Annea Lockwood - The Glass World

From AllMusic:

New Zealand-born composer Annea Lockwood worked in New York throughout the '60s alongside some of the pioneering avant-garde composers of the time, such as John Cage, Phillip Corner and Alvin Lucier. She created conceptual pieces that walked a fine line between modern composition sound art and experimental theater, as well as works for string quartets and large-scale outdoor installations - A Sound Map of the Hudson River is her most recognized work.

The Glass World is a series of experimental compositions based on the sounds of glass that was originally released on LP in 1970; this CD version was issued in 1996. Overtones and resonations of glass sheets are folded into concise minimalist compositions; crunching and shattering sounds are used as complex tonal orchestrations. This collection is a highly intriguing experimental recording and, expectedly, is filled with a music of unease - which one would expect from such an avant-garde project. Much like Cage, the composer makes her music from the detailed study of everyday sounds.

Khampagar Monastery - Tibetan Buddhism: The Ritual Orchestra & Chants

From Nonesuch:

Extracts from music for three rituals were played in 1973 by the magnificent ensemble of shawms, trumpets and percussion of Khampagar Monastery. The recording opens with an invocation to Padmasambhava, who brought Buddhism to Tibet from India. Then follow two rites associated with Mahakala, who removes impediments to enlightenment.

Music plays an integral role in Tantric Buddhism, seen as a means to transform the whole stream of being into illumined awareness. The basic musical concepts and the teachings of Tantric Buddhism originally came to Tibet from India beginning in the eighth century. Chanting, such as that heard on this recording, is recognized as a powerful medium for inward transformation, since it is a dynamic form of meditation.

Nina Simone - 'Nuff Said

Its hard to imagine a limit on the amount of praise one could shower upon the high priestess of soul and I won't feign any attempt to do so.

Recorded three days after the death of Martin Luthor King at a concert performance as part of the Westborough music festival this recording is my favourite of Nina Simones (and one of my favourite records of all time).

As with many of Ninas live shows she darts between humour, good will, passionate longing and straight up righteous anger in an obviously inspired set

The record begins by lulling you into a false sense of security with the laid back 'In The Morning' which continues through 'Sunday In Savannah' until the latter half of the song as she wails Don't you dare go fishing son hinting at the parralels between the injustices in Africa and those happening in the US and sets the scene for one of the standouts on the album 'Bachlash Blues' - an uncompromising civil rights song written for her by African American poet Langston Hughes who had also died a few months prior.

Its hard not to be reduced to tears of inspiration as she screams When Langston Hughes died many months before / he said Nina keep on workin' 'til they open up the door / one of these days when ya made it and the doors are open wide / make sure you tell 'em exactly where its at so they'll have no place to hide.

Other stand outs include the moving tribute to MLK in the song 'Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead)', 'Peace Of Mind' and her incredible reinterpretation of 'Ain't Got No / I got Life' from the musical 'Hair'.

I can't recommend this album enough and am surprised at myself for not including it on the blog sooner. It is beautiful, brilliant and inspiring, a true classic in all the right ways.

Michael Hurley & Pals - Armchair Boogie

From Exiled Records:

Michael Hurley & Pals “Armchair Boogie” (Mississippi) Michael Hurley’s second album, recorded in ’69. The casual, effortless beauty of this album is a rare thing. Eccentric without being showy or pretentious, traditional without being formal. Semi-acoustic soundworld, but with occasional drums, piano, fiddle, other embellishments various & sundry, but never sounding “produced” – organic back porch vibe all the way.

This is a little like the best stuff from “Basement Tapes,” & it’s that good or better. Genius. If I mention the various recent musicians who have covered songs from this album, or Hurley’s songs in general, it might impress you, or it might annoy you – so I won’t mention them. Every song is brilliant and the recording is perfect…I can’t pick this thing apart – listening to it, I’m gone. Mississippi has done another service to humanity by getting this back out there on vinyl. Hard to see how anyone wouldn’t need this, wouldn’t love this.

Keiji Haino - The 21st Century Hard-Y-Guide-Y Man

From AllMusic:

The dark magus of flaming noise guitar trio Fushitsusha and Vajra not to mention any number of free-improvisation sessions in the Tokyo experimental music underground sets the world aflame again with this release. An incredibly diverse artist who approaches his recordings with frightening dedication, it was only a matter of time before the concept of a solo hurdy-gurdy recording would be committed to disk. His music has always sat somewhere in the inter-zone between ancient and modern, sounding as if it grew out of the earth and the Tokyo subway system in equal measures.

