#2086 Grateful Dead / John Oswald - Greyfolded

John Oswald folds together 2 hours of live performances of Dark Star into a gigantic 2-part opus.

I first heard a bit of this in the 90's and didn't know what to make of it - come to think of it, it probably colored my perception of the Dead for decades. I kept coming across downright straightforward albums like Workingman's Dead and asking, is this it? Thought yall were supposed to be a trip.

Older, wiser, more pretentious, I'm more willing to indulge in indulgence, and I do love that this goes all the way. Oswald finds the right balance between letting sections breathe and keeping his foot on the evolutionary gas, letting swirls shift into drones into meanders. If you're going to really space out, why let it ever end? Why not go all the way?

And the fact that you don't know where live ends and swirled-together begins, you just have to take it in as sounds, experimental on experimental, down the rabbit hole 4/5