John Oswald
Gray Folded

First Appeared in The Music Box, May 1996, Volume 3, #3

Written by John Metzger

This is one of the weirder Grateful Dead- related releases on the market. You've probably heard portions of it as well as interviews with John Oswald on David Gans' program. Gray Folded is a two-disk set spanning nearly two hours and covering twenty-five years of the classic Dark Star. What makes this collection so weird is that Oswald, using a process he calls plunderphonics, rolls together many, many version of Dark Star both sequentially and in musical layers. The result is a musical masterpiece, although it does get a bit weird when Jerry Garcia's voice is heard singing the word "dark" and holding it for a full minute. The packaging for the set is fantastic, including a description of the creative and technical process and a full mapping in ten-second increments of which versions appear in the mix. ½

Gray Folded is available from Barnes & Noble.
To order, Click Here!

Ratings

1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!

Copyright © 1996 The Music Box