/The Tower is captured surprisingly well for an audience tape).

Tracks from this have filtered out on compilations or as album bonus tracks in the past, but it's still nice to get the set brought together as a whole and given about as good a tidy-up as it can feasibly get given the source; it's sounding about as good hear as I can ever remember this material sounding. There's an extent to which the dark, murky sound quality is actually kind of appropriate to the dark and claustrophobic tone of much of the material, which certainly helps. Still, don't go into this one expecting miracles: this will never sound as good as an official soundboard tape, and while a hero's job has been done to try and tune it up, heroes can only do so much.

The real jewel in the crown of this box is the live show from the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris on the 6th December - a mere 3 days before the last gig that the Banton-Jackson-Evans-Hammill lineup would play in the 1970s (remember, The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome and Vital were played by a somewhat reconfigured group). Highlights of the show had been played on French radio, but the rest was believed lost - but wonderfully, a full set of the tapes from the concert were recently unearthed, allowing the box to present a two-disc presentation of the whole concert.

Here, at last, is the full-fledged high-quality VdGG live album from the glory years of the 1970s and the classic lineup which we fans have pined for so long, and were so convinced we'd never see, and they absolutely kill it, playing like a band possessed. The sound quality isn't perfect - Hammill's microphone disappears into the mix in part of Masks, for instance - but it's as good as we're ever going to get. The version of Meurglys III (The Songwriter's Guild) is a particular highlight, since the long instrumental break in the song is spiced up by a more lively rendition.

Between the audio improvements on the previously-released material and some cracking live rarities, this box is an absolutely incredible offering for fans of the band, a case study in how to do this stuff right. We might hope that the Maison de la Mutualité will see a separate release in some form for those who find the whole box a bit too dear, but for those able to spring for the box it's an absolute treat - and of course getting the most important works of one of the greatest prog bands of all time in the mix is certainly nothing to sneeze at.