The first three Emerson Lake and Palmer albums (self titled, Tarkus and Pictures at an Exhibition) are arguably the first true Rock Mini LPs. They were released on 21st September 1994.

These had been preceded by a much earlier Lotus and a US release of some Rolling Stones albums repackaged for Japan a few short months before these. Neither of these earlier releases was true to the original vinyl although the Stones came close.

The earliest true Minis were two series of MCA Jazz releases from March 1994 (MVCZ-26 to MVCZ-45) including this example: Death and The Flower.

Tarkus promo box and obis released to accompany the first K2 24 bit release of the first five ELP albums.

The artwork is darker than the album cover. It came with 6 promo obis, 2 for Trilogy.

Some of the images shown here include all but one of the Tarkus Mini LP releases spanning 1994 - 2008

Front opening promo box and obis from Disk Union came with first five albums in 20 bit K2 : VICP-62114 to VICP-62118

(Images courtesy of The Brain Salad Surgery site http://www.brain-salad-surgery.de/.)

Published by EMI Music Japan. This box is a little larger than the non-Japanese version as it contains additional printed material.

16 CD box set - being 14 studio albums including 2 doubles.

According to Pink Floyd Brain Damage site there were a few glitches with this release, the most notable being a misprinting of the inner bag for the second CD in "The Wall".

There are also cases of an album being missed out and duplicates in their places.

The later Japanese release of this box set is basically identical to this box set.

Poor quality fakes exist for this set - more details below.

The original Japanese individual releases are regarded as being of a much higher quality to either of these box sets.

You can see a YouTube video of this set on the videos page.