Play music, and play with the box

With the album under attack by the iPod, boxed sets have become more and more like retrospective museum exhibitions.

Technology has freed music consumers to hear the individual song they want, when they want it. But along with the immediate gratification of the pleasure principle, there's a concomitant need to make sense of it all, and take a measure of an artist's overall output. And for some listeners - the old-fashioned kind, anyway - there's a need to hold a physical object in the hand, so they can look at something other than an LCD screen as they listen.

That's where the boxed - or box? - set-makers come in. And that's why many of the collections reviewed here (all with at least three CDs) are as much about packaging as the music.

The Heavy Metal box looks like an amp that goes all the way up to 11, while the Brit-pop box resembles a telephone booth that lights up with the flick of a switch (batteries included). And almost all contain lovingly detailed booklets full of vintage photos that cater to the superfan.

These blurbs don't cover everything - there are multi-CD sets for enthusiasts of Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard and Genesis, among others. But some didn't make the cut because they had too little rare or unreleased material.

Miles Davis The Complete On the Corner Sessions (Sony/Columbia ***). Come hither ye hipsters for the studio recordings and a dozen unreleased tracks that trumpeter Miles Davis made between 1972 and 1975, starting with the album On the Corner. Its coolness is calculated to explode in the brains of squares. Funky grooves abound over a gurgling bottom. Tunes with names like "Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X" seem to float on cymbal haze while electric sitars and tablas add a worldly distortion. Many worthies - including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Fortune and John McLaughlin - are represented. After 6½ hours of listening, you may feel enlightened, or like an unhappy patient of Miles' dentist father. (6 CDs, $140)

   - Karl Stark