Stray sound to modern ears more like the best of (newly rehabilitated) British Prog Blues, with an added dash of Canterbury style psychedelia. There are moments reminsicent of Mountain and indeed Stray once supported touring them and guitarist Del Bromham still tours with Leslie West of mountain, and hints of Iron Butterfly and Free, much more upbeat. I cannot imagine Stray audiences being sat down. The curious drum and synth opening statement sounds like it ought to be pipes and drums but after that it all settles into classic brit-rock grooves on drums and bass guitar overlaid with imaginative guitar parts, the whole sometimes reminiscent of influences as diverse as Link Wray to Caravan.

After material that would'nt've sounded out of play at Woodstock or monterey, Rock Steady (track 10) reintroduces us oldies to the fashionable effects unit of '77, the Heil Talk Box! This was a compression driver at the foot of a hosepipe designed to emulate the effect of putting your guitar amp speaker in your mouth and shaping the sound with the shape of the guitarist's embouchure! Back then I built a cheapo version using an old 150mm speaker and garden hose, but sadly my DPDT switching unit failed to cut the main speaker and as the guitarist stomped the footswitch I got a howl of microphone feedback through one earpiece that left me monaurally deaf for a couple of days. Hence, your old reviewer has unpleasant associations with the Talk Box. Stray redeem themselves with a homage to Jimi constructed mostly from Hendrix songtitles; corny but cute.

Alive and Giggin' is another reason to own a vivid sounding audio system. Recorded live in 1996 at the Robin hood R'n'B Club in the British West Midlands, the area that's produced more rock music than anywhere else in the world; the same venue where their Live: In Yer Face CD was recorded in 2002. No attempt has been made to remove 50Hz mains hum picked up by the microphones and leads, soundstage is bordering on mono, but it is vibrant lively and fun even if Buying Time (track 8) features that damned Talk Box again. Get home from a hard day at work, pop open a can and play this loud, it's as good a reason to own audio as any.

Robin George: Crying Diamonds and Dangerous Music Live '85

Robin George is fast becoming a one man music industry. Not only is his workaholic ethic plus obsessive attention to detail driving constant output and re-authored output, but in an unusual reversal of fortunes, his record company appear to be under Robin's yoke of workaholic oppression to issue this endles stream of product.

By what Faustian Pact at the Crossroads has Robin George achieved this? Demand Plebs, stage left
Faust only acquired from Mephistpholes a few cheap tricks (not Cheap Trick, the Aussie 12 bar band of the late 70s, famous for specifying 'piss yellow vinyl' for At The Budokan) in exchange for his soul. Has Robin George exchanged his soul for the opportunity to repolish his oevre and apply the craftsmanship gained over an extra quarter century?

"We know recycling is fashionable these days," whinge plebs, stage left, "but why should the same old stuff be foisted upon us all over again like when they conned us to buy CDs of stuff we had on LP?"

Robin anticipates his programme of reissues will offer superior sound quality and the chance to include tracks recorded at the time but rejected due to record company scissors and politics. Moving from those lumbering dinosaur major labels to the industrious scurrying indie labels is ironic for one who was once a mainstay of majors, but such things often travel in circles. Music is now so diverse it is no longer controllable by global industries so of no further interest to them except for cross platform reality show derived product. What goes around comes around (as Robin sings on track 5 of Crying Diamonds) and luckily for the survivors along comes renewed opportunity knocking to apply years of experience to achieve what was always in the mind's ear. Robin likens it to any art restoration project, to clean and illuminate hidden depths, which is what can be achieved by re-mastering recored music. The only risk is the time and trouble taken, he says, which is no risk at all if the result increases personal satisfaction and lays some old ghosts to rest... or even raises them Lazarus like to emerge from the cutting floor into the daylight of a re-release.

