Thanks, good review! I'm on the fence about this - the book is the biggest draw for me too.Originally Posted by Valen
Thanks, good review! I'm on the fence about this - the book is the biggest draw for me too.
Never listened to a lot of OT; I'd heard them a couple of times over the years and I remember thinking their sound had a lot of techno/EDM, which is a realm of music I have trouble appreciating. Just pulled up Pungent Effulgent based on the fantastic story from the comments and I'm really enjoying it. The moods & atmospheres remind me a bit of Hawkwind but with way more athletic playing. I do enjoy using box sets as an opportunity to deep-dive artists I don't know that well (did that with Kayak, Focus & Golden Earring) and I may actually pick this up if it stays available at a decent price for awhile.
Listen to my music at https://electricbrainelectricshadow.bandcamp.com/
Darn it, Valen, your review made me buy this! The book is the main attraction for me - I like reading about the scene at those shows, and the story of the band, so this one was sort of a must-have thing for me. I went with ImportCDs.com - it came to $81, so some savings over Burning Shed's price with shipping.
Hardly have any Ozric (Swirly Terminations is the only one I have at home), so I could be tempted but two things draw me back
1- Ozric is one of those bands where you have two albums of theirs, you have them all. (they're so much sameu)
2- it's again a bloody boxset without the individual sleeves and artwork (doesn't count in the stupid book), which makes it dofficult to extract an album out of the box (towards the car for ex) and follow the tracks list & stuff without taking the book or the whole box with you
I rarely miss the occasion to see them on stage when they're in my neck of the woods and would've probablu liked to buy more than I own, but I hardly need a sabotaged boxset.
yup, it helped me turning it down (for reasons stated above)
thx anyways.
yup, reasonable price too, but AFAIK, no major unreleased elsewhere bonus, from what I gather so far.
Last edited by Trane; 01-27-2022 at 05:03 AM.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
That's true.
The thing is that if you don’t buy it, later when it’s OOP you’ll be seized with regret and self-loathing and it may require expensive therapy to get past.
It’s also possible that this may happen if you do buy it of course.
Disagree. There's plenty of variety, especially from Pungent Effulgent through Arborescence.
Oh man.. I just did it.. I have said to myself so many times that I'll never buy the Vitamin Box again. I wasn't to crazy about the 2013 version to be honest. Based on the review I got both the Vitamin Box and the new one tonight.. My birthday is coming up soon-ish so..I will be telling the wifey that I just wanted to give myself some gifts this year
The only thing I don't have is the rarities disc, and to pay this much for one disc is way too much, even for a band I enjoy. If that disc ever gets released separately I will pick it up.
Please don't ask questions, just use google.
Never let good music get in the way of making a profit.
I'm only here to reglaze my bathtub.
I don’t have the 2013 CDs for comparison, but these sound absolutely fantastic on my study system (with stand-mount speakers). Gotta give them a run on the main rig when I get a chance.
Just got this in the mail yesterday, and it's a lovely book/set. I'm in the process of ripping it all to my PC now.
As an aside, has anyone else noticed that "White Rhino Tea (earlier, stranger mix)" does not appear on the actual rarities CD itself? It doesn't appear in the index, even though the book says it's on there. Wondering what's up with that...
"what's better, peanut butter or g-sharp minor?"
- Sturgeon's Lawyer, 2021
Bloody hippies!As an aside, has anyone else noticed that "White Rhino Tea (earlier, stranger mix)" does not appear on the actual rarities CD itself? It doesn't appear in the index, even though the book says it's on there. Wondering what's up with that...
I had a buddy who was interested in OT after hearing me play Erpland. I told him to start there and then go every 10 years or so
after.; Hidden Step, Paper Monkeys and Space for Earth. I told him this should ensure some variety as they can be a tad samey from album to album.
Again, I just don't hear that "sameyness" on Erpland, Pungent Effulgent, Strangeitude and Jurassic Shift. Those albums cook. (That being said, I do like The Hidden Step and Paper Monkeys a lot!)
The cool thing about that boxset would be to have the good artworks expoloded to coffee table book or vinyl format. :X
I'm not sure I ever saw any Ozric album in vinyl format. I'm not even sure all their classic albums ever got a vinyl release back then - or at all.
Seen Ozric on stage a few times (5 or 7, methinks) sduring the 90-10's (always fun - danceable toking music), but I was incapable to tell on which album the track playing was on, further (not) helped that the band rarely spoke to the public and when doing so, usually, it wasn't to announce which track was coming up or just finished playing. The instrumental nature of the band also didn't help in recognizing easily the tracks. I guess the band thought (rightfully, maybe) that its loyal following knew it and therefore it was unnecessary to do so.
I've stopped paying attention for their studio or live release catalogue after Hidden Step and Terminations, but yeah, I guess I should own one more album of theirs - from the 'classic era" between Pungent and Arborescence - probably Erpland .
Last edited by Trane; 01-27-2022 at 05:15 AM.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
My copy from Importcds escaped the Jersey City vortex and arrived this morning. Good weekend, with beautiful weather (today), the IQ Archive set just arrived, and now this Ozrics set! Can't wait to dig in. I do wish the colors on the cover were a bit more vibrant; very subdued for the Ozrics. I haven't unwrapped it yet, but did Ed Wynn do the artwork on the Ozrics album covers? The sticker seems to imply that. If so I had no idea, and he's a talented visual artist!
BTW, I said upthread that Importcds had not gotten the set in stock, but they did, maybe just a day or two late.
