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If someone was deliberately trying to drain my wallet, one could hardly concoct a more diabolical scheme than releasing remastered CDs of classic ELO and Alan Parsons Project albums, with extra tracks and bonus material, at the same time. This is indeed happening, and all under the watchful eye (in the sky?) of Sony, no less. As a preamble, I’ve always felt that if you’re already a fan of either ELO or Alan Parsons Project, you’re primed to be a fan of the other. Musically, they’re miles apart, with the lyrical and thematic gloominess of Parsons and Project partner Eric Woolfson counterpointing Jeff Lynne’s “Mr. Blue Sky” cheer. But stylistically, these two very different groups are in the same ball park: lush orchestration, banging against the walls of what constitutes rock and threatening to leave a hole big enough for classical to seep into the room - to say nothing of mesmerizing overdubbed harmonies and widescreen production. I’ve always loved both.

Released in 1977, I, Robot is the Project’s second album, but its first for the Arista label, which would release the rest of the group’s output until it disbanded in 1990. (Sony’s acquisition of Arista and its back catalog is what brought these remastered editions about; the rights to the groundbreaking first album are held by Mercury, which will capitalize on remaster fever by reissuing that album as a double-CD set later this year.) While at times this album seems to be trying a little more self-consciously to “fit in with the times” (”The Voice”’s brief dive into disco territory, “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”’s funky rhythm section), it’s also surprisingly forward-looking for relatively mainstream ’70s prog rock.

In addition to the outstanding original album, presented in crystal clear remastered sound (coincidentally, with the help of Jeff Magid and Tim Fraser-Harding, who oversaw the recent ELO remasters), which upon more recent listening has withstood the test of time better than I think I’ve previously given it credit for (despite elements that clearly mark it as a creation of the 1970s), there are a few early demo recordings and instrumental mixes. There’s a fantastic instrumental of “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”, missing only the vocals and Ian Bairnson’s ferocious guitar solo, as well as demos of “Day After Day”, “Breakdown” (sounding almost like a soulful ballad) and “I Robot” itself, the latter being a weird experiment using the sound of metal balls bouncing. “The Naked Robot” is a medley gathering instrumental bits, pieces and snippets from several of the songs, including a great many elements and ideas left on the cutting room floor, never to be heard in the final album.

The booklet itself is a wealth of information, revealing that Parsons and Woolfson actually approached Isaac Asimov to sound him out on the idea of basing a prog rock opera on “I, Robot”, but since any adaptation rights were tied to the long-stalled film rights, they had to knock the comma out of the title and adjust their thematic approach every so slightly. The book also pins a lot of the group’s success on the coincidence that I Robot arrived in record stores immediately on the heels of Star Wars with a robot on the cover and a futuristic theme in its music. It might be true, who knows? But it certainly didn’t hurt that it was a great album to begin with.

1. I Robot (6:02)
2. I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You (3:23)
3. Some Other Time (4:05)
4. Breakdown (3:53)
5. Don’t Let It Show (4:25)
6. The Voice (5:23)
7. Nucleus (3:22)
8. Day After Day (The Show Must Go On) (3:57)
9. Total Eclipse (3:12)
10. Genesis Ch.1 V.32 (3:30)
11. Boules (I Robot Experiment) (1:59)
12. Breakdown (early demo) (2:11)
13. I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You (backing track rough mix) (3:29)
14. Day After Day (early stage rough mix) (3:41)
15. The Naked Robot (10:19)

Released by: Legacy / Arista
Release date: 2007 (originally released in 1977)
Total running time: 62:51

The final release in a trilogy of soundtracks accompanying the trilogy of Katamari games (Katamari Damacy, We Love Katamari and the PSP title Me And My Katamari), The Complete Sounds Of Katamari is an unusual combination of material, ranging from the music of Me & My Katamari to previously unreleased tracks from We Love Katamari to tunes from other Namco video games with no Katamari connection at all. But as with the previous two soundtracks in the series, Complete Sounds has enough gems of pure musical cheerfulness to offer that it’s easy to overlook any lack of cohesiveness.

As one might expect, the first disc - featuring only music from the Katamari games - has moments of pure gold, as well as moments that really work better as in-game music than stand-alone listening material. “Shine! Mr. Sunshine” is a highlight of the tracks from Me & My Katamari, with a soulful, southern gospel feel that’s almost unexpected after its opening, which is a short, NES-style rendition of the Katamari theme. That theme is reinterpreted and experimented with endlessly, in such tracks as “Katamari On The Moog” and “Katamari On The Funk” (to name just two of the better tracks). From track 10 onward, the first disc presents music from We Love Katamari that didn’t make it onto that game’s soundtrack CD; a favorite among these is the quirky “One Tip March.”