The album is an intense and electrified drone that sounds like a swarm of electric guitars and/or the orchestral intensity of heavy microtonal minimalist music - Tony Conrad and Phill Niblock come to mind. This album is an awesome standout in the Keiji Haino cannon that exhibits literally hundreds of recordings and nearly as many diversions in terms of his approach. Solo hurdy-gurdy is a forte for such a cerebral and abrasive aesthetic as Keiji Haino's.

Monks - Black Monk Time

From AllMusic:

The story of the Monks is one of those rock & roll tales that seems too good to be true - five Americans soldiers stationed in Germany form a rock band to blow off steam, and after starting out playing solid but ordinary R&B-influenced beat music, their songs evolve into something that bear practically no relation to anything happening in pop in 1966.

If anything, the Monks were far wilder than their story would suggest; they may have looked bizarre in their matching black outfits, rope ties, and tonsures, but it was their music that was truly radical, with the sharp fuzz and feedback of Gary Burger's guitar faced off against the bludgeoning clang of Dave Day's amplified banjo (taking the place of rhythm guitar), as Roger Johnston pounded out minimalist patterns on the drums, Eddie Shaw's electric bass gave forth with a monstrous throb, and Larry Clark's keyboard bounced off the surfaces of the aural melee.

This would have been heady stuff even without Burger's wild-eyed vocals, in which he howls "I hate you with a passion, baby," "Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?" and "Believing you're wise, being so dumb" over the band's dissonant fury. The closest thing the Monks had to a musical counterpart in 1966 were the Velvet Underground, but existing on separate continents they never heard one another at the time, and while Lou Reed and John Cale were schooled in free jazz and contemporary classical that influenced their work, the Monks were creating a new species of rock & roll pretty much out of their heads.

Given all this, it's all the more remarkable that they landed a record deal with a major German label, and while Black Monk Time, their first and only studio album, doesn't boast a fancy production, the simple, clean recording of the group's crazed sounds captures their mad genius to striking effect, and the mingled rage and lunatic joy that rises from these songs is still striking decades after they were recorded.

Within a year of the release of Black Monk Time, the band would break up (reportedly over disagreements about a possible tour of Vietnam), and the two singles that followed the LP were more pop-oriented efforts that suggested the Monks couldn't keep up this level of intensity forever. But in late 1965, the Monks were rock & roll's most savage visionaries, and Black Monk Time preserves their cleansing rage in simple but grand style.

Bishop Perry Tillis - In Times Like These

From 50 Miles of Elbow Room:

Perry Tillis was born in Alabama in 1919. He led the life of a travelling blues singer in his early years before finding religion and leaving that life behind. Bengt Olsson made the first recordings of Bishop Perry Tillis in 1971 which appeared on a few collections on labels such as Flyright and were eventually issued on CD by the Birdman label a few years back. On these tracks he shows a light touch and a passionate delivery that has a hypnotic effect on the listener.

Bishop Tillis apparently continued to refine this aesthetic over the years, continuing to go further with it, channeling spirits, communicating with the angels, and making something truly cosmic, very raw, far out, and transportational. A field recording from the mid-‘90s (heard on the “Traditional Music from Alabama’s Wiregrass” CD on Alabama Traditions which is also in stock here for cheap) showed a brief glimpse of this heavier approach. Video footage from roundabout the same time also exists and it is exceptionally raucous (the great Brian Turner of WFMU played some of the audio on his program and identified the track as “TOTAL INSANITY I AM NOT KIDDING YOU” on his playlist).

In his last years, Tillis continued to make home recordings on a boombox, selections of which make up this LP that is full of honest, raw, free, spirit song that sounds like the beginning of all music, born from the urge to GET IT OUT. An informative insert penned by Amos Harvey provides the listener with some context and grounding, but you’ve really just got to let go and dive in.

Axolotl - Telesma

From Dusted Magazine:

If there are two camps of noise - holistic vs hubristic; psychedelic vs pugilistic; the joyous vs the jock - then Karl Bauer’s Axolotl recordings plot most thoroughly the route away from bully-boy excess and ever-outwards to an approximately infinite universe, with Telesma his calling card, the deepest and most affecting set he’s yet unleashed. Bauer sources drone as his bedrock and he repeatedly excites the flat-line by pushing everything just into the red and then letting molecules of texture and distortion bump against each other, mapping constellations of unbridled ecstatic tone.

