Genesis - From Genesis to Revelation (Remixed & Remastered) [2LP]

Genesis's 1969 debut From Genesis to Revelation returns remixed and remastered, spread across a 2LP UK import set.

The album began with Charterhouse schoolboys Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips, recording in London in 1968 around a loose concept linking the first and last books of the Bible. Strings and horns were added afterwards, largely without the band's input, and the record sank on release. For decades it sat awkwardly at the start of the Genesis story, more curiosity than cornerstone.

This edition shifts the balance. A new stereo mix by Stephen W. Tayler, approved by Banks, Gabriel and Rutherford, puts the band's playing first and lets the orchestration sit further back. In the Beginning and The Serpent show the young group's melodic instincts, with Banks's keyboards and Gabriel's already distinctive voice at the centre. The second disc works like a bonus EP, gathering four extra tracks, among them the early single A Winter's Tale and a previously unreleased early version of Visions of Angels.

That song would later resurface on Trespass, which makes this set a neat bridge between the pop apprentices of 1968 and the prog pioneers they became. Listeners raised on the band's later epics get a rare chance to hear where those ideas first took shape.