THE MAN WHO CHANGED GUITAR FOREVER!

For everything Allan Holdsworth did for prog, jazz fusion, and guitar in general, this collection of beautiful remasters is an essential piece in anyone's Holdsworth collection. All the remasters of all the albums in this boxset are amazing, nice and clean sounding, not muddy, and very well restored to fit today's standard. Unfortunately, I cannot review the albums in the boxset here, I will be reviewing each and every album here on ProgArchives. For what this was meant to be (a boxset full of remasters of studio and live cds), this is amazing. This is just as good as the Genesis 2007 remaster boxsets. Except that this boxset has all of Holdsworth's glory, exceptional guitar playing, unbelievable emotion, and a hard hitting listen from each piece found in here. Allan was an inspiration to guitar and prog, and this is the best gift we got from him. Thanks Allan, you inspired me to make beautiful music like you did.

This is a huge collection of jazz. I don't consider Allan's band to be a rock outfit although there are deep rock energy sensibilities, especially with the first four albums, which are jazz/rock. Over the years the music became more jazz. Toward the latter part of his career he became sublime. It appears he was on a never ending quest to improve his musicality and he didn't like to listen to his early work. For example, this collection does not include Velvet Darkness, as he disowned the record. The one live recording is from 1990 in Japan and it's amazing. Most hardcore Holdsworth fans probably already have these cd's in their collection, but it got harder to find the early releases on cd and this rectifies the situation as it is complete. If you want to hear remastered cd's of Allan Holdsworth this is the deluxe version. He also released a condensed version called Eidolon. Here is a really great collection of the man who not only changed the guitar but significantly improved its possibilities. He is also one of the greatest guitar synthesizer proponents in history. Check out FlatTire and Sand for heavy synthesis. This can now go along side the live releases which have be distributed in the last few years.