VITAMIN ENHANCED

OZRIC TENTACLES spent the majority of the 80s playing small festivals and venues before they would find their first album 'Pungent Effulgent' on the Dovetail Records label which would lead them into on their way to find themselves as one of the most interesting underground psychedelic space rock bands of the 90s.

During this time the band released six recordings but only on cassette and were only sold at live venues making it quite difficult for anyone who wasn't there at the time to track down. Dovetail solved that problem by releasing all of those homemade albums on CD in the box set compilation VITAMIN ENHANCED in 1994.

As if the originals themselves weren't hard enough to find, the original pressing for VITAMIN ENHANCED was limited to a mere 5000 copies which sold out quickly as the band amassed more popular appeal. Not helping the matter was the fact of legal issues from Kellogg's who complained that the artwork resembled their brand of Corn Flakes packaging.

Because of all that, the plans for a repressing were scrapped but finally in 2013, in honor of the band's 30th anniversary, the Snapper Music label remastered the entire six albums which saw a release in January of 2014. Also included is a generous booklet filled with history and artwork from those early days. The CDs included are wrapped up in cardboard sleeves with their original artwork all snug together in a nice tripped out box.

While most of the early albums aren't exactly essential with only 'Live Essential Cereal' and 'Bits Between The Bits' receiving a four star status from yours truly, this is an impressive packaging design and an excellent way to get all the early albums in a one-stop shop in totally remastered form, thus a 4 star box set which includes mostly 3 star albums but the remastered versions add a little more star heft to my rating.

This box set includes: CD 1: Erpsongs (1984) CD 2: Tantric Obstacles (1985) CD 3: Live Ethereal Cereal (1986) CD 4: There Is Nothing (1987) CD 5: Sliding Gliding Worlds (1988) CD 6: Bits Between the Bits (1989)