Genesis Revisited

Overall, I found the sound quality to be quite good, definitely above average. I'd give it a 7-8 out of ten overall. Some cuts even higher perhaps. Acoustic guitars in particular sound fabulous in this go round and alone worth the cost of admission for me. A lot of the busier material will be quite challenging to reproduce fully with great detail and full scale on many systems, as is often the case with prog rock recordings. Overall, recording quality as good or better than originals and other similar newer prog rock type recordings I have heard as a whole I would say. Some of the larger orchestral elements in some cuts were clearly mixed in at relatively low levels compared to what might have been done, so they were recessed and not what one would expect in a pure classical release (Hackett has some very fine sounding solo efforts in that genre), but still fairly well recorded and detailed, at least based on what I heard.

I found Hackett took a good bit more liberty (rightfully so) creating new versions/arrangements of his solo material redone here that did not make it into any Genesis albums like A Tower Struck Down and Please Don't Touch. Being more significantly different studio versions of the originals providing more new to digest, I was not able to assess these compared to the originals as well from a single listen.

I picked up the CD, and while I appreciate the difference and treatment from the original tracks, I don't pick up the emotion that the originals had. GRII is professionally subdued. For example, listen to Ripples original and in GRII. The female singer sounds like Marianne Faithful or is on valium. In the original, Phil's vocals soar and he (or Chester?) does rightful violence to the drums ala Bonham. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy GRII, but the spotless studio treatment wrings the life from the music.

As far as sound quality goes, the vinyl is superior to the CD's. The CD's are compressed and victims of the loudness war. I have the 4LP/2CD set and have compared both. For example, the dynamic range of The Musical Box on CD is 7. On vinyl it is 13.