Rating: 
Summary: Good - Less Good
Review: Well, there's good news here and (slightly) less good news.Let me start with the latter. This is just a DVD. Just the disc, in other words, nothing else. No liner notes, no booklet. And the DVD just jumps into the music, plays it through, and ends. Nothing even remotely resembling anything extra. Given this very basic approach, it should come at no surpise that that the actual film footage is of reasonable - but not excellent - quality. As to the sound recordings: they're fair. But not by any means pristine. For example, in the reasonably quiet instrumental sections at the beginning of Lighthouse Keepers ("Pictures Lighthouse"), there's way too much background noise and hiss. Then the mix - well, someone has actually taken the time to remix it to a Dolby 5.1 surround version. However, that turns out to be a bit of a half-hearted affair, really. To say that the sound actually comes at you from five different channels is about all you can say in favour of this endeavour. But the thing is - does any of this really matter all that much? Because, very simply put, the good news is that here, at last, we have Van der Graff in their heydey on film. We have a complete, intense and yet also remarkably sober performance of the entire Godbluff album, as recorded in concert in Paris in 1975. And then, as a bonus, we get two earlier tracks, recorded in a somewhat primitively surreal environment (without, it seeems, an audience) somewhere in 1971: Theme 1 and the full A Plague Of Lighthose Keepers. In the end, it comes down to this. This Godbluff DVD might not be what Van der Graaf ultimately deserve - as one of the very best of progressive bands, they deserve far greater recognition in every way - but having said that, anyone fond of the band should pick this up forthwith.
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