Complete Jan Akkerman

We hear that a 26 CD Jan Akkerman set is being released next month. UK pricing is around £99. Wouter Bessels, who compiled, annotated and mastered the set in collaboration with Jan, kindly put some background info online elsewhere. He says

The booklet will be substantial, yes, to say the least. 66 pages. A biography by yours truly, with several pages of photos from all eras of Jan’s career – including several previously unpublished shots, followed by an album-to-album breakdown, featuring full credits (including never before published facts about who played what on particular albums) and Jan’s own memories about the 23 studio and live albums, taken from recent extended interviews I’ve done with Jan. In addition there’s a cd featuring his personal selection of Focus tracks, with some pre-Focus stuff added (Johnny and His Cellar Rockers, The Hunters and Brainbox) and a cd full of previously unreleased stuff such as basic tracks from “Angel Watch” and “Stingray” (both without string and woodwind overdubs!) and the original demo for “Crackers” recorded in the Summer of 1975 with Pierre van der Linden on drums. That particular demo was recorded during rehearsals for the 1975 Japan/Australia tour of Focus for which Pierre temporarily rejoined the band.

Regarding the mastering: I have been working for almost a year to transfer the analog 2-track tapes – or digital safety copies in some cases – for most of the albums up to 1993. Expect some flat transfers (as some were very good and did not need to be enhanced – less is more), expect some carefully dynamically remastering on some albums (eg. the 1977 guitar in bed album – which sounds pretty hollow and too bright – I have carefully corrected that), a few needle drops (as some mastertapes have disappeared and/or were untraceable) and for the rarities cd: a variety of sources, from 2-track DAT, cassettes to 2-track analog / 2-track digital. ‘Subsequently all cd-masters were checked and prepared for production by Peter Brussee of QPoint mastering in Hilversum (The Netherlands) – no additional EQ’ing a.o. was done during that final process. I can honestly say that Jan’s back catalogue is now fully future proof!’