Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust & Thunder Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust & Thunder Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 3, 2017

Maybe because my sons are more into EDM and similar genres, and most of their friends who seem to have made our house their permanent second homes are of the same ilk, I was introduced to Mumford & Sons jokes years ago by gaggles of teen boys not especially fond of the group's folky tendencies. What is it about this apparently harmless band that brings out the snark in some people? In doing research for this review, I actually found whole pages devoted to Mumford & Sons jokes (typical examples: “Mumford & Sons are Nickelback with acoustic guitars” and “Mumford & Sons got kicked out of a strip club — even strippers have standards”). Other folks may be making the band the object of endless punchlines, but it’s Mumford & Sons who are laughing—all the way to the bank. The band has had pretty incredible success over the past decade or so, despite releasing only a relatively meager three studio albums during that time, Sigh No More, Babel and Wilder Mind. All joking aside, for those of us who cringe at the “mechanization” of a lot of modern pop music, it’s actually refreshing to see wonderful acoustic instruments like a violin, a banjo and even a good old fashioned doublebass being played by the band, instruments that give some of Mumford & Sons’ tunes a distinctive sonic ambience. No one would ever accuse the band of offering anything approaching “head banger” status, but that’s not what they’re aiming for. This new so-called Gentlemen of the Road Edition of Mumford & Sons Live from South Africa: Dust and Thunder offers an appealing if often pretty low key concert (despite a wildly enthusiastic and to my taste overly vocal audience) along with We Wrote This Yesterday, a kinda sorta travelogue which documents the band’s travels in South Africa. Snarky young ‘uns like my sons will probably disparage the release, but Mumford & Sons fans (and there are a lot of them) will enjoy at least parts of both the concert and (perhaps especially) the accompanying documentary.

It’s perhaps heartening to see the societal transformation South Africa has undergone since the era documented in Under African Skies, a piece devoted to the history behind Paul Simon’s Graceland album. The fact that South Africa has been able to make such huge strides in racial equity in such a relatively short amount of time is a pretty thrilling example to those who are caught up in headlines of various strife and disorder in supposedly more “tolerant” environments. While it’s a little hard to make out individual faces in the gigantic audience attending Mumford & Sons’ Pretoria concert, but it’s not hard to imagine a cross cultural aggregation attending the performance, and there’s absolutely no doubt that the band features (if relatively briefly) international artists as part of the show, including Baaba Maal, Mamadou Sarr, The Very Best and Beaterberg (for some interesting background on this Graceland like collaboration, see the accompanying documentary We Wrote This Yesterday).

The concert is genuinely enjoyable, and the intercultural exchange moments are quite energetic, but for this concert video fan the nonstop "singalong" antics of the audience were increasingly annoying. This is actually a concert where almost every tune engenders a huge audience participation, something that of course speaks to Mumford & Sons' impact on their fan base, but which may prevent a few obstacles to a "mere" listener.

The Dust and Thunder concert features the following songs:

1. Snake Eyes
2. I Will Wait
3. Below My Feet
4. Wilder Mind
5. Awake My Soul
6. Lover Of The Light
7. Tompkins Square Park
8. Believe
9. Ghosts That We Knew
10. The Cave
11. Ditmas
12. Dust Bowl Dance
13. Wona
14. Lampenda
15. There Will Be Time
16. Little Lion Man
17. The Wolf

Note: For those wanting a slightly more budget friendly edition of this release, there's Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa - Dust and Thunder.

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust & Thunder Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust and Thunder is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, and Universal Music Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.90:1. Despite the fact that this concert takes place out of doors and at night, large portions of it offer really good detail and fine detail levels, at least when lighting regimens allow. As seems to be unavoidable, whoever designs these arena concerts really likes shades of violet and yellow, both of which tend to smooth out fine detail levels at times. Kind of funnily, while it's evident that rock concert staple dry ice was utilized (as evidenced in We Wrote This Yesterday), an opening behind the scenes moment in Dust and Thunder suggests the weather was a bit misty (see screenshot 6), and when either mist of dry ice vapors intrude on the stage, detail levels can also be at least marginally affected. While detail levels are at least somewhat variable, this release is not plagued with any serious posterizing or banding, despite the cameras being aimed squarely at light arrays throughout the concert.

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust & Thunder Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust and Thunder offers Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 core), DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks. All three of these options offer excellent reproductions of the source material, though I was at least a little surprised that there's not a huge difference between the Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. That said, the Atmos track definitely has more of an ambient environmental edge, something that may in fact turn out to be a detriment for some who aren't overly fond of all the audience participation on virtually every song. Both of the surround tracks offer excellent separation and breathing room, as well as generally fine support for the vocals, but the LPCM 2.0 track really features the vocals more prominently, as tends to be the case in many stereo offerings of live outdoor concert fare.

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust & Thunder Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Since this Gentlemen of the Road Edition contains a Blu-ray not included in the Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa - Dust and Thunder edition, I'm treating its content as supplementary material.

• Mumford and Sons: We Wrote This Yesterday (1080p; 1:06:14) is presented in a 1080p transfer in the rather wide AR of 2.78:1 (see screenshots 10 - 18). Audio options include DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0, and unlike the concert video, there are subtitles on this release, including English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese. The documentary is presented on a BD-25 (the concert is on a BD-50). The documentary begins in Capetown in February 2016, with the boys meeting the international artists who form part of their touring group and performances, as they attempt to hash out new material on the fly. There's kind of a charming self deprecation to some of this material, since evidently Mumford & Sons aren't ones to worry about little things like the number of bars certain chords last in any given tune. The documentary then follows the band on tour, and offers some backstage looks at a Johannesburg recording session. There are some passing commentaries about the vast social changes South Africa has undergone (there's a great anecdote relayed by Winston Marshall, whose father evidently lived in South Africa and verbally took on P.W. Botha at one point). The surround track offers a nice recreation of the documentary's musical moments, while also providing good immersion in some of the scenes with several people in the frame, as in some of the recording session material. Occasional very light dustings of noise creep into a couple of darker moments, but otherwise the video component is also excellent.

The release is housed in a CD sized book with a kind of faux leather inscribed cover. Inside the three discs (two Blu-rays and a Bonus CD) are in individual cardboard sleeves, and there are several pages of pictures of the band.

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust & Thunder Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mumford & Sons: Live from South Africa Dust and Thunder should be a no brainer for Mumford & Sons fans, and, please, no jokes about Mumford and a lack of brains (that is a joke, in case it isn't clear). This is an appealing "two fer" which offers a nice concert (albeit with too much audience "singing" for my particular tastes) and really nicely done documentary which is part travelogue, part performance footage and part recording session. Recommended.