LIVE AT DEEPLY VALE FESTIVAL 78

I honestly does not have a clue why this is the first ever review of this album in PA. It is pretty easy to find and Steve Hillage is pretty popular here in PA. I have also had this album for some time before I gave it a week's worth of spin. Shame on us, then.......

This double live album is a more a tribute to this free festival outside Rochdale, England, than a proper Steve Hillage live album. Live Herald is head and shoulders better than this album. CD 1 consists of the gig recorded through the mixing desk. CD 2 consists of the same gig but recorded in the audience. The first CD has a pretty poor sound quality. The sound on the second CD is poor bootleg quality, bordering to sounding like a vacuum cleaner. You also get some songs by the band Tractor, the band run by the organizer of this free gig. Which is a pretty original concept, to say at least.

CD 2 is therefore best forgotten and a one star affair. Give it to your dog as a plaything.

CD 1 consists of the only good meat in this package. The Steve Hillage gig with some decent sound. Never mind the sound, Steve and his band is giving it all with good live renditions of songs I shamefully have not heard the studio versions of. I have the albums, but have failed to put them in my CD player. Shameful.

The songs are superb though. Salmon Song being the best song here, but Searching for the Spark is also excellent. Strangely enough, Hurdy Gurdy Man falls flat on it's face here because of a poor rendition. The main riff has been toned down and replaced with some noodling. But the rest of this CD is good.

This album is a strange live album and not entirely satisfactory. But three stars is due from an artist I feel I should give some more time.

3 stars

Bootleg quality live double set, recorded during one concert in 1978, but released for the first time in 2004 only.

Steve Hillage plays some spacey psychedelic jams, but drumming and electronics are heavily influenced by "new wave" coming. There are plenty of pleasant Steve's guitar moments, but sound quality is so terrible you can't enjoy them. With better sound recording, and shortened to one better structured CD, this material could be not so bad and possibly would attract Hillage guitar sound lovers.

But as it is, I hardly believe even fan can stay more than two hours of noisy flat sound, endless jamming and bad bootleg record feeling.

The only possible listener is Hillage albums collector.

Sourced from recently-rediscovered soundboard tapes, this festival concert from the Green Tour has a decent enough setlist, but the sound quality just isn't up to par. The bonus tracks illustrate that it is, indeed, a step up from the audience tapes of this gig that had previously circulated, but it's still only a half-notch above bootleg quality.

On top of that, more recent archival live releases from Hillage - both the standalone release of the Madison Square Garden concert from the L tour and the various live albums offered in the Searching For the Spark boxed set - stand head and shoulders above this one when it comes to audio quality. There's really no shortage of Steve Hillage live material these days - and as a result there's no compelling reason, unless you're a completist, to settle for a release with sub-par audio quality like this one.