1983-1998 CD/DVD Boxset - North American release Info & pre-order links

[Christian]

The New Boxset covers the albums from 1983-1998

Genesis (1983)
Invisible Touch (1986)
We Can't Dance (1991)
Calling All Stations (1997)

plus an Extra CD/DVD with Non-album tracks, which are:
On The Shoreine
Hearts On Fire
Do The Neurotic
Feedng The Fire
I'd Rather Be You
Anything Now
Sign Your Life Away
Run Out Of Time

The CDs contain the new Stereo-Mixes by Nick Davis from 2006/2007
The DVDs contain the CD content in Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts 5.1 Surround Mixes, plus visual extras

A complete list can be found here

The Boxset 1983-1998 (5x CD/DVD - NTSC) will be released November 20.

last update (pre-order links / prices): 06th Oct 2007

Preorder the Box at
amazon-com | CDuniverse ($79.98)

individual albums:

Genesis (CD/DVD)
(pre)order: to follow soon

Invisible Touch (CD/DVD)
(pre)order: to follow soon

We Can't Dance (CD/DVD)
(pre)order: to follow soon

Calling All Stations (CD/DVD)
(pre)order: to follow soon

[Danlaw83]

As soon as I get good couple of listens to the albums, and Christian puts up the stickys for the new boxed set, I will put the reviews up.....here is a little tease for ALL......Mama is the complete, extended version....longer fade out...Fantastic!

[DownAndOut]

No, the remixed "Mama" isn't the long version. It's not the album version or the single mix, either--it's the long version faded to fit the same time as the album version.

And in stereo (can't comment on 5.1, which doesn't interest me anyway) it's a total disaster.

The reverb is absurd, the drums come close to trampling the vocal and the compression is even worse than that on the first box. All Nick Davis had to do was master the thing at higher volume, with less hiss. Instead, he has mixed what amounts to a parody of PC's gated drum sound and use of the limiter on his vocals. It''s heartbreaking.

Elsewhere on the discs, a few not unpleasant surprises lurk, with slight changes to the vocals (inserted from other takes) during the last minutes of "Anything She Does," "Since I Lost You" and "Dreaming While You Sleep." The guitar solo is different at the end of "The Brazilian," there's new percussion at the start of "Hearts on Fire," and several of the fades throughout the set are slightly longer. There are moments when the high compression and overbrightness benefit the songs: "Just a Job to Do" pops (though Davis, counterintuitively, has sliced the reverb off the snare hits during the last verse), and "Silver Rainbow" pushes Rutherford's busy bass part up to appropriate levels.

But man, the new mix of "Mama" is an unmitigated train wreck, and throughout the discs, Phil's voice and drums seem overwhelmed by the glaring new polish on Banks' keyboard parts and the stifling flatness of the compressed mixes. Hold on to your 3-inch CD single of the extended version ("It's Gonna Get Better" is the standard album version on the new CD) of "Mama" and your 180-gram Simply Vinyl pressing of the self-titled album.

[Squonkman]

Originally Posted by DownAndOut

No, the remixed "Mama" isn't the long version. It's not the album version or the single mix, either--it's the long version faded to fit the same time as the album version.

And in stereo (can't comment on 5.1, which doesn't interest me anyway) it's a total disaster.

The reverb is absurd, the drums come close to trampling the vocal and the compression is even worse than that on the first box. All Nick Davis had to do was master the thing at higher volume, with less hiss. Instead, he has mixed what amounts to a parody of PC's gated drum sound and use of the limiter on his vocals. It''s heartbreaking.

Elsewhere on the discs, a few not unpleasant surprises lurk, with slight changes to the vocals (inserted from other takes) during the last minutes of "Anything She Does," "Since I Lost You" and "Dreaming While You Sleep." The guitar solo is different at the end of "The Brazilian," there's new percussion at the start of "Hearts on Fire," and several of the fades throughout the set are slightly longer. There are moments when the high compression and overbrightness benefit the songs: "Just a Job to Do" pops (though Davis, counterintuitively, has sliced the reverb off the snare hits during the last verse), and "Silver Rainbow" pushes Rutherford's busy bass part up to appropriate levels.

But man, the new mix of "Mama" is an unmitigated train wreck, and throughout the discs, Phil's voice and drums seem overwhelmed by the glaring new polish on Banks' keyboard parts and the stifling flatness of the compressed mixes. Hold on to your 3-inch CD single of the extended version ("It's Gonna Get Better" is the standard album version on the new CD) of "Mama" and your 180-gram Simply Vinyl pressing of the self-titled album.