Last edited by JKL2000; 02-12-2022 at 03:56 PM.
Jed, post that Ozrics set in Prog Collectors! I don't think we've seen it show up yet.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Will do!
Found a nice review on the set on the Expose website (Expose is still posting lots of new reviews, incidentally! Ill provide the link to the page as well. I haven't yet removed the shrinkwrap - or as I call it, the condom - from this bad boy, so today's the day I get lucky!:
http://expose.org/index.php/articles...-circle-3.html
Ozric Tentacles — Travelling the Great Circle
(Kscope KSCOPE564, 1993/2022, 7CD+DVD+Book)
by Peter Thelen, Published 2022-02-20
This massive set containing an 80-page LP-sized hardbound book, a DVD, and seven CDs (including remasters of the band’s first five regular releases) is something of a 30 year anniversary of what many would agree is Ozrics’ strongest creative period. Wearing their influences on their sleeves (You era Gong, Tim Blake, Steve Hillage, Hawkwind, and Kraan, to name but a few) they consolidated those ideas into a wholly fresh approach, almost purely instrumental, and intensely psychedelic. After six cassette releases that slowly developed their trademark sound from humble beginnings, in 1989 the band released their very first long player, Pungent Effulgent, featuring numerous strong entries like “Ayurvedic,” “Dissolution (The Clouds Disperse),” “Phalarn Dawn,” and “Kick Muck,” not to mention the beautiful swirly psychedelic cover artwork by Blim. The following year, the band’s second LP, Erpland, was released — a double album this time containing timeless classics like “Sunscape,” “Crackerblocks,” “Eternal Wheel,” “Snakepit,” “Toltec Spring,” “Valley of a Thousand Thoughts,” and the title track; three songs per side stretch out to make this one of the band’s most satisfying LPs, but about the same time, both Erpland and Pungent received CD releases, the latter adding a couple bonus tracks. With only a couple weeks of studio time available, the band’s next album, Strangeitude, sounds like the rush job that it was, though the gimmicky “Sploosh” gave the band some much needed radio play, and the album features some real gems like the reworking of “White Rhino Tea” (originally on the Sliding Gliding Worlds cassette) and the amazing title track. With their star on the rise, it was time to release a live document in the form of Live Underslunky, first available on cassette, though it would find a wider release on double LP and CD months later. Featuring recordings from November 1991; the versions of “O-I,” “Sunscape,” and “Erpland” are nothing short of superb, but it’s “Kick Muck” that will have the listener hanging onto their seat. By comparison, the band had their own studio and all the time they needed to create their 1993 studio album, Jurassic Shift, an album that seems to get the band back on track for another masterpiece like Erpland, with strong cuts like “Sunhair,” “Stretchy,” “Half Light in Thallai,” the title track, and “Vita Voom” — another song that garnered airplay for the band. And thus ends the period covered by this set, all five lovingly remastered. If one needs justification for the purchase, just go have a look at the original Dovetail label releases of these — they will no doubt be bronzing away with bit rot and likely won’t play well, if they play at all.
The two additional CDs in the set include Demos & Rarities, which includes four extended tracks, the highlights being “Saucers,” “Weirditude,” and a sidelong slab of “Ayurvedism” that stretches out to a full nineteen minutes. The Remix Disc contains five remixes of “Sunhair” (System 7), “Strangeitude” (Eat Static), “Eternal Wheel” (Zion Train), “Pteranodon,” and “Sploosh” (Simon Postford aka Hallucinogen), it’s a scaled down version (only five tracks) of the previously released Floating Seeds Remixed CD. I’ll be frank when I say that for me, none of these remixes hold a candle to the original versions, though your mileage may vary. Which brings us to the DVD, featuring a complete show from 1991 at the Fridge in Brixton, drawing material from Eprpland, Pungent, and earlier, a couple of the ten pieces are improvs to be found nowhere else. The audio of the Brixton set is quite engaging, and their hyper-psychedelic light show is in top form; my only complaint is that whoever made the video decided to superimpose their own psychedelic drug experience over the entire recording, unfortunately further muddying up the video to the point where one can’t see any detail in the performance, other than flutist John Egan dancing and prancing all over the stage (and not playing flute very much), other players can be seen at times here and there amid the ongoing swirling lysergic haze; I found it more satisfying to just close my eyes and listen and forego the headache of having to watch someone else’s hallucinations. By contrast, the DVD extras feature several clips from larger outdoor festivals and other venues, plus the MTV featured video of “Vita Voom” as well as other goodies. This is one of those cases where the extra features — at least from a visual standpoint — are better than the main feature.
Now comes the book. It’s an LP-sized coffee table style book, 80 pages total, and goes deep into The Ozric’s history, from the beginning, even before the beginning with Ed and Roly Wynne’s childhood endeavors, and how the band initially came to be, as well as a step-by-step through their cassette tape years. Text and images are roughly balanced throughout, offering many informative anecdotes about the individual songs, sessions, and many other details. Photos abound of the band in its various stages through the mid 90s, concert handbills, ticket stubs, and much more. Most of the citations are from Ed Wynne, but all of the other members get their thoughts in regarding the band’s rich and convoluted timeline during this period of growth. Whether one just wants to look at photos, or concentrate on reading the full history of the band to that point, the book is truly the centerpiece of Travelling the Great Circle, and offers many interesting hours of time travel and reading while one listens to the seven CDs packaged within its covers.
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