Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 8, 2025

Rhino's Quadio series has been ongoing now for several years, and all sorts of iconic musical artists have gotten their chance to strut their (or at least their engineer's) four channel stuff, including such legends as Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, Donny Hathaway, The Doobie Brothers and Seals & Crofts, to name but a few, but virtually every release thus far in the Quadio line has in fact been for folks with a recognizable name. How many out there are going to be cognizant of Beaver & Krause, the duo responsible for both albums included on this disc (this is the first "twofer" on a Quadio disc that I've reviewed)? Enterprising researchers would do well to look up this venerable duo, who first came to my attention when I, as a fledgling piano student also interested in synthesizers, picked up their fantastic Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music, still an outstanding introduction to a then nascent idiom. Beaver & Krause went on to record three "groovy" albums for Warner, beginning with 1970's In a Wild Sanctuary (I'm wondering if it was a bit too early to be part of the quadraphonic craze). The two albums aggregated on this disc arrived in 1971 and 1972, and they're both fascinating musical journeys that combine any number of approaches, but with some very distinctive coloring courtesy of the electronic instruments utilized, though much of the color here is achieved by combinations of acoustic and electronic sounds.

As mentioned above, this is the first time a Rhino Quadio disc has offered two albums, and so the screenshots here are a bit different. The disc boots to the images seen in screenshot 1, and then selecting a given album goes to the tracklist for the album. You can therefore see track lists in screenshots 2 and 3.

Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Once again as with most of the Quadio releases, the video content here is simply the static menu(s) seen in the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. Yet again Rhino is inconsistent in its authoring and this disc does not allowing changing codecs with the colored buttons on your remote. As can be seen in the screenshots, the colors of the track names change as you cycle through.

Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men feature a nicely sumptuous DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 mix, though it may be the actual music rather than any surround presentation that throws some listeners. This is not "showy" quasi-orchestral fare like, say, the early releases from Wendy Carlos or Tomita were, and in fact a lot of the music here is rather reflective and meditative. As such, things like uses of quasi-pedal or near drones on the low end tend to waft out of all four channels simultaneously, but there is clear discrete channelization at times throughout both albums (one particularly nutty synth solo blasts out of the left rear channel). Vocals vary from amorphously diaphanous to good old fashioned sung English, and tend to waft through the soundstage almost as if at Atmos track were present. The mixture of acoustic and electronic sounds is quite interesting, and both tracks deliver flawless fidelity.

Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As with every Quadio release I've reviewed, there is no on disc supplemental material. The insert booklet recreates the original album's cover information, while offering the Quadio standbys of a picture of the boxes holding the master tapes, as well as Rhino's typical verbiage on setup.

Beaver & Krause: Gandharva and All Good Men Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I am kind of an outlier in that I always really liked all three of Beaver & Krause's Warner albums, while a lot of early electronic music aficionados seemed to have found them too "tame". The sounds and frankly even styles offered here are multi-varied to say the least, and may therefore not be to everyone's taste, but the four channel presentation is really inviting. Recommended.