Disc two’s tracks are more symphonic in nature, and hail from such games as Splatterhouse and Tales Of Eternia Online - an interesting mix to be sure. There are also a few tracks of ambient outdoor sound effects. It’s almost like a Namco “best of” collection, but given how expensive this 2-CD set can be (depending on where one gets it), one wonders why Namco didn’t just divide this package into two separate releases and save some of us who are really after more Katamari music the money.

It’s all a nice package of music, but certainly a strange collision of styles and sources.

Disc One
1. Overture III (2:35)
2. Katamari On The Funk (10:22)
3. Katamaresort (3:04)
4. Shabadoobie (3:01)
5. Jesus Island (4:47)
6. Family Damacy (4:41)
7. Katamari On The Moog (0:32)
8. Shine! Mr. Sunshine (5:36)
9. Katamarhythm Box (1:41)
10. Dan Don Fuga (2:14)
11. Tron The Grasslands (4:27)
12. One Tip March (2:43)
13. Do Re Mi Katamari Do (3:13)
14. Starlight Jamboree (2:56)
15. Everyone Dancing Katamari Damacy (1:00)
16. Love & Peace & Katamari Damacy (0:43)
17. Big Cosmos Salon (3:03)

Disc Two
1. In A Muddle (7:05)
2. Kanewood Edge - Morning (0:40)
3. None But the Lonely Heart (Op. 6-6) (2:51)
4. Presto Scherzando (1:35)
5. Appassionate, Allegro Moderato (2:15)
6. Super Taiko Damacy (0:59)
7. None But the Lonely Heart (Op. 6-6) (2:58)
8. Super Taiko Damacy (Refrain) (0:26)
9. Sadness (1:42)
10. Stizzoso (1:08)
11. Kanewood Edge - Day (0:33)
12. Con Energico (5:49)
13. Sento Nel Core (Arrange Version from Splatterhouse (4:24)
14. Kuttsuki Taro (2:43)
15. Misterioso (3:03)
16. Chaotic Ambience (0:54)
17. Andante, Con Moto, Grandioso (1:41)
18. Big Fire (1:55)
19. Night Moo Moo (0:41)
20. Kanewood Edge - Star (9:55)

Released by: Columbia Japan
Release date: 2005
Disc one total running time: 56:38
Disc two total running time: 53:17

Out Of The Blue is, quite simply, one of the most iconic albums of the ’70s, hands-down. It seems that, despite its intricate arrangements and impeccable musicianship, this album will simply never have the rock critic cachet of, say, Dark Side Of The Moon. And yet these days, one hears more young artists coming out of the woodwork trying to achieve the sound of Jeff Lynne and company than one hears Pink Floyd sound-alikes. You can do the math there if you like.

This remastered edition adds only a handful of bonus material, largely because the original double LP takes up most of a single CD. (I would’ve been happy to go to two CDs, a la the remasters of ELO’s first two albums, but there’s not much indication that there was really enough material to go that route.) The one full bonus track that isn’t a demo or other form of outtake is the lovely “Latitude 88 North,” a song which, according to the notes, was partially written at the same time as the other Out Of The Blue tracks but just didn’t make the cut. Of the various bonus tracks that have come along since the Flashback box set ushered in this new era of “remastered with a few freshly recorded bonus tracks” activity, “Latitude 88 North” is the best one to come along since “Love Changes All” and “Helpless” (or, for that matter, Zoom). Even if it’s clearly a recent recording (at best, the song itself may be 30 years old, but the track itself is much more recent), it’s a great song that hearkens back to ELO’s glory days, and it at least sounds closer to that classic style than “Surrender” (from the remastered A New World Record) does. Bringing up the rear are an excerpt from a demo of “Wild West Hero” (which demonstrates great harmony, but lousy lyrics that were replaced in the final version) and the rousing instrumental “The Quick And The Daft”, which most certainly is a 1977 original - good material for serious fans and students of ELO’s work to chew on, but nothing that will really excite casual listeners.

