Aerial Boundaries
It's been called the album that opened "a new chapter on steel-string guitar playing," and it's unquestionably one of the most groundbreaking albums in acoustic guitar history. Though Hedges had released the excellentBreakfast in the Fieldon Windham Hill in 1981, the Grammy-nominatedBoundariescame as an unexpected revelation in 1985. On stirring, complex compositions like "Rickover's Dream," "Spare Change," and a deft instrumental reading of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," Hedges unleashed a stunning new vocabulary of finger-tapping, hammering, and harmonic slaps--processed with electronics and reverb--that still resounds today in the playing of artists from Ani Di Franco to Preston Reed. Steeped both in classical harmony and the fingerstyle guitar tradition of Leo Kottke, Martin Carthy, and John Renbourn,Boundariesremains the late composer-guitarist's seminal work, and its innovations in technique, tuning, tone, and intensity remain key texts in modern acoustic circles.--James Rotondi