Review of Electric Light Orchestra Part 2: Access All Areas

Introduction

Electric Light Orchestra: Part 2 is a 60 minute German documentary about the British rock band also known as ELO, who have been around for over 30 years and have featured a number of well-known artists including Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood over the years. The band were prolific in the seventies, quiet in the eighties and nineties and have been a little more active recently.

Video

The video is presented in 4:3 full-frame and the picture is pretty good, with the concert footage well filmed and quite crisp and the interview footage is also pretty good, despite an annoying specked effect that proceeds each segment/cut. The archival footage is of variable quality, dependant on the age and source of the material on display. Still images are irritatingly bordered by a tacky translucent frame.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, and the concert footage sounds very good given the lack of a multi-channel remix and LFE channel. The music is clear, has sufficient range and the vocals are easy to understand. The dialogue in the interview footage is also very clear.

Features

The disc is devoid of extras which is annoying, some full length songs either live or promo-video would have been nice. The menus are well designed and easy to navigate despite being in German - hopefully the retail release will be in English instead.

Conclusion

I`ve got a broad musical taste, ranging from hard rock/metal all the way up to dance/trance, and have got ELO`s greatest hits lying around somewhere in the house although I`ve not listened to it for quite some time.

This documentary was quite interesting, but in truth offers little that hasn`t been seen elsewhere in the various rock family tree type of program often shown on terrestrial television or the various satellite/cable music channels.

Having said that, I found it to be quite informative and if has good audio and visual quality, with a good combination of music and interview/archival footage.