Pentangle Time Has Come 1967-1973 CD

Lavish and definitive 2008 digitally remastered four CD box set covering the six year career of the Jazz/Folk fusion pioneers. The Time Has Come is both a glorious and accessible ‘best of’ for the curious and a treasure trove of lost gems for the faithful. Extensively illustrated and annotated, The Time Has Come features the best of Pentangle’s album tracks, singles and B-sides alongside no less than 20 previously unreleased tracks. Among the many rarities are a track from their very first recording session (1967); live concert and television performances; studio outtakes from The Pentangle (1968) and Reflection (1971); BBC radio session tracks newly in stereo and previously unheard film soundtrack work. The Time Has Come was researched, compiled and annotated by Pentangle historian Colin Harper. The 60 page full-colour booklet is beautifully illustrated with unseen photos and memorabilia and includes an introduction to the extensive sleevenotes by Pete Paphides, Chief Rock Critic for The Times. Sanctuary.

Audio Remasterer: Cormac O'Kane.
In 2007, when so many neo-folkies owe the hairs of their scruffy beards to Pentangle, it seems both natural that a box set of the band's work should be released and ironic that for much of the period it covers, they were known to relatively few outside the Brit-folk faithful. A wealth of previously unreleased tracks, including concert recordings, BBC sessions, etc. will be the draw for hardcore fans, but it's the cumulative heft of the band's work as a whole that makes THE TIME HAS COME so weighty.
When Fairport Convention was still messing around with Joni Mitchell songs, Pentangle were transforming British trad folk via blues, jazz, and raga shadings. Covering the entirety of their initial lifespan, TIME lets you hear the interplay between Bert Jansch and John Renbourn's guitars grow in complexity and telepathy, and the jazzy grooves of Terry Cox and Danny Thompson bend with increasing suppleness to support Jacqui McShee's willowy voice. This handsome anthology does double duty as guided tour and collectors' grab bag.
Like many large CD box sets, The Time Has Come is not quite a best-of or a rarities compilation, but something in between. That warning given, it also has to be added that as such things go, this four-CD, 65-track set -- drawn exclusively from their 1967-1973 recordings, and ignoring any reunion efforts -- is one of the best. For one thing, it does include quite a bit of rare material that serious Pentangle fans will want to have, including an entire disc of previously unreleased live, television, and film recordings from 1970-1973; a few more unreleased soundtrack bits and studio outtakes; and BBC sessions and B-sides that, while previously issued on CD, might not be in every Pentangle admirer's collection. Yet it doesn't lose sight of their strongest and most popular material. Most of their most essential songs are represented in either the familiar studio form or as a live/BBC/TV recording, although the absence of a few standout tunes like "Lyke-Wake Dirge" and "I've Got a Feeling" hurts a bit. The journey's also made more interesting by the inclusion of a few tracks from solo albums that John Renbourn and Bert Jansch issued during the 1967-1973 period. The devotion of the entirety of disc three to all 19 songs officially issued from their Royal Festival Hall concert of June 29, 1968 (12 of which were first released as part of their 1968 Sweet Child album, the remaining seven of which showed up on a 2001 expanded CD reissue of that record) might seem to give that material inappropriate weight. But even those tracks have been re-sequenced with (in the words of the liner notes) "much of the lengthy applause, between-song banter, and tuning up edited out," creating a more compact listening experience for those interested in re-experiencing the cuts in such a fashion.
It's the rare material that the most ardent fans of the group will want to hear most, of course, aUncut (p.82) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "It's an impressive overview of the group's best years....The light snap and twang of Cox and Thompson's rhythm section kept the music aerated but never fluffy."
The Wire (p.61) - "40 years on, Pentagular music hasn't dated a chime, pluck, wassail or gurdy....It embodies all of the bold-axis patchwork virtues of its late 60s time."
Dirty Linen (p.48) - "It's an amazing mix of traditional ballads, blues, pop, rock oldies, and jazz..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.114) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Pentangle's critical move was to cross-pollinate folk with parallel musical forms -- especially jazz."