Nick Davis is quoted in an interview on this site as stating that they recorded no NEW material at all, so there isn't any added guitar solos or new percussion, you are just hearing a different mix.

[DownAndOut]

I know nothing new was recorded. That doesn't mean that parts recorded during the original sessions haven't been spliced in as part of the new mixes. These aren't aspects that were merely inaudible before; they weren't there.

[Squonkman]

Originally Posted by DownAndOut

I know nothing new was recorded. That doesn't mean that parts recorded during the original sessions haven't been spliced in as part of the new mixes. These aren't aspects that were merely inaudible before; they weren't there.

hmmm, I would be surprised that he would do that. He was pretty clear that they didn't ADD anything to the mixes. I will have to go back and reread the interview. By remixing and bringing some instruments up in the mix and de-emphasizing others, you may be hearing stuff that was simply buried before. I doubt if he altered the recordings. He never said anything about splicing in stuff that had been left off. Tony would have been adament about adding stuff or altering the songs, and he listened to every note of the new mixes.

[DownAndOut]

Whatever the reason--faulty memory, a heretofore undiscussed desire to surprise fans, overconfidence in someone's recollection of the CD as we consumers know (knew) it, familiarity with a range of takes and tapes that we'll never know--Davis and whoever signed off on these reissues let through several slight but obvious differences. That three of them are on "We Can't Dance" suggests the overfamiliarity angle, given that it was Davis' baby to begin with. (The three that jump out at me on that disc are an impressive two0-second vocal melisma starting at 3:14 on "Since I Lost You," the entrance of the "We all agree" and "It's just the way of the world" countervocals a chorus earlier on "Way of the World" (starting at 3:32 and 3:41, respectively) and an "ohhh" at 6:54 of "Dreaming While You Sleep" similar to the one at the end of the first chorus.) Curious what all of you think (or will think when you hear them).

[martinus]

DaO, you make it sound as it Nick intentionally changed bits from the original recordings but that is not true at all. Though it is quite possible that Nick Davis occasionally picked a different takes for the new remixes, he did not do it intentionally - possibly was not even aware that it was a different take. As he explained in the interview with www.genesis-news.com:

Originally Posted by Nick Davis

The paperwork in those early days wasn't really good. So trying to find the track sheets is a lot harder. So I have a perfect multitrack, I know what song it is but I have no idea which tracks were used for the song.
I can work out most of them but - I just did a recall of More Fool Me as we speak and there are three lead vocals and no tracksheet so we didn't know which was was used for the lead vocal. So we had to analyse which track sings which line.

(You can find the whole interview here: His Own Special Way .)

[jebho62]

Originally Posted by DownAndOut

Whatever the reason--faulty memory, a heretofore undiscussed desire to surprise fans, overconfidence in someone's recollection of the CD as we consumers know (knew) it, familiarity with a range of takes and tapes that we'll never know--Davis and whoever signed off on these reissues let through several slight but obvious differences. That three of them are on "We Can't Dance" suggests the overfamiliarity angle, given that it was Davis' baby to begin with. (The three that jump out at me on that disc are an impressive two0-second vocal melisma starting at 3:14 on "Since I Lost You," the entrance of the "We all agree" and "It's just the way of the world" countervocals a chorus earlier on "Way of the World" (starting at 3:32 and 3:41, respectively) and an "ohhh" at 6:54 of "Dreaming While You Sleep" similar to the one at the end of the first chorus.) Curious what all of you think (or will think when you hear them).

Originally Posted by martinus

DaO, you make it sound as it Nick intentionally changed bits from the original recordings but that is not true at all. Though it is quite possible that Nick Davis occasionally picked a different takes for the new remixes, he did not do it intentionally - possibly was not even aware that it was a different take. As he explained in the interview with www.genesis-news.com:

(You can find the whole interview here: His Own Special Way .)

Good ear though picking those differences out....whew!!!!

[DownAndOut]

No, I don't make it sound like anything of the kind. I'm just stating what's audible. I'm not attacking Davis' intentions--I'm saying he did a lousy job in some cases and pointing out that there are clear differences (that aren't lousy at all) in other cases. You're the one ascribing motivation to him--I don't know what's in the man's head, whereas you're keen to explain and defend him. My point about using different takes is simply: No matter how hard it is to track down this or that master, I bet someone could have got his hands on one of the actual old CDs (available for cheap from any used CD store in the world, for starters) for the sake of rough comparison. I don't care how or why it happened; I just know that I feel punished for wanting to hear these mixes in stereo rather than surround, because the two-channel mixes sound like a muddled afterthought. I still love the music and believe in everyone's basic decency and the nobility of the effort--I just wish that, as is the case in many big remastering projects, more than one engineer had been involved.