The engorged electricity and loop logic that inhabits Telesma suggests any number of peers and precedents - imagine Astral Social Club remixing those mid-period Cluster records; the massed hum of Takehisa Kosugi overpowering Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas and All projects; a ten-year old LaMonte Young sighing to the shortwave non-songs of Sunroof! It’s deeply suggestive stuff. But Bauer’s trail into the eternal is littered with personal touches, from the fairy floss white noise of “Apergy” to the organ-as-bee-swarm purr of the title track, where Bauer’s lips and tongue seemingly kiss the cosmos.

Anyone who has spent any time following up the complex topography of post-Dream Syndicate higher-mind drone sound will have lost a good portion of their hearing to lesser ingrates – hipsters genuflecting to Conrad and company without sourcing the breathless rhapsody of internal flight. Well, you’re on safe ground with Axolotl - no Johnny-come-lately, Bauer’s one of the few psychonauts pushing the field through into the next torched, glittering zone of ecstasy. Easily the best released-in-2006-but-I-didn’t-hear-it-until-2007, reissue-of-limited-CDR I ever did encounter.

Alhaji Bai Konte - Kora Melodies From The Republic Of The Gambia, West Africa

From Kora Connection:

Documenting the late Gambian kora legend, Alhaji Bai Konte, this 72 minute CD captures the spirit and beauty of the Mandinka kora. The original LP features performances recorded at his home in Brikama. The CD reissue includes two previously unissued bonus tracks of Bai playing live in concert. Bai's musical style ranges from intimate to lively and has performed at folk festivals through out the world. If there were only one kora recording in your music collection, this would be an excellent choice.

John Fahey - Visits Washington D.C.

From AllMusic:

John Fahey's final album of the 1970s was also his first studio album in nearly five years, his prolific pace in the first dozen years or so of his recording career slowing notably by the middle of the decade.

He pretty much just picked up where he left off on Visits Washington DC, however, offering another set of acoustic guitar instrumentals with stellar picking and an eclectic range of influences. A good share of the material this time around came from other sources, as he put together a medley of Doc Watson's "Silver Bell" and Bill Monroe's "Cheyenne" for the first track; incorporated Leo Kottke's "Death by Reputation" into the second, and also covered Bola Sete's "Guitar Lamento."

On his originals (and to some degree even his interpretations), echoes of Appalachian folk, bluegrass, blues, ragtime, and flotsam and jetsam of Americana (with Stephen Foster liberally quoted in Fahey's composition "The Discovery of the Sylvia Scott") blend and merge. Some of his characteristic moodiness emerges in passages from "Ann Arbor" and "Melody McBad," and Richard Ruskin, another artist on the Takoma label, adds second guitar to "Silver Bell."

The Harmonic Choir - Hearing Solar Winds

From CD Baby:

Twenty-five years have passed since the hot, hazy summer night in Provence when David Hykes and The Harmonic Choir sat together in the Thoronet Abbey and created their remarkable recording of Hearing Solar Winds.

Twenty-five years is an eternity in the world of music. An entire generation comes of age in that time, bringing with it new currents of musical taste and style. Rare is the work that speaks to successive generations with an abiding freshness and feeling of revelation that endures after repeated listening. "Hearing Solar Winds" is such a work.

Two-and-a-half decades after its first release, it still offers an astonishing window into a different world of perception. It deserves to be regarded as a key work of the late twentieth century, both for the originality of its vision, and for the abiding influence that its revelatory approach to working with sound has had on diverse communities of musicians and artists, not to mention a broader circle of scientists and seekers, healers and musicians.

David Hykes was himself influenced by many kinds of music, notably the overtone-singing traditions of Mongolia, Tibet and Tuva, which were far less known in the 1970s and early 1980s than they are today. Yet Hearing Solar Winds represents not a simulacrum of Tuvan or Mongolian overtone singing, but the product of a global sensibility inspired by music's most powerful universal: the harmonic series.

Just as Tuvan and Mongolian overtone singing are rooted in the natural environment of mountains and grasslands that the south Siberian herders hold sacred, the Harmonic Chant of Hearing Solar Winds evolved in the environment of sacred indoor spaces, including New York City's neo-gothic St. John the Divine Cathedral, where the Harmonic Choir was in residence from 1979 until 1989, and the Thoronet Abbey. The Choir's music is perfectly suited to these spaces, which bring to life both the literal and metaphorical harmony created by well-tuned overtones.

