Of all the groups that emerged fired up and ready-to-roll in the first golden dawn of early-1970s jazz-rock fusion Weather Report blazed a trail deeper than any other. They defined the nascent genre with a potent vision and imagination, turbo-charged by intense collective improvisation and sonic adventure, and have remained a continual influence and inspiration long after the clouds rolled in for the last time in 1985. They released 15 albums, many critically acclaimed, and even scored a Top 40 chart hit in 1977 with ‘Birdland’. And they haven't been too badly served by Columbia's reissue industry of human happiness either, with the original CD transfers, the mid-1990s Japanese Mastersound CD series in replica mini-LP type sleeves, the 2002 remastered reissues, the double CD Live & Unreleased set, and the triple CD and DVD box set anthology, Forecast:Tomorrow from 2006. And now comes this baby.

Nestling inside The Columbia Albums 1971-1975's stout compact box are their first six albums in replica card sleeves – including the hard to find Live In Tokyo 2CD set – and a 24-page booklet containing a lengthy new essay by noted US writer Bill Milkowski. For some, Weather Report's finest period was the colossal quartet with Jaco Pastorius and Peter Erskine from 1977 to 1981, but it's their earlier years that produced the most forward-looking and provocative music. A vital canon of work that took a thread from Miles' In A Silent Way and weaved a whole new tapestry of sound that still sounds utterly contemporary, with Shorter's spare brilliance and Zawinul's raw analogue keyboards providing the gritty, authentic edge so sought after by today's new breed, thoroughly sick of digital drabness. We don't need to re-review the music here. You know it. You know it's magnificent and totally essential. And if you don't then run, don't walk, to the nearest store or online retailer and start right now.

Using the superb sounding Mark Wilder/Bob Belden remasters from 2002, and adding bonus tracks from Live and Unreleased and Forecast: Tomorrow to each disc, Weather Report fanatics who own all the above-mentioned recordings will already have all the music here, and in the same sound quality. But for everybody else this is an absolute must. The debut Weather Report has the full 10.44 minute version of ‘Eurydice’ replacing the short edited version. I Sing The Body Electric adds the studio recording of ‘Directions’, while Live In Tokyo from 1972 is a revelation for those unfamiliar with this once costly import. Fearsome interplay and improvisation finds Zawinul wrenching all manner of warped weirdness from his Fender Rhodes, Eric Gravatt, Miroslav Vitous and Don Um Romao laying a menacing rhythmic dialogue and Shorter playing at a scary level of intensity he never again visited in this group. The broader, more groove driven Sweetnighter adds the DJ Logic remix of ‘125th Street Congress’ as a bonus, further cementing Zawinul's claim that the original track was the first hip hop beat ever recorded, while both Mysterious Traveller and Tale Spinnin', that incorporate African textures and the then cutting-edge synthesizers, are fattened with added live cuts, including ‘Cucumber Slumber’ and ‘Nubian Sundance’ for the former and ‘Man In The Green Shirt’ and ‘Directions/Dr Honoris Causa’ for the latter. And at a street price of under £25 it's a decision that hardly warrants agonising over.