Album Reviews

This Michael Hedges album shook up the guitar playing world in 1984 the way Leo Kottke's 6 and 12 String Guitars had in 1969.

John Fahey had produced the Kottke album, which made sense. Windham Hill's Will Ackerman co-produced this one, which was issued on that label. That made somewhat less sense because this album is hardly "new age" music intended to calm and sooth the minds of post hippie grown-ups, which was most of what Ackerman's label trafficked in.

Aerial Boundaries with its edgy, flamboyant slapping, string popping and hard edged percussive strumming can be at times positively jarring, though of course there are times when it shimmers and flows river-like. It's telling that while over time much of what Windham Hill released now sounds dated and "Earth Shoe"-like, Hedges's albums—particularly this one— have time traveled well—sounding as fresh today as when first released, though I'm less enthused now about the "After the Goldrush" cover than I was back when the record was first released..

It's one of only two Windham Hill albums in my collection. The other is Tim Green's Glass Green. I reacted to most of the Windham Hill stuff the way hyper-active kids react to amphetamines. For some reason it calms them down. Rather than relaxing me as intended, I grow agitated and angry listening to Windham Hill fare. For some reason it just pisses me off.

That didn't happen listening to this album, which could at one moment produce the calming feeling of cool water on a hot day and eating hot peppers the next as Hedges could go from calm strumming to leaving open spaces that he'd fill seemingly sporadically with pyrotechnic-like percussive and tonal explosions.

Hedges, who died in a car accident in 1997 at age 44, recorded his debut album for Windham Hill in 1981 and this one, considered his best, three years later.

You can hear in his playing some of the other guitar virtuosos of the folk era (name your favorite, but especially the percussion oriented ones like John Martyn) but his compositions were less folk and more jazz-tinged and minimalist classical, resembling at times works by Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Of course there's a Pat Metheny influence as well, to both his compositions and the sound he achieved.

The combination of odd tunings, his being adept using electronic effects and especially his being well-educated in musical composition made his music anything but "new age". That only stuck because of the Windham Hill Association.

Windham Hill was also annoying (to me anyway) because it, like Rykodisc, made a big deal out of being a digital label. So this album's notes tell you that some tracks were recorded "live to 2 track digital master", while others were recorded "live to 2 track master" because someone couldn't bring himself to use the dreaded "A word".

The paragraph below is what I'd originally written about the source used for lacquer cutting:

"So the digital master for this record was sourced at a variety of studios from both analog and digital tape (the digital probably Sony F-1, which I believe was used to transfer John Renbourn's Sir John A lot Of.. for Windham Hill's Lost Lake division, completely ruining the sound in the process) and all of it was transferred to the final digital master by Mark Boeddeker at Master Digital, in Venice, CA. Bernie Grundman mastered the original vinyl at A&M Studios back in 1984."

But, that is incorrect! I just got an email from Kevin Gray who says the source he cut from was the original analog master tape!"

What that means is, Mark Boeddeker transferred the digital recordings to analog so a final analog master tape could be assembled using both original digital and analog recordings. So the tracks that were originally recorded analog are AAA on this record.

I have that version as well as another pass Grundman made in the late 1990s for the German Alto Analogue label. That second pass creams the original in terms of dynamics and transparency as converters greatly improved (though of course we know they are all perfect and all sound the same).

Kevin Gray remastered this time for Audio Fidelity, which issued it in an attractive gatefold package. And again, this latest edition blows the doors off the previous two in every imaginable way. If you're thinking "why not get an all digital version?", why are you reading this?

If you don't have a copy of this, it's worth getting, musically and sonically. And if you have an original, you will be surprised by how much better this reissue sounds compared to the original.