Word has got around after around five decades that Made in Japan is one of the best live albums in the rock era. Some people even do without half -cooking relativizations and tend to go to the superlative. Not a completely absurd point of view, even when fan glasses are set, because the three concerts from Osaka and Tokyo actually present a band at the peak of their career, which was able to transform good studio tracks into adventurous live takes with exuberant joy and lots of competence.
Recommendations of the editorial team
Even those who have little to do with the British hard rock of the 1970s should – provided open ears – be impressed by the sheer energy, the improvisatory ingenuity, the joy of experiment and the relaxedness with which all of this is presented. Perhaps the best example: “Space Truckin ‘”, on the studio album Machine Head a nice, slightly glam-skirt four and a half-minute boogie, mutated on August 16 in Osaka on the almost 20-minute space trip with spherical keyboard interludies, which are more likely to commemorate the Kosmische Kuriers of the Berlin Krautrock School than to London Hardrocker. The zeitgeist was benevolent, rock music was allowed to expand in all possible directions and let off steam.
The zeitgeist was benevolent, rock music was allowed to expand in all possible directions.
Whereby the deep purple of that era, the legendary Mark II occupation, which earns, has dispensed with jazz rock opponent or progress-beautiful spiritualities-it was still a tough, rough rock’n’roll. The original album appeared in December 1972 as a double LP and sold as stupid, in Germany it was in second place on the annual charts-only topped by Heino’s “great success”. Surprising for a work that was originally only to appear as a tour souvenir in Japan and had met with little interest in parts of the band in advance.
The three-CD set from 1993 took into account all three concerts, albeit extremely incomplete, the narrower anniversary edition for the 25th birthday came with tracks from the addition, and when a box set with five CDs and a DVD documentary was published in 2014, the last word seemed to be spoken. But not: on the 50th anniversary, which is actually the 53rd, an even larger package comes, of course, revised by Steven Wilson. In addition to the classic double LP, a luxury vinyl box with ten LPs is now released for the first time, optionally also a 5-CD set including Blu-ray and atmos mixes. If you acquire the complete shows including encores and then coupled single edits, you will be spoiled with a 60-page accompanying book and the reprint of the tour poster, you have to leaf through a good 250 euros for the ten-LP box. Is the last word spoken? Stand today: yes.
This review first appeared in the MusikExpress 09/2025.