BJH THROUGH THE EYES OF JOHN LEES: ECHOES OF A BRAVE NEW WORLD

There's a certain amount of barrel scrapping and sleight of hand going on here. Clearly the record label were not satisfied with sales of Barclay James Harvest Through the Eyes of John Lees' "Nexus" and "Revival - live" albums. Having already combined them into a budget priced double album called "Brave new world", they now extract tracks from each to form a single CD compilation. What's even more unforgivable is they do not even fill the single disc! I understand by the way, that the band had no control over the release of this album.

As a result, what we have here is a hotchpotch combination of studio and live songs. The track list may give the false impression that some of the songs are from the archive, but rest assured, even the versions of "Mocking bird", "Titles", "Galadriel" etc, are all taken from these two albums.

The music here is undeniably of a consistently high quality, but with the "Brave new world" compilation which contains all the tracks on both albums being readily available at a budget price (sometimes under alternate titles), there is little reason to waste good money on this opportunist release.