Oh Mr Amazon, with this cheap box set / bargain item, etc...

There were the usual competing anniversary boxes during his centenary year. I don't remember if emi did one. The Sony one wasn't very good. I seem to recall the UMG was the one to get.

late to this conversation but I order classical from arkiv, they're great: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/main.jsp

we had a store in town with an actually quite good classical section but they changed hands this year and the classical's gone.

Arkiv has the Solti Ring Cycle in its latest remastering on sale for 37 bucks, or at least they did a few days ago.

I bought this Deutsche Grammofon 17CD Debussy Box when it came out, and I think it's pretty excellent. Though admittedly I don't too many other Debussy discs to compare it to, Jon can probably tell how this recordings compare to others?

"I don't own too many other Debussy discs"

The Sony Debussy has some really good Boulez stuff but the piano music is probably covered better elsewhere.

Not that it isn't very good.

Yeah it's the piano stuff on the Sony that sorta let it down, the Boulez Columbia stuff is awes

Sun Ra, "Four Classic Albums", under a tenner: Jazz By Sun Ra / Supersonic Jazz / Jazz In Silhouette / The Futuristic Sounds Of Sun Ra plus bonus CD of ludicrous 50s singles

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Classic-Albums-Audio-Sun/dp/B007VA1YE8/ref=sr_1_5?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1437943894&sr=1-5

Ha, I've just noticed Cecil Taylor, SEVEN Classic Albums, £6.80!!!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00B1D6XJW?keywords=cecil%20taylor&qid=1437944296&ref_=sr_1_5&s=music&sr=1-5

Albums:
Jazz Advance (1956)
At Newport (1958)
Looking Ahead (1959)
Stereo Drive (Hard Driving Jazz) (1959)
Love For Sale (1959)
The World Of Cecil Taylor (1960)
New York City R & B (with Buell Neidinger) (1961)

You're better off with this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Collection-1956-1962-Cecil-Taylor/dp/B00JWS9I9U

Jazz Advance
At Newport
Looking Ahead
Stereo Drive
Love For Sale
The World Of Cecil Taylor
New York City R&B
Into The Hot
Live At Cafe Montmartre

The Cafe Montmartre disc is crucial.

This is a lot of Tchaikovsky for £28, though possibly more than i would ever want:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tchaikovsky-Edition-Various-Artists/dp/B00FP45TT8/ref=pd_sim_15_43?ie=UTF8&refRID=01X5AFNH7YVFD64BCNPA

Faure Edition for £16 is very good value:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faur%C3%A9-Various/dp/B00EZCVEPY/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1438082094&sr=1-1&keywords=faure+edition

Do read reviews when it comes to Brilliant Classics box sets, they are all over the map when it comes to performance and recording quality. That Faure one does look great! I've heard good things about a lot of those recordings in their former incarnations.

Other Brilliant boxes that are strongly rec'd:

Complete Shostakovich symphonies - Barshai
Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas - Friedrich Gulda
Complete Haydn String Quartets - Buchberger Qtet

i only know faure's requiem and the pavanne. hows the rest of his stuff?

i mostly know the chamber music. a mysterious reserve cloaking a volcanic inner radiance?

the other cecil taylor is twice the price

and both are missing a track from at least one album

a mysterious reserve cloaking a volcanic inner radiance?

ha, sounds good to me!

Faure is one of my favourites, but it's kinda hard to pin him down. Often quite romantic, but never corny, and even though he's best known (I think?) for serene, straightforwardly melodic works, there's a lot of proto-modernist anxiety in his works too, especially the later ones.

I don't know about the quality of the the Brilliant Classics set (like Jon said, it's a budget label with a lot of variance in quality, though some of their comps are quite good), but these two Erato boxes are quite fantastic, and they'll provide you with pretty much all of his chamber music you'll ever need:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oeuvres-Pour-Piano-Collard-Rigutto/dp/B000V1Z0H6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faur%C3%A9-Musique-Chambre-Various-Artists/dp/B0040UEIA4

Like with most French composers of his era, the piano and chamber music forms the most essential part of his oeuvre, but there are a few orchestral works you should check out too, like the aforementioned Pavane and, especially, the Requiem - it's pretty much my favourite classical requiem of all time. There are a kazillion recordings of it, but this Philippe Herreweghe one is my favourite.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faur%C3%A9-Requiem-Messe-p%C3%AAcheurs-Gabriel/dp/B000027O2A

It's a recording of the earlier, more stripped-down version of the Requiem from 1893, which I think sounds more sublime than the later revised version, which is the one that usually gets performed and recorded.

This British recording of the Requiem from last year is really good too:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Faure-Requiem-Choir-College-Cambridge/dp/B00L5J4Q5K

The recording quality on it is excellent, the sound is so lovely and intimate. And if you have SACD player and surround speakers, you get a nice 5.1 mix, though (like all hybrid SACDs) the disc plays in regular CD players as well.

Thanks tuomas!

I think the first of those two erato sets is also part of the brilliant box

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LOrgue-Francais-Marie-Claire-Alain/dp/B00M8AQZFO

This is not the cheapest of box sets, but I've been long fascinated with French organ music, so this 18CD Erato set is like manna to me! First of all, Marie-Claire Alain is pretty much the best classical organist I've come across, and the breadth of this set is pretty amazing: Couperin, Marchand, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Widor, Faure, Duruflé, Poulenc, Jehan Alain (Marie-Claire's brother who died in WWII), Messiaen... Out of these, I've only owned the Messiaen and the Duruflé/Alain sets before, so I can't wait to get to hear the rest!

Sorry, it's 22 CDs, not 18.