Robin George is determined to apply the skills acquired over the ensuing quarter century to hone and polish his earlier work to new levels of perfection using his own studio to achieve "the best possible audio quality utilizing the latest technology that helps me achieve this". Your old scribe has a splendid old '79 Triumph Bonneville which I've owned since '88; I've rebuilt the engine internals but the outside of the machine bears the patina of wear and of all that I have done with it. There are scars on the alloy engine cases from wear from rubbimg braided hoses; there are worn areas on the frame powder coating from where I bungeed a bag of 48 beer cans for a weekend away camping at a biker party, you get the picture. Fellow members of the Triumph owners club awarded it the De Grot rat bike trophy 2 years in a row.

Those same fellow Triumph owners take their bikes off the road in Winter and polish the engine cases with ever finer grades of abrasive polishing compound, retouch stone chipped paint, rechrome parts and reassemble with loving attention to detail. Hence it is a matter of taste, this persuit of polished perfection and the music on Crying Diamonds is immaculately played and produced, but it leaves me wanting more rough edges. It so so polished to perfection that it would sound just as fine on average audio systems. The opening track Learn The dance is one of the finest funk-rock tunes that should've been a hit single and rock club floor filler. Cocoon has more cohones on the recent Life project release, with less compression on drums and what sounds like lower average level on the CD too. However, Robin insists that he always records at just short of clipping (-0.1dB!) so it's a subjective effect and your old scribe can't be bothered to take the CD from the player to measure it. Hence my desire to crank Yesterdays News right up to really hit the spot; it could easily be a Free or an Argent song and Machine could be Heaven 17, such is the diversity. Rock needs a bit of rough. The title track and Kings Call (written by Phil Lynott) are both incredibly strong songs that I'd rather hear played unplugged at 3M distance in a pub back room.

Robin George notes that the differences between Crying Diamonds and Cocoon versions of Cocoon are also explained by Life featuring Nick Tart's more powerful vocals than Robin's own so they do not need to be as elevated in the mix. Life Cocoon is mostly analogue initial recordings while Crying Diamonds is mostly digital. Your old scribe is not suggesting either is superior because both digital and analogue master recordings are an order of magnitude superior to what is possible in the domestic domain, but that each tool invites its own aesthetic in response from the user.

"Two CD's are included in this purchase, so what's the other one like?" enquire plebs, stage left, perfectly reasonably

Absolutely brilliant! Quoth your ageing scribe. This live performance from 1985 has dynamics and you are there qualities in spades. Not the you are there qualities of crossed pair minimalist recordings of harpsichords in Rennaissance churches performing the pre-Bach repertoire, but the you are there qualities of live feed from the desk at the venue. Hence there are quirks (like "good night and see you soon" at the end of track 10, even though there are 6 more tracks to go, including the 4 BBC recorded In Concert bonus tracks. These are the rough edges that keep it fresh.

You can take the boy out of Wolverhampton (British West Midlands again) but you can't take Wolverhampton out of the boy as he thanks the audience with a cheery "Cheers!". Dangerous Music Live '85 alone is worth the cover price; the sound quality is more vibrant (and obviously less polished) with more of the edge and nuances that only good audio systems reproduce and that make the persuit of this hobby so worthwhile. every time I sat down to write this review I listened straight through. What more can I say.

Conclusion

More rock reissues and remasters this month. A salutory lesson in production values and audiophilia. It takes great skill to polish recordings to perfection so they will work fine on a wide range of systems. It takes great audio systems to bring out the best in less produced recordings, especially live recordings. Of the 5 CD's that make up these 3 releases it's the live discs that really make your old scribe move.

Without a supply of well recorded music (whatever the production values) there is no point in audiophilia nervosa. Fortunately the supply shows no signs of drying up.

"When are we going to hear about some minimalist audiophile recordings?", complain plebs, stage left
When some appear with some great music. If you're making them, then submit them for review, clearly some labels don't have the chutzpah to submit their releases to this scrutiny, offers the old one in reply from his lofty mountaintop.