Taken from the ‘Mike Gibbs tape archive’, the discographical detail notes that the seven tracks on this CD were ‘recorded-live-in-the-studio’, while the liner notes say they were performed without an audience. All five tracks that comprised the 1971 Deram Tanglewood 63 release – ‘Tanglewood 63’, ‘Fanfare’, ‘Sojourn’, ‘Canticle’ and ‘Five For England’ (the latter perhaps conceptually the weakest track) – are represented on these radio sessions plus ‘June the 15th 1967’, subsequently recorded in February 2002 on Michael Gibbs and the NDR Bigband’s Back in the Days. The original liner notes of the Deram Tanglewood 63 reference the Belfast Arts Festival in 1969 who commissioned ‘Tanglewood 63’ and ‘June 15th 1967’, and in 2018,Mike Gibbs with the Gary Burton Quartet: Festival 69 has the premier of these two compositions at the Whitla Hall, Belfast in November 1969. ‘Country Roads’ is also included in the ‘The Early Tapes’ sessions, which got its first release on Just Ahead, recorded in Ronnie Scott’s in May/June 1972. All the tracks on Revisiting Tanglewood 63 are of even quality, even if they qualify as “The Early Tapes” by the skin of their teeth, with ‘Five For England’, ‘Fanfare’ and ‘Canticle’ qualifying by just nine days. There is a rawness to these sessions, ‘Canticle’ a bit lustily overenthusiastic, and the original album, and its 1998 CD release, seems at this distance more rounded, especially with the addition of strings on ‘Sojourn’, ‘Fanfare’ and ‘Canticle’, the latter with a fuller, more haunting, sustained drone and cello obligato, which offers a more complete realisation of Gibbs’ ambitions.