That sounds awesome.

Hello thread. This Ornette box is ridiculously cheap (and the mastering is great): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ornette-Coleman-Complete-Atlantic-Recordings/dp/B00RC9WLAO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438934587&sr=8-1&keywords=ornette+coleman

Slight warning with thaht version of the Ornette deal, it's being fulfilled from Amazon somewhere in Europe so P+p is higher. But still may be cheaper than elsewhere. Beauty Is A Rare Thing after all.

Not sure what is on that that hadn't been released on the lps yet. But I think it is basically everything they recorded for Atlantic so is pretty comprehensive. Spread across 5 discs.

Six discs, actually. I've owned that box since '93, and while the music is superb, be advised that the tracks appear in recording session order, not album order; if you want to hear the original albums, you'll have to create them as iTunes playlists or re-tag them after importing, or whatever. That said, there's basically a full CD's worth of bonus tracks, some of which are fantastic ("I Heard It Over The Radio" is my favorite). To me, that's an every-home-should-have-one item.

Thanks for the heads up on that one chinaski!

I've never listened to any Coleman but that box set is too good a price to pass up as my introduction. Thanks!

'Box set' might be overcooking it slightly but £5 for this great Nina Simone live trilogy is peanuts http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Trilogy-Nina-Simone/dp/B00D7W7330/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1439239070&sr=8-1&keywords=Nina+simone+live+trilogy

This thread b costin me money.

Ornette and the "20th Cent" boxes, lately.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91WX0K3DHeL._SL1500_.jpg

^ this thing is £8 at the moment, but what the heck are those records? I only know the obvious one

Parzival are more prog-folk than krautrock imo. La Dusseldorf's Silver Cloud is really lovely. That Gift album is pretty cool - kind of heavy pysch overlapping with kraut.

I have the idea that Message sound like early Genesis in my head but idk if that's right. I don't know the Asterix.

Parzival is rubbish, haven't heard the rest, £8 for a La Dusseldorf album, can no doubt get it cheaper.

... I mean, obv. I've heard the La D LP that is.

I quite like Parzival. I do have a high tolerance for European prog-folk though.

Still, that Krautrock eh? Great stuff.

it is tremendously clunky marketing isn't it? really ugly design too

Asterix is pre-Lucifer's Friend, dual male vocalist heavy rock stuff, Deep/Heep vibes. I like it but that's no surprise.

I think Message are one of the seeming legions of German bands that liked Nektar a lot.

Gift album's pretty good German hard but psychy rock, the song "Drugs" is great.

it is tremendously clunky marketing isn't it? really ugly design too

But Wait! There's More...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81gTGRt8SuL._SL1464_.jpg

Yes, those well-know Grunge outfits Soul Coughing & Uncle Tupelo are included in this overview!

Yeah seems there are some odd inclusions in a number of those sets, I think the Punk USA was just reviewed in Record Collector saying similar.
BUt there have been some great ones. The Tim Buckley one has Blue Afternoon which has otherwise been unavailable on cd for years.
& the Terry Reid has River which makes that widely available.
I think there was an Alice cooper taht had some of teh early lps in it, definitely including Love It To Death

I think those are the same series, but I think there area couple of labels running similar series at the moment.
Also not sure what it means in terms of remastering.

Yeah, I have that early Alice Cooper one, one of the best certainly.

that grunge set looks particularly revolting even though i actually like a couple of those bands. reckon you could probably get all the original cds in that grunge set for about £0.01 each, so who would buy it i just don't know.

thnx gott punch for german rock knowledge btw

The single-artist ones can be great - there's a 3CD one that has the remastered versions of the Sisters of Mercy albums, bonus tracks and all, for $10. I just bought that last night, along with a 5CD set by Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. Overall I have about 20 of these sets - the Warners versions look like the ones above; the Sony ones are called Original Album Classics. Universal has no equivalent as far as I know, which seems weird to me, 'cause they've definitely got a catalog worth exploiting.

Some of them have been yanked off the market: there was a Prince one with 1999, Purple Rain, Parade, Lovesexy and Diamonds and Pearls that's hard to get hold of, and a Tom Waits one with his first five Asylum albums that's even rarer.

there's a 5cd Sisters box with the two compilations as well for £10.

bunnymen and mary chain too, if i didn't already have multiple copies of all of those already.

Oh yeah, the Mary Chain one.

I have at least two of all the albums in that one, but Psychocandy I've got the UK original CD, an american one, the "Times" freebie and the multi-disc deluxe edition. Then again, if it was a tenner or something..

there's a 5cd Sisters box with the two compilations as well for £10.

Yeah, but that one uses the older masters and doesn't have the bonus tracks.

I'm kinda looking at the J&MC one.

There are some bands I'm surprised don't have budget sets like these, like the Ramones (first four albums and It's Alive would be great) and Talking Heads (first five albums)...

Some of those would be "too good" to do.

It basically comes down to "up to 2 major albums, and the rest minor ones"

(none of the bunnymen, the j&mc or the bauhaus, byrds and monkees boxes i have contain any minor albums, they are strictly chronological with occasional added compilations)

bigger question for me is why the bunnymen and mary chain ones exist. isn't there a market for the original lps sold individually? (i guess not)

That's what I mean by "minor" - Whereas "Honey's Dead" might struggle to sell on its own, piggybacking it with "Psychocandy" plus 3 others makes it more attractive.

Of course, the idea of "Minor" albums is in the eye of the beholder. The Fall had "Wonderful/Frightening" and "This Nations" as extended box sets, the other Beggars Banquet albums got boxed together.

And of course, the J&MC albums all got to be 2CD+DVD sets in the end.