Bob Marley & The Wailers – The Complete Island Recordings

In regard specifically to sound quality, although, the packaging and presentation are essentially bargain bin. The sound is consistently somewhere between the Diament and Jensen remasters. The Kaya comparison was made to the Kevin Reeves deluxe remaster of Kaya, and sounds identical, suggesting that Kevin Reeves did the remasters for this set. Just speculation of course, although upon further listening, Catch a Fire sounds very much like the inverted 75th SHM-CD which was mastered by Alex Wharton, so perhaps this is a collection of whatever was laying around. Overpriced and underproduced, and should be way cheaper since Universal obviously put near zero effort into this release. Finally, these are not the complete Island recordings.

for everyones info there is a stainless steel zippo lighter box set that was released in a numbered edition of 100 sold on ebay on 2003. it is an official release and though it did not contain a slip mat and other things the steel box is much heavier and handmade with red velvet lining

Description: Stunning, Limited Edition 2003 11LP Flip-Top Steel Box Set. This Is Number 048 Of Only 100 Sets That Were Manufactured For Mail Order Only By Universal In Germany in 2003. The Album Titles Are: "Burnin," "Uprising," "Rastaman Vibration," "Live," "Survival," "Babylon By Bus," "Catch A Fire," "Natty Dread," "Kaya" And "Confrontation." Each LP Is Housed In The Original Artwork Jacket And Has A Plastic Outer Sleeve. The Inside Of The Massive Steel (We Believe It's Steel) Box Is Lined With Red Card. Probably The Only One Of These We Will Ever See.

In this kind of situation it's difficult to review:

On one hand it contains a bunch of classic albums, many of which are regarded as the best within the reggae genre. The music speaks for itself. The sound quality is decent too (not going to delve too much into this considering the price).

On the other hand however, it's as bare-bones as you can get. It contains a reproduction of the original outer sleeves but the print quality is sub-standard, the colours are a little off and the sleeves open upwards instead of to the side. None of the interesting quirks that made the originals look so flashy are evident here; the die-cut covers, the embossed lettering, the gold sleeve, the famous zippo lighter sleeve design. The inner sleeve artwork too is missing. There's a complete lack of bonus material too (which I personally don't mind). It is obvious from the start that this is a budget release even before you see the price, which brings me onto my final point...

This is a bargain. I paid £18 for this brand new on Amazon (sorry planet Earth). Even if this was £30 it would be a fantastic price, so it's easy to look past some of the issues raised above. It's a shame that there isn't a slightly more 'deluxe' package out there at a reasonable cost, and perhaps it's wishful thinking to want a complete collection of Bob Marley's music including his pre-Island Records stuff, but ultimately it comes down to the price - I just can't give this anything less than five stars.

Though I wish there was more detail in the liner notes regarding the origin of these masters, seeing as this is marketed as a CD version of the 2015 vinyl box set, it's probably safe to assume that the masters used for this set are the high-resolution digital remasters made for that vinyl box set. Although the previous CD set, the 2001 Definitive Remasters, sounded good, the sound quality of this set is noticeably more dynamic and clear, making this one the ideal collection for Bob Marley's Island Records discography. The only confusing part about this set is why it wasn't marketed as the new definitive CD versions of these albums.

Very cool boxset! Great price too! Don't know the masters that were used but sounds pretty dynamic to my ear!

It's annoying that this isn't complete, with all the non album tracks from singles missing. There's easily enough space to add these and the 12" versions, or put them on an extra disc.

Très beau coffret, dommage qu'il n'y a pas du tout de bonus, quitte a faire le coffret un peu plus cher.

No tags on any of my discs. I had to enter each song title in manually, along withe the album and artist and album title. Very frustrating and unprofessional.

Mastering information seems to be notably absent from release notes in this CD box set, also Island Records own website make no mention at all this CD set is remastered. Would be great to have the definitive info on this.
However on examining the ID tags of each CD the album Kaya has the tags for the 40th anniversary remaster. That being said, Survival and Uprising had no tags at all which was concerning and Babylon By Bus had missing tags.

Does anyone have any details on the masters used here?