Peter Gabriel - Play: The Videos
Peter Gabriel has long been revered for his great songwriting, cinematic  soundscapes, riveting concerts, and groundbreaking videos. Is it any  surprise, then, thatPlay: The Videosis a music DVD for the  ages? Nope. But that doesn't make it any less thrilling to watch--or to  listen to. Gabriel has assembled and polished an evening-filling 26  clips, all of them collaborations with innovative visual artists and  directors like Stephen Johnson, Matt Mahurin, Francois Vogel, and Sean  Penn. From the 1977 promo for "Modern Love" to 2003's "Growing Up" and  much between, it's all here, and most viewers will be pleasantly  surprised to find more than a couple videos they missed along the way.  The focus is explicitly on conceptual pieces, the lone visual exception  being a 2004 live rendition of "Games Without Frontiers" among the  extras.Gabriel says in an accompanying essay that "music can stand more  repetition than video and music together."Playgives us  something extra in light of that: fresh 5.1 surround mixes in both Dolby  Digital and DTS 96/24 for every track, with Gabriel/U2 production vet  Daniel Lanois at the helm for most songs. (You'll get standard DTS sound  from DTS-capable DVD players and, even better, lossless high-resolution  audio from a DTS 96/24-compatible player.) The surround mixes are  nothing short of revelatory, using all available channels to amplify  Gabriel's ambient side while breaking out the percussion in fascinating  ways and driving home the music's subterranean bass.--Michael  Mikesell