Steven Wilson "Home Invasion - In Concert at the Royal Albert Hall" (BR+2CD, DVD+2CD) Oct 26/18

Thanks for the link. Crazy that they buried it like that. Couldn't find it for the life of me and again, they swapped in the DVD version while it was in my basket.

I'm sure some will find the link useful. Others may go with importCDs which has it for $18 & change, a pretty sweet price.

 

The two tracks they have released as ''singles" prior to the full release of the concert film have been made available as 'Masters' MQA encodes on Tidal, so I would hope the full album would be available in this format too.

 

Finished listening to the whole 2,5 hours album this morning. Again I'm impressed by the stereo mix, wonderful instruments separation, great (even too polished) sound. Solid performance, the band and guests were on fire apparently. Waiting for my bluray to arrive on monday/tuesday.

 

I cherry picked a few songs and listened to them on Tidal HiFi (MQA). More than happy with what I heard so far. The rest have to wait until I get my Bluray, hopefully waiting for me when I get home from work.

 

Got the Blu-ray today. Oh yeah, baby! Just started so up to Regret #9/Home Invasion so far.

 

Fantastic live document-sounds and looks ( blu-ray ) great.

Love me some SW.

 

Got the 2CD/BR set today and just watched the full show in 5.1. This is the first time a concert I’ve been to has been released in full, so it’s great to experience the show in a different way.

I’m really impressed with the way it’s been done. The light and visuals work very well - they’re engaging but not so much that they overwhelm the music.

The surround mix seems very cool to me. There’s really nice use of the rears, but it’s not gimmicky. I also think some of the To The Bone tracks come over really well - I don’t have much time for People Who Eat Darkness, but the live version with Ninet is great.

All in all it’s a great release.

 

First impression is overall positive which isn’t unusual for me because I view all that is SW through such a lens. There are aspects of the production which make me think this can be an iconic concert film if there can ever be another of those although some of the camera angles made me go wtf early on.

As much as I enjoy To The Bone and agree that those performances are spirited on the blu-Ray, the songs seem a bit exposed when compared with the monster performances that came with Raven and HCE.

I’m pretty sure that these impressions will smooth over and Home Invasion will rate quite highly as I spend more quality time with it.

 

Still waiting for mine (knew I should have got it from Amazon but I like to support Burning Shed) so I grabbed the hi-res from '...somewhere but not here' and it sounds great so far.

 

Had a quick look at a few songs this morning and it looks and sounds great. However, the rehearsal songs have some very poor video encoding as can see loads of artifacts (shimmering) which I didn't see in the parts of the main show I sampled. Not sure why they would encode it so badly.

 

I so rarely have time anymore to sit down and watch a full concert, but as a diehard SW fan, I have to get this.

 

The CD/Blu-ray arrived this morning. The Blu-ray is stunning!

The packaging leaves a lot to be desired, compared to my usual Steven Wilson special editions, but for the price, I'm not complaining.

 

I checked out some of the blu-ray last night — sounds great and looks solid through my projector. Would’ve been a cool show to be at!

 

I saw two of the shows on the tour, didn't go to the RAH because I can't stand the place. I did end up seeing both setlists he did on the tour though because of the two gigs I went to.

 

I watched it last night beginning to end, and as a big fan (saw this tour twice, and have tix to see it twice again), this concert movie is glorious. Picture, sound, setlist, performance, etc. -- a fantastic document.

Thankfully, very few audience shots. And yes, there's a fair amount of non-live audio embellishments -- both backing vocals and instruments, but when to comes together to sound this good, I don't mind. The DTS-HD Master Audio surround mix is spot-on perfect, naturally. Nice to get to see Ninet sing live. The editing can get frantic in spots when the music warrants it, which adds to the energy. There's also few enjoyable post-production special effects that I won't ruin.

It would be great if the disc had the ability to watch the back-screen movies set to music as an extra, but oh well. Maybe another videos disc down the road. Also, I don't think the three rehearsal numbers are 1080p... looked maybe 720p?

Overall, an A+ production that really captures a fantastic concert.

 

My Blu-Ray should be arriving today, I'm really looking forward to it.

Re: the vinyl box set: is it available to pre-order from anywhere other than the Burning Shed store? The item price is great at $66, but the shipping is $40.

 

Nevermind, the vinyl box is on Amazon for only $6 more than Burning Shed: https://amzn.to/2EYIOJa

 

I just watched the entire concert on Blu-Ray in stereo (everything's 24bit/96kHz by the way), and at two and a half hours + the extras, you certainly get your money's worth. I had a blast and there were a few surprises that really elevated the whole product.
Now if I can nitpick...

I was surprised that the packaging is in the CD digipak format -since there is a Blu-Ray I expected a "video-size" box. But the quality of the digipak is good and the presentation is tasteful.

I also didn't expect the image ratio to be 2.35 (think Cinemascope) and there were moments when I wished it was 1.78 (16/9 size) or something in between instead. The 'scope format tends IMO to be great for stately shots and slow tracking shots, but less for closeups and frenetic movements with frantic editing. Not that there is a lot of that, the editing is tastefully done and not hyperactive or relying on effects too much. On the subject of closeups there were quite a lot of Stevie, that's to be expected, but I wished we saw a bit more of the other members of the band. Also I like instruments closeups (now what chord is he playing?) and there weren't a huge lot of these.
Other than that the image is quite classy with great lighting, colors and composing.

Sound-wise the stereo mix was more constrained and not as immersive as the surround mix (that I sampled), but that's to be expected. There isn't a huge dynamic range but it's serviceable and sufficiently impactful for a concert. What I found a bit lacking surprisingly, is the amount of lower bass. There isn't a whole lot of it and I felt the need to add some deep bass (something I very rarely do) after the first few songs. Maybe it had to be filtered, I don't know. Don't get me wrong, we hear the bass and the kick drum alright, they just don't go very low.

The vocals recording not being 100% absolutely perfect makes me think there wasn't a lot of post-production embellishments, if any. I prefer it that way. Of course there are added recorded parts (like Sophie Hunger's vocals on Song Of I), but these were mixed live with the band.
The rehearsal tracks were indeed filmed in 720i so there are jaggies but the quality of the image and the encoding is good.

Overall a fantastic package, recommended.

 

Can anyone say if Mark Feltham is shown playing in the video?

 

No he’s not sadly - he played the night before - and was awesome

 

There are also standalone DVD and Blu-ray versions without CDs, each in their usual video boxes.

I had to double-dip on the BD version in addition to the CDs+BD package, just to get one that fits on the shelf with others Blu-rays. I also double-dipped with To The Bone, even though I have the deluxe package that also includes a BD.

 

Steven Wilson’s bank account thanks you !

 

Seriously. If you feel the need to file Blu-rays together in Amaray-size cases, @DaverJ, then why not just buy some blank Amaray cases for discs stored in non-standard packaging? You can even design, print, and slip in cover sheets at home, if you want.

 

I see his point. If I felt the need, I’d buy more originals as well. I’ve been known to buy redundant SW for my CD shelf even though I have the deluxe versions.

And don’t get me started on redundant vinyl!

 

How can you tell? My Oppo shows up as 1080, 23.9p, although it might be upscaling so I will check again. Still, even if it's in 720, there should not be any jaggies if properly encoded. Why they would film it in 720i is strange because it looks like they are using the same pro cameras as the main show.