THE BEATLES LOVE (Apple) FORTY-something years down the line, the phenomenon of The Beatles seems a bit like a dream.

Their songs, the band's rags-to-untold-riches story and its painful and dismaying end are all part of our collective consciousness, yet the glowing, celebratory, all-inclusive optimism which was their natural stock-in-trade seems like an entirely alien concept in 2006. Did we dream the whole thing after all?

How fitting, then, that this latest re-imagining of the most gilt-edged back catalogue in the history of popular music should sound like a hallucinatory Beatles dreamscape - a kaleidoscopic and appropriately psychedelic sound collage where half-remembered fragments surface and sink into each other, suddenly snapping into moments of shocking pinpoint clarity.

The Love project arose out of the late George Harrison's friendship with Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Lalibert, who first mooted the idea of an entertainment experience' built around Beatles music. In less capable hands, this could so easily have manifested itself as an inappropriately crass endeavour - visions of a Beatles on ice dance spectacular swim nightmarishly before one's eyes - but the surviving Beatles are careful custodians of their legacy, and the involvement of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Sir George Martin and his son Giles caused Beatles fans the world over to sit up and take notice.

What has emerged is the result of a two-year labour of love - fittingly enough - whereby Giles Martin, with paternal input from Sir George, went back to the original EMI master tapes and began a painstaking process of unpicking and restitching to create a new aural tapestry. The idea was to end up with a seamless hour-and-a-half which took the Beatle-friendly listener on a vivid, frequently sentimental journey, ensuring however that there were no end of surprises along the way.

The good news is that Love is a resounding success, artistically valid and packing a colossal emotional punch. If you're a Beatles fan you'll be in bits, guaranteed, at several points if not entirely throughout. (I thought it best to start welling up straight away, with the spine-tingling a capella harmonies of Because - as clear a definition of beauty as I've ever stumbled across.) I was startled to also find myself overcome by Octopus's Garden, of all things. Ringo's doleful vocal, with the string arrangement from Goodnight behind it, is oddly and inexplicably affecting.

The careful craftsmanship involved throughout fair gladdens the heart. Vocal lines from one song will float magically over the backing track from another, and iconic motifs frequently shimmer into being like mirages. Many of the songs are completely intact, of course, but the mix is so startlingly clear and fresh that it is almost as thrilling as hearing them for the first time.

While on this topic, I should point out that Love is available in a special double digipak which includes a 5.1 surround sound mix of the album, which I fully expect will be revelatory and knee-buckling.

Do I have any reservations? Well, the intertwining segue of Drive My Car/The Word/What You're Doing veers uncomfortably close to Stars On 45 territory, but other than that, no. A full version of Blue Jay Way would have been nice, perhaps, but its foggy tendrils and the tamboura drone of Within You, Without You make for powerfully atmospheric transitions.

Strawberry Fields Forever is arguably worth the price of admission alone, building from John Lennon's original demo version through an early full band recording then into the one we know and revere - by which time the listener is well and truly poleaxed.

The best thing about Love is that it will send you scurrying back to the original albums with renewed vigour. It seems daft to say it, but it's easy to forget just how brilliant The Beatles really were - and hearing all of these astounding, uplifting songs tumbling over and into each other is a bit like being relentlessly mullered by, well, love.