Deeply

Talk to any connoisseur of '70s-era double live albums, and many will agree that Steve Hillage's Live Herald, recorded and released in 1977-1978, rates among the finest jewels that the genre has to offer. So it's astonishing to discover that someone has spent the last 25 years sitting on tapes that knock that set into the dust, both in terms of on-stage excitement and aural enjoyment. Live at Deeply Vale Festival '78 transports the listener back to one of the last truly great festivals staged in the U.K. that decade, a weekend's worth of music that fearlessly ranged across both the traditional rock range and the upcoming punk movement, before climaxing with a Hillage set that the guitarist himself reflects, "[sounds] as exciting now as Live Herald was back then."