GENESIS 1976 - 1982

Want to hear an album like Trick in all its glory? Buy a used, minty $5 LP at a store near you and crank that beauty. One of the best productions in prog history. Here, it sounds just like any other modern mix that tries to put the detail of every single instrument up front and sacrifices overall warmth and subtlety. Ah, subtlety... Something Genesis always brought to the turntable but isn't within a hundred miles of this boxset. Sometimes I think that's how technology is often used to sell people music they already own: Make something they never noticed before jump out of the mix so people salivate about hearing a new detail they didn't recall.

If you want to hear classic late 70s/early 80s Genesis sound like it is being broadcast on FM radio, then this is the ticket. The disrespect to the original mixes here is nothing short of depressing. We're not talking about something that will only disappoint purists, but work so drastic that it has arguably been the most controversial remastering of the past decade. I'm not sure I have ever read so many negative reviews about a remastering job, and if you are curious about such commentary, your search engine will surely reveal enough reading for a lifetime. Even some of the defenders of this set have admitted that they can only tolerate it at low volumes. Should this be the way we have to listen to music!? I like music that makes me want to turn it up and experience the sound as I become emotionally engaged in the sonics, not music that makes me feel like maybe I should watch some TV after ten minutes. This stuff is a thrill ride for a few minutes, but how anyone could listen to Genesis in this fashion on a constant basis is something I cannot fathom.

Suffice to say that this stuff has clearly been pummeled (and I mean *pummeled*) with compression in the remixing process. The subtle elements of the original mixes are just squashed. Everything is loud, in your face, and dynamically limited beyond reason.

The Defintive Editions weren't definitive, and most audiophiles I know seek out the early Virgin/Charisma CDs with those horrible cropped covers (most of which look bad but SOUND great!). However, compared to this stuff, even those DEs were glorious. The DEs may have been digitally no- noised (ick!) and inferior to the original UK discs (and some US discs) by ten miles, but even they were 100 miles better than this approach. I don't hear any digital noise reduction on these, which is good, but the compression is simply unbearable to my ears. You can almost feel the compressor just pumping on some of this stuff. The sonic approach seems akin to the worst trip (nightmare) imagineable: Vintage Genesis being mixed to appeal to the modern dance club crowd or something...

No thanks.