Grateful Dead / John Oswald - Grayfolded - 3 Cassette Set

First edition of 300 triple tape sets. 2025 adjustments & mastering for tape by John Oswald. 

Grayfolded 3LP vinyl edition available here

“This could be the greatest Grateful Dead album ever… it's that good.”

In 1993 Canadian composer John Oswald was invited by Phil Lesh to transform historical recordings of the Dead into something new, along the lines of what they had attempted in their Anthem of the Sun album. Oswald chose to focus on the Dead’s Dark Star, which, over the course of a quarter century, they had expanded and transformed in myriad ways in live performances. Oswald was given access to the Vaults, where over the course of a month, with the guidance of the Dead's resident archivist Dick Latvala, he collected 105 performances, which through the following year he formed, folded, fondled, and finessed into a kaleidoscopic unstuck-in-time documentary of the Grateful Dead in some of their most psychedelic, symphonic, and rocking excursions— a singular 110-minute fantasy performance.

Grayfolded was originally released in 1994 in between Dick's Picks Volume 1 (1993) and Dick's Picks Volume 2 (1995)

"An extended time-warped psychedelic jam that is meticulously hallucinatory."     New York Times 

"Rightly acclaimed as the ultimate Dark Star, the one you had always hoped the Dead would one day get around to playing." London Daily Telegraph

"Grayfolded is literally a hundred or so great nights rolled into one extraordinary extended high. Gorgeous sonic oragami." Rolling Stone

Original recordings of the Grateful Dead in performance have been processed using Plunderphonic techniques. John Oswald's nearly invisible hand creates the ultimate Dark Star that is even more than the sum of its parts.

• Performed by The Grateful Dead 
  (c) Grateful Dead Productions Inc. & Ice Nine Publishing Inc. 
• Taken from over 100 performances of Dark Star recorded between 1968 and 1993. Built, layered and "folded" to produce one large, new re-composed Dark Star.
• Time maps for each side documenting the source performances.
  
  Original recordings of the Grateful Dead in performance have been processed using Plunderphonic techniques. John Oswald's nearly invisible hand creates the ultimate Dark Star that is even more than the sum of its parts.
  
  Tape edition includes "time maps" which chart the source concerts of Dark Star.