Stars Of The Lid - Live At Holy Trinity Church, Leeds, UK, 25-05-2008

A review of the show:

What better venue for an evening of ambient music that Holy Trinity Church? Though it may not have the best sound for a concert in Leeds I would doubt anybody's claim for a venue with better ambiance. The phrase 'pull up a pew' has never been more apt than tonight as the church fills to the brim with a crowd that knows it made the right choice in braving the cold weather to be here, with or without canned lager in hand.

Stars Of The Lid are a difficult band to capture in words, they make their way to the stage to a choir of Disney-esque ambiance, and from then on you know that this show will be out of the ordinary. Adam Wiltzie & Brian Edward McBride direct the beautiful orchestra-lite, and they play through cuttings of their 'Tired Sounds' and more recent 'Refinement of the Decline' albums. It's a wash of sound, a couple of violins have never sounded so big especially when the cello grinds up from the deep to create a roar of noise, you're listening for the distortion but it's not there. Sombre tones build and the projections on the church walls echo it, from green primordial swamps to the creation of the universe in its celestial magnitude, it's all painted on the ceiling tonight.

This is one amazing show. There is real majesty here, so much so that a crowd that only dares to squeak open beer cans between songs demands an encore and still wants more once it's gone. It would be futile to name what songs are played tonight and it's one of those shows where everybody who was there will remember for years into the future.

Three Eduard Artemiev Soundtracks

Three bootleg-ish versions of Eduard Artemiev's soundtracks to Andrei Tarkovsky's films Solaris, Zerkalo (The Mirror) and Stalker.

If you haven't seen these films, you should probably do so, they're some of Tarkovsky's best work and three of the best movies I've seen.

Two CDs in one zip file.

Tarkovsky Wiki Article

Various Artists - Ritual Mouth Organs Of The Murung, Bangladesh

The Murung are people living in the hills of West Bangladesh, near the Burmese border. Consisting of a population of around 50,000, they have their own language and were able to avoid being converted to the neighboring religions.

Their main musical instrument is the plung, a mouth-organ (whose origin is from the region of Burma and Cambodia). It is made of a wind-chest made of a calabash gourd, several bamboo pipes (between three and five), and a bamboo mouth piece. Each pipe has a hole and contains a free reed which vibrates when the hole is closed by the fingers of the players. The reed will vibrate either when inhaling or exhaling.

A plung ensemble can contain between ten and 20 instruments of different sizes. The music is repetitive and rhythmic; it creates more tone-color melodies than real melodies. It is heard during particular events (weddings, funerals, or other celebrations or ceremonies). There is also another version of the plung, called the rina plung. It accompanies litanies, lists of names of ancestors, or love poems, which are half-sung and half-murmured. These songs are accompanied by ecstatic dances.

This record was produced in France during the Festival de l'Imaginaire. The Murung music was heard for the first time outside of their native hills of Bangladesh.

Kyoto Imperial Court Music Orchestra - Gagaku: The Imperial Court Music Of Japan

""Elegant" music, likely the oldest existing form of orchestral music in the world, Gagaku is presented here in a richly authentic performance recorded in Kyoto, Japan. Rarely performed in public (and even more rarely in the West) this is profoundly intense and affecting music exquisitely performed by the Kyoto Imperial Court Orchestra. Prepare yourself for Gagaku of Japan - haunting, powerful, and unforgettable music of ceremony!

Includes Etenraku (music of divinity), Hassan (crane dance), and Nasori (dragon dance)."
From Lyrichord.

The above review doesn't exactly do justice to this recording - It needs to be heard to be believed.

Bonus video:

Yoshi Wada - Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile

From Boomkat:

Best known for his work as part of the Fluxus collective, sound artist Yoshi Wada only released two albums, the rarest of which is reissued here. 1981's Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile contains two pieces: one half-hour vocal drone focusing on overtones in a reverberant space, and another, slightly longer piece based on a bagpipe-like homemade instrument, which drones in a magnificently aggressive fashion exhaustively.

On this piece you can certainly hear the connection between Wada and cohort La Monte Young, but there's also a real similarity between this latter composition and Jim O'Rourke's early organ drones. These pieces present a similar illusion of featureless, complete temporal stasis, with sustain spiraling off into infinity. Which, in case you're unclear on the matter, would be a good thing.

Abner Jay - True Story Of Abner Jay

From Volcanic Tongue:

Describing himself as "the last great Southern black minstrel show", Abner Jay was a travelling one-man band and revenant folk spirit who performed lugubrious versions of original blues and traditional American spirituals alongside his own material in a baritone several leagues below Johnny Cash. By slowing his source material to a laggard, awkward lollop, Jay rescued it from decades of blacked-up virtuoso mimicry, refocusing attention on its ragged edges, emotional depth and complex humanity.

