Marshall Blonstein's Audio Fidelity will be releasing guitar innovator
Michael Hedges critically acclaimed album Aerial Boundaries on a limited
edition hybrid SACD! This will be the first time that the celebrated album has
been made available on the SACD format.
It is important to note the "hybrid" SACD is compatible with
all standard CD players and no special audio equipment is needed to enjoy the
brilliant, remastered sound of unquestionably one of the most groundbreaking
albums in acoustic guitar history.
Aerial
Boundaries is the record that presented Michael Hedges to the world as the
ultimate acoustic guitar visionary, stretching the limits of the instrument to
accommodate his uncanny musical ideas. There are moments on the record where it
seems impossible that so much music is coming from one man and his guitar. The
liner notes inside the SACD booklet assures the listener that the guitar is the
origin for every sound heard...attacking his instrument, snapping strings,
banging on the fingerboard with his right hand.
The songs on
Aerial Boundaries are all beautiful and haunting and it is this emphasis on
composition over technique that makes this such an important recording. Hedges'
tracks feature layer upon layer of musical complexity and every performance
expands the dynamic range of the instrument. Stirring, complex compositions
like “Rickover's Dream,” “Spare Change,” and an ingenious instrumental take of
Neil Young's “After the Gold Rush” are on full display. Hedges could be
seductively quiet and suddenly explosive...slow or fast, timid or thunderous.
“There was
simply no one like him,” Bonnie Raitt said of Michael Hedges following his
untimely death in 1997, “a very gifted performer, arranger and composer whose
music sounded like nothing that had come before it." Aerial Boundaries
remains the late composer-guitarist's seminal work, and its innovations in
technique, tuning, tone, and intensity remain key texts in modern acoustic
circles. Hedges electronically manipulated some of the guitar sounds to an
almost unrecognizable point and still managed to create music of untarnished
beauty and so very rich in classical harmony.
Aerial
Boundaries is also available from Audio Fidelity on a deluxe 180g high quality
vinyl pressing.
Tracks:
1. Aerial
Boundaries
2. Bensusan
3.
Rickover's Dream
4.
Ragamuffin
5. After the
Gold Rush
6. Hot Type
7. Spare
Change
8. Ménage à
Trois
9. The Magic
Farmer
Produced by
Will Ackerman, Michael Hedges, Steven Miller
Engineered
by Steven Miller, Oliver Di Cicco, Bill Mueller, Michael Hedges
Mastered for
this release by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio
No comments:
Post a Comment