RAINDANCES: THE TRANSATLANTIC RECORDINGS 1973-1975

This purports, in its accompanying booklet, to contain all the tracks from Gryphon's first four albums. Not so! One track has been trimmed to allow their self-titled debut, Midnight Mushrumps, Red Queen To Gryphon Three, and Raindance to fit onto two CDs, with the tracks arranged in order and with no awkward mid-album break between the two CDs, that being Dubbel Dutch from Midnight Mushrumps.

That said, Dubbel Dutch is probably the least inspired tune on that album - the title track and Ethelion, in particular, absolutely blow it out of the water - so I'd say it's actually improved by that one omission. Certainly, it feels like this set contains everything which was truly essential in these first four albums, though admittedly I may be out of step since I think Midnight Mushrumps is the weakest of the four (it sags a bit in the middle, hence the removal of Dubbel Dutch being helpful), which doesn't seem to be the consensus.

Still, unless Esoteric fancy doing one of those nice clamshell sets they do with the albums in individual cardboard sleeves for Gryphon (perhaps throwing in 1977's Treason, the major release of their original run that this is missing), this will do nicely.