20-05-2013 @ 15:19
The Moody Blues will release a definitive career-spanning box set entitled ‘Timeless Flight’ on June 3rd 2013.
Housed in a heavy-duty LP-sized hard-back slipcase, this lavish box set contains 17 discs including:
* 11 remastered CDs featuring key album tracks, previously unreleased mixes, out-takes and complete live concerts
* 3 DVDs of rare television performances from around the world, promotional videos and the previously unreleased live concert from Olympia, Paris in 1970
* 3 DVD audio discs containing the long-deleted 5:1 surround sound mixes of Days Of Future Passed, On The Threshold Of A Dream, To Our Children's Children's Children, A Question Of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Seventh Sojourn
* 120-page hard-back book including a new essay by Moody Blues researcher Mark Powell plus rare and previously unseen photos on heavy weight paper
* Replica full colour tour poster and discography
* Replica ‘Threshold’ press pack containing photos and memorabilia
* Exclusive ‘Timeless Flight’ fabric patch
There will also be available an extremely limited edition version of ‘Timeless Flight’ available exclusively from Universal Music’s Box Sets store.
The Moody Blues, still rocking in 2013 with original members Justin Hayward, John Lodge and Graeme Edge, have released 24 albums in a career spanning nearly five decades. They have sold over 50 million albums, earning them eighteen platinum discs and all manner of awards including Playboy “Group of the Year”, the Golden Ticket award for selling the most tickets at Madison Square Garden and an Ivor Novello for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, even appearing in an episode of “The Simpsons”.
Their classic album “Days of Future Passed” (featuring the Moody Blues’ signature song “Nights in White Satin”) heralded the era of the concept album and elaborate sleeve artwork that would epitomise the Progressive Rock movement that followed.
Formed in 1964 in Birmingham the Moody Blues came from the same gene pool that would give the world Traffic, the Move, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Slade. The original line-up of the band (Denny Laine, Graeme Edge, Clint Warwick, Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder) scored a global number one hit with “Go Now”, but struggled to follow up this success and Warwick and Laine left the group to be replaced by John Lodge and Justin Hayward respectively in 1966. For the next few months the band crafted a new set of original copmpositions that would change their fortunes.
Drastically re-thinking their musical approach, the band began to compose new material in a uniquely different style. Eager to recoup some of the money they had invested in the band, the Decca label asked the Moody Blues to record a rock version of Dvorak’s New World Symphony to demonstrate a new stereo system they were launching known as ‘Deramic’ sound. Instead, the Moodies, along with producer Tony Clarke, used the orchestral settings for a suite of their own songs, which resulted in ‘Days Of Future Passed’, a record that was as groundbreaking as any of that era and featured the band’s signature song, ‘Nights In White Satin’. This proved a turning point for the band and they soon became acknowledged masters of lushly orchestrated psychedelic rock and trailblazers in the use of the mellotron, which they used both live and in the studio to mimic the sounds of a full orchestra. Era defining albums such as ‘In Search Of The Lost Chord’, ‘On The Threshold Of A Dream’, ‘To Our Children’s Children’s Children’, ‘A Question Of Balance’, ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Favour’ and ‘Seventh Sojourn’ followed and the Moody Blues have continued to release albums through the Eighties and Nineties and into the Noughties and thrilling audiences with their live shows all over the world.
“I suppose that it is our songs, and the way we interpret them that has seen us travel so far,” says Justin Hayward. “It means so much to us that some of our recordings have really meant something to people.”
In june The Moody Blues will perform several dates in the UK + 2 concerts in Amsterdam, september, october touring the US
The Moody Blues - Timeless Flight
release: june 2nd - 2013