Elo Flashback

Flashback is the second box set compilation by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), released in 2000. In 2000, Jeff Lynne found a new impetus to work on the music of his old band and returned to the recording studio to work on an ELO project for the first time in some 15 years just prior to the comeback album Zoom in 2001. This work resulted in a digitally remastered compilation released in late 2000. Unlike its predecessors, this project, Flashback, was personally approved and endorsed by Lynne. The set includes songs featured from all 11 studio albums up to that point, including an edit of "Great Balls of Fire" from their live album The Night the Light Went On in Long Beach, plus some new recordings amongst the band's extensive back catalog, most notably a reworking of Lynne's only UK number one hit "Xanadu". The album includes liner notes by David Wild with quotes on each song from Lynne and a booklet inside.

The very fact that Electric Light Orchestra released a second three-disc box set is a tacit admission that, yes, 1987's Afterglow wasn't everything it should be. Happily, 2000's Flashback is. Assembled with the cooperation of Jeff Lynne, Flashback covers all the bases, featuring all the hits, a good selection of album tracks, and seven previously unreleased tracks, two alternate mixes and "After All," previously unavailable on CD…

It must be something in the water. The movement known as the French touch encompasses a huge sweep of music, from Justice’s heavy metal take on house to Dimitri From Paris and St Germain’s slinky lounge jazz. But one thing that they all seem to have in common is an ability to take sounds from square centre in the middle of the road and then re-invent them as something chic and glamorous. Think of, for instance, the monstrous success of Daft Punk, who took questionable 70s disco and Barry White samples and re-purpose them as the coolest dancefloor fire in town.