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 Once more Peter Gabriel sets the standard in DVDs |
 A huge wave of releases is washing through the Genesis camp in autumn 2004. Many of these releases make use of the DVD medium, and there is no sign that this is going to change in the next couple of years. There is just so much material waiting to be published in brillant sound and video quality on DVD. With Peter, we have come to know it doesn't rain but it pours. His new PLAY DVD is not only a collection of all the videos he has released so far, but it is advertised as a production that is going to set standards. And it does, mainly in the sound department. Peter Gabriel gives his fans no choice but to take the step and join him in the 21st century. PLAY is an onion waiting to be peeled. Without a decent dts-surround system you'll barely scratch the outer surface. The DVD comes with a nice digipak in play-doh design and a multicolor-multipage booklet. PLAY brings together 23 music videos from throughout Peters career, though the equally notorious and embarrassing Modern Love video has been tucked away into the bonus material. This, we happily note, makes PLAY a more or less complete collection. We find the well-known videos such as Sledgehammer, Digging In The Dirt, Big Time and The Barry Williams Show - gems that made video design history accompanied by rarities such as the Lovetown and Zaar videos. The latter one had, of course, been previously released on the All About Us sampler. A pleasant surprise is the production of some new videos. Father, Son features emotional images of Peters father and his little son. It is apparently a very recent shot. The Drop was also included, which confirms rumours about the existence of such a video that were brought up a year ago or so. Both this one and the video for Washing Of The Water were very simplistic. This song was rerecorded and it sounds very jazzy. When they say that wine improves with age, this is a very fine drop indeed. For what its worth, it was recorded on a Jools Holland project in 2003. The video for My Head Sounds Like That was not included. It can be found on Anna's Tour DVD. Many songs have brief intros. Contrary to earlier statements by Peter, these are no making-ofs, but short introductions with statements from the time when Peter wrote the song, or new insights. We are also shown parts of the legendary Southbank Show which is, of course, the Making Of of the Security album. It may well be questioned why those snippets precede I Don't Remember, which has been released on his third album. Songs like The Barry Williams Show haven't got a real Making Of either, though it would have been available. Sound and Visuals All the videos come in very good quality. The quality of the images naturally improves the more recent the video is. The stereo mixes are excellent, but they are soon eclipsed by the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and the rich 96kHz / 24 bit dts-sound. This DVD premieres a whole new dts decoder that produces and transmits the high frequencies for the perfect audiophile sound. All songs were especially remastered for the DVD. Most of that was done by Daniel Lanois. Many videos or tracks sound slightly, at times even radically different from the original. A song like Big Time opens up whole new soundscapes, and Steam showcases elements you could never hear in the original album version. Add to that other acoustic effects such as the vocals from the rear speakers in Digging In The Dirt or the 4.1 sound in Solsbury Hill with its mute central speaker. The surround sound is a real treat, and Peter makes use of this technology occasionally to produce over-the-top effects. This is, of course, something we've become familiar with from the Growing Up Live DVD. The Mindblender mix of Kiss That Frog, the minimalistic re-recording of Washing Of The Water and Lovetown are just the tip of the iceberg that is the new dts 5.1 mix. Extras Theres no DVD without extras anymore. Who are we to complain? In the era of the VHS-Vvideo cassette we usually had to do without interesting background stories. The extras on PLAY do not tell any stories, though, they are real extras. And there it is, the so embarrassing video for Modern Love with Peter on the escalators, in rich 5.1 sound. Unfortunately, an old problem remains and the audio track is out of synch with the images. That, however, is only the case with Modern Love and does not extend to The Nest That Sailed The Sky (from the Ovo album), which is another extra. We are also given a taste of the upcoming Festival Show live DVD in the shape of Games Without Frontiers, featuring images from Kaiserslautern, Paleo, Brussels and other shows. This, too, was directed by Hamish Hamilton. Finally, there are trailers for the Secret World Live, Growing Up Live and for Annas DVD and extensive credits. Then, there ist another big extra on PLAY: You can arrange and play the tracks of this DVD in any order you like and, if you want to, you can even turn off the intros. PLAY is another ground-breaking release by Peter Gabriel. With earlier releases, one could complain about picture quality or incompleteness. PLAY, however, is a complete works edition of Peter Gabriel, the visualist. To top that, the new dts sound leaves you totally fascinated. One might wonder about the 5.1 mixes and whether changing the originals to such an extent in some cases was really justified, but there's always the stereo mix. The only real weak point of this DVD is the asynchronous audio track for the Modern Love video. But then there are the highlights: the new version of Washing Of The Water, the 5.1 mixes of Big Time, Digging In The Dirt, Kiss That Frog and Steam, not to mention the live video of Games Without Frontiers as a teaser for Peter's next DVD. Which September will that be released? german version written by Christian Gerhardts translated by Martin Klinkhardt
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