Fortunately for casual listeners, one of the most iconic albums of the ’70s is still here, perfectly intact and remastered, and it’s never sounded better. The remastering isn’t so radical as to have me reassesing my favorite songs, but it’s nice to hear them cleaned up and sounding sharper than ever before. The booklet-style case is also a treat, with an extensive set of notes about the making of Out Of The Blue. There’s a standard version of this CD with a slightly pared-down version of that booklet, but the deluxe edition - bound like a little book, featuring the full liner notes and even a miniature replica of the original LP’s punch-out cardstock spaceship - is a real treat for fans of the band’s work. I’ll admit I just haven’t had the heart to punch out the spaceship and build it, though; I did that with the one that came with the LP, years and years and years ago, and lost track of that one; I think I’ll leave this one intact, and maybe when my own child is around the same age I was when I first heard this album, it’ll be punched out and put together.

Not a bad package at all, celebrating an album that means a lot to quite a few people, even those who would never in a million years profess to be ELO fans. Though I’d wager that the original release of Out Of The Blue created plenty of those as well.

1. Turn To Stone (3:49)
2. It’s Over (4:08)
3. Sweet Talkin’ Woman (3:49)
4. Across The Border (3:53)
5. Night In The City (4:03)
6. Starlight (4:31)
7. Jungle (3:53)
8. Believe Me Now (1:21)
9. Steppin’ Out (4:40)
10. Standin’ In The Rain (3:59)
11. Big Wheels (5:32)
12. Summer And Lightning (4:15)
13. Mr. Blue Sky (5:03)
14. Sweet Is The Night (3:27)
15. The Whale (5:07)
16. Birmingham Blues (4:23)
17. Wild West Hero (4:45)
18. Wild West Hero (alternate bridge - home demo) (0:26)
19. The Quick And The Daft (1:50)
20. Latitude 88 North (3:24)

Released by: Epic / Legacy
Release date: 2007 (originally released in 1977)
Total running time: 76:18

The subject of literally decades of debate among film scholars, soundtrack afficionados and others, Alex North’s rejected score for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey has already received one release, though in a form that was re-recorded from the ground up by Jerry Goldsmith in 1993. In the liner notes from that earlier release, it is revealed that the only surviving copy of North’s original 1968 session recordings was a cassette that had been missing virtually since the movie came out, recovered on the eve of Goldsmith’s sessions. This release from Intrada is that cassette: the original sessions, brought up as close as possible to digital specs, timed out to scenes from the movie, and released to the public for the first time.

There are subtle musical differences and major ones too. Slight differences in arrangement, orchestration and timing differentiate between the two recordings of this most famous selection of unused movie music, and there are some that are biggies (entire minutes of music and alternate arrangements that didn’t make it into the 1993 re-recording, as well as the revelation that the “Entr’acte”track from that release was mislabeled and had nothing to do with 2001 at all). It’s a fascinating study in contrasts, but in the end, it’s still great music. How the use of this score instead of Kubrick’s favored selection of existing orchestral and choral pieces might have impacted the movie’s timelessness, we’ll never know.

Thanks to the incredibly extensive liner notes, though, you have a unique opportunity to test-drive North’s score - each track includes precise, down-to-the-second timing notes allowing you to sync up your DVD of 2001 to the film in the appropriate places. The liner notes booklet also tells, in great detail, the story of the feud between North and Kubrick over Kubrick’s quiet (but public) dismissal of North’s music, and how that feud carried on the two men’s respective estates even after they themselves had died. The back cover of the booklet contains, at last, an olive branch extended in writing from Kubrick’s estate to North’s children, acknowledging that North’s music is an important part of the film’s legacy. It’s disappointing that the proposal for a DVD with an alternate audio track, also revealed in the booklet, never got off the ground, but the booklet’s notes let you do it yourself at home without having to buy yet another iteration of 2001 on DVD, so perhaps it’s just as well.

Few soundtracks in the history of Hollywood have as much of a story behind them as this one does, but Alex North’s 2001 can now finally be heard and appreciated, with the film it was intended to accompany. That neither North nor Kubrick could ever bury the hatchet so this could happen in either of their lifetimes is the only disappointment to come out of it.

1. The Foraging (3:13)
2. The Bluff (2:39)
3. Night Terrors (1:49)
4. Bones (1:43)
5. Eat Meat And Kill (4:03)
6. Space Station Docking (5:24)
7. Space Talk (3:49)
8. Trip To Moon (3:05)
9. Moon Rocket Bus (5:20)
10. The Foraging (alternate version) (3:16)
11. Eat Meat And Kill (Take 7 wild) (1:06)
12. Space Station (Take 4 partial) (2:13)
13. Docking (Take 2) (1:15)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: 2007 (originally recorded in 1968)
Total running time: 38:55