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In hindsight, it seems almost incredible: 27 years ago, a young musician named Jeff Wayne (who at the time primarily wrote music for commercials) fell in love with H.G. Wells' much-loved book The War of the Worlds, and decided to make a musical version of it. Star Wars had just put people's minds into outer space, musical theatre was hugely successful, and long, anthemic orchestral prog-rock was all the rage. Wayne was inspired by all these elements and decided to gather together his peers and make a musical-mixed-with-spoken-word album, with the script taken directly from the famous book. This was by no means a soundtrack to a movie; in fact, all of the visuals were to come straight from the listener's minds (hard to imagine in today's video-oriented world.) The two-LP set featured Sir Richard Burton as frontman, along with some of the leaders of the progressive rock world who joined in on the fun. Moody Blues' Justin Hayward, "Rock On" vocalist David Essex and Thin Lizzy lead Philip Lynott each did more than sing on the record, they took a part in the musical play, performing key roles alongside the aforementioned dramatist Burton. Amazingly, the eccentric project was a massive success, selling over 13 million copies and staying on the U.K. charts for over 260 weeks straight. DJs and bands--including the Orbital and Todd Terry--still use WOTW samples to inspire their own works. Unquestionably, the genesis of electronica can (in part) be mapped back to the War of the Worlds' use of sound experimentation and synthesized grooves.
The re-released double CD got a revamping both on an auditory and visual front: on the sonic side, the collection is now a remastered disc, mixed both in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. On the cosmetic side, the collection is now a six-panel digipack, with 48 pages of lyrics, biographies, and a handful of paintings from the original artwork. The music comes as a pair of Super Audio CDs (SACDs), a technology that will play both in standard and SACD players, the latter receiving up to four more times the sonic information for superior sound quality. --Denise Sheppard
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