Lovingly copy & pasted for your reading pleasure.
Also note that I wrote this review almost immediately after I got the 70-75 boxset, and I was trying to look on the bright side, so I went (relatively) easy on it. It's since soured on me a lot more.
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The New Mixes
These mixes range from mediocre to good for the most part and definitely are not worth trading in your old CD versions for. Everything has been made clearer, which is good. You can hear all the instruments individually, which isn't necessarily good. Overall dynamics are lost as most of the quieter parts (and a lot of the already loud parts) are way louder than they used to be, which is bad. The 5.1 Mixes are reportedly all-around fantastic but I can't hear them so I'm only commenting on the stereo versions.
Trespass
Hands down, the best new mix. When I listened to the old version I heard: "deedle, deedle, deedle, THE KNIFE". But this version brings out the other songs wonderfully. Everything sounds crystal clear but it's not overdone.
Nursury Cryme
All the quiet parts of "The Musical Box" are brought way up which I don't really like, but the other tracks sound alright. "Fountain of Salmacis" is a standout
Foxtrot
Some dodgy bits in the mix but I can't remember any specifics. Again, mostly dynamic ones with quiet parts being too loud.
Selling England By the Pound
They fucked up the transition between "Cinema Show" and "Aisle of Plenty". The latter now starts when the "Moonlit Knight" reprise bit starts, instead of when the vocals come in like the old version does. And it's a little awkward.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
I was expecting big things for this mix but I was greatly disappointed. The old, more muddy, mix gave the album an otherworldly quality that sounded like nothing else. This version just sounds 'bleh'. Most of the 'flaws' of the old mix are gone or smoothed out (for example, the oddly loud vocals in parts of "Broadway Melody"), but I liked those flaws, they helped give the album character. The biggest mess-ups are "In The Cage" and "Back in NYC". They turned the keyboards way down and brought up the guitar, which would be good on any other song (and there are many songs here that are better for it) but not on these two tracks which are both extremely dependent on the keyboards for their eerie atmosphere. The problem with dynamics is also at its largest here. On the other albums, it's usually only little quiet bits that are brought louder. But here there are entire songs that should be quiet and these are all cranked as loud as everything else, (though I'll admit, "The Waiting Room" actually benefits from this). So, thumbs down for this one.
Extras
"Happy The Man" and "Twilight Alehouse" both sound terrific (except that the guitar solo in "Twilight Alehouse" is either missing or turned way down). The other stuff is moderately interesting (especially the "Jackson Tapes" with working versions of "The Musical Box", "Salmacis", and "Anyway") but nothing you'd want to hear more than a few times. The packaging is a major fault. Why do the other albums come in jewel cases but "The Lamb" and "Extras" come in little hardcover books with paper sleeves? And would it have hurt them to list the songs in the proper order?
The liner notes are a joke. The write ups totally suck. I don't know about you, but when I read liner notes I want to gain some insight into the band. The liner notes about Nursery Cryme should be about Nursery Cryme, not their other albums, so don't go off on tangents about how you failed to get layed after playing a girl "Supper's Ready". Nearly all the write-ups have little personal anecdotes that I don't care about at all. Not one, but two of them name checks The Sex Pistols (???). And why are pictures from the wrong era put with each set of liner notes? When I want to read about Nursery Cryme I want to look at pictures from that period dammit! Roger Taylor wrote the liner notes for Foxtrot and he comes across as a twit. He apologizes for rambling even though he only wrote three shitty paragraphs. Thankfully, Richard Macphail's notes on Trespass are great, actually giving some insight into their earliest period. Why couldn't the other notes be like that? Tony and Peter also write little paragraphs, but they're entirely pointless. All they say is "We did some songs that weren't on the albums!" and "My voice sounds horrible on these songs!" and Tony references what Peter wrote so his paragraph should come second but it doesn't. Most annoyingly of all, why are all the liner notes for each album crammed together into the "Extras" booklet? They should be included in the booklets of their respective albums.
Video
Most of these I've seen before so there weren't many surprises here. Some of the footage is pretty low quality but that can be forgiven as better quality versions probably no longer exist. The only major complaint is that the performances aren't on their corresponding disks. The live stuff on the Foxtrot DVD is entirely from Nursery Cryme so why wasn't it on that DVD? The live footage is also extremely biased towards Nursury Cryme and Foxtrot with only two tracks from Selling England and zero from The Lamb. But I suppose that they had to make use of what they had.
As for the interviews, the shots are occasionally slightly blurry and the audio chooses it's own volume (so I had to constantly adjust the volume levels) which is very annoying, but the interviews themselves are great.
Keep in mind that my rating is not for the albums themselves (which are among the best of all time) but for the package overall along with the new mixes and other things. They could have done this way better, but I'm still glad it exists and that I bought it. But I'll keep holding on to my old copies of these albums thank you very much.
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I wrote that almost a year ago, since then I've let the set sink in a bit more and every time I hate it a little bit more. Most of the stuff that I pointed out as highlights now bugs me as much as the stuff that I didn't. I don't know why I let "Twilight Alehouse" off so easy, when the guitar solo is COMPLETELY MISSING. There's absolutely no excuse for that shit. All subtlety is completely gone from the mixes, and Genesis music thrives on subtlety. None of the songs have that "punch" any more, they all sound flat. Additionally tons of songs use alternate takes for various parts, which is basically sacrilege.
The live video footage has no excuse for being such shitty quality. Why wasn't that material given an overhaul? It certainly needed restoration more then anything else on the set.
And I still have no idea if the 5.1 mixes are any good or not, so I basically spent a bunch of extra money on mixes I can't play. What a waste.