Jay joined Silas Greens Minstrels in 1932 on the back of a huge repertoire of banjo and old-time songs learnt from his grandfather, who had been a slave in Washington County, Georgia. He went on to lead the WMAZ Minstrels on Macon radio from 1946-56 before going solo and touring the country in his portable 'log cabin', complete with its own PA system, from where he would perform and sell cassettes and LPs, when not in residence at Tom Flynn's Plantation Restaurant in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Jay died in 1993 and since then his LPs have become almost impossible to track down. Anthony Braxton described Jay as an "American master" and his banjo, guitar and harmonica playing is every bit as idiosyncratic and unmediated by the tyranny of 'correct' technique as Braxton's own. And the tongues given voice to here are drawn from deep within the murk of centuries, combining almost Velvets-styled barbed wire drones with gut-bucket paeans to drugs, depression and women.

This is classic private press/real people Americana of the caliber of Arthur Doyle and Mississippi have done a great job of compiling the best of Jay’s underground oeuvre - including classic tracks like “I’m So Depressed”, “Vietnam”, “Ol Man River” and “My Mule” – while cutting out his sometimes distracting ‘comedy’ routines and packaging it in a sleeve that could almost pass for a Brandie original. You need to hear this: some of the most amazing avant/primitive blues music of the 20th century.

Holy shit this fucking rules - Aaron

Erkin Koray - Elektronik Türküler

My friend Mic told me to listen to this guy because he is supposedly the 'Godfather of Turkish Psychedelic'. Upon further investigation, I have found that this guy is totally ballin'.

Erkin Koray (born June 24, 1941), has been in the Turkish rock music scene since the late 1950s or early 1960s. He is widely acclaimed as being the first person to ever play rock and roll in Turkey; in 1957, he and his band gained notoriety by playing covers of Elvis Presley and Fats Domino. He was also one of the first Turkish musicians to embrace the electric guitar and modern amplification.

By the late 1960s, he was already a major figure in Turkish psychedelic music and Anatolian Rock, beginning with his first psychedelic single Anma Arkadaş in 1967. Koray followed this with a number of singles, both by himself and in collaboration with others, that established him as a force to be reckoned with on the Turkish rock scene. Koray became a controversial figure in Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s; he was actually assaulted in Istanbul, and on one occasion stabbed, for having long hair.

Badass.

Emeralds - What Happened

From Brainwashed:

The album opens with "Alive in the Sea of Information," an eight minute excursion which fits snuggly into Emeralds’ previous oeuvre. The trio is unflinching in their alliance with the forms of '70s synth explorers like Cluster and Klaus Schulze, and they display their fine capabilities in that realm here as the soft ringing of Hauschildt's Moog gradually thickens with Elliott's Korg MS-10 bass tones. The liner notes state that "this recording is a collection of improvised songs recorded live to tape 2007-2008," an important indicator as to the group's process and one which is on fine display here. Each line undulates along in a soupy mix of analog psychedelia that captures perfectly the group's capability for spontaneous improvisational composition. As long vocal drones are spread across the weighty synth backdrop it does become a song of sorts, exploring its parts with a careful and confident hand

One of the paradoxes surrounding Emeralds is their close-knit affiliation with the underground noise scene. Despite the high-fidelity and overt beauty often explored on their works, the unit has continued to sharpen their abilities in the tape, vinyl and CD-R culture of labels such as Fag Tapes, Ecstatic Peace and their own Wagon and Gneiss Things imprints. This influence is readily apparent on "Damaged Kids," which starts off with synthesizer gestures that bubble about among thick and mossy tones, sounding more like John Olson's remixes of Elliott's solo work than the traditionally vibrant Emeralds sound. As it builds however, it meshes into a series of mobile synth gestures that are carried along by McGuire's guitar pulse before lightening its load in favor of crystalline drops of guitar tone and synthesized garble that drift off into a quickly pulsing end. Given that the group takes 15 minutes for the piece, it is still surprising how frequently they are able to smoothly transition from one mode to another.

"Up in the Air" is, as its title suggests, a lofty affair that serves as a brief intermission in the album. It is the most overtly gentle work on the disc, providing a respite before the next two tracks make up the last half of the album. "Living Room," the longest piece here, begins with an organ-like line that recalls Terry Riley or La Monte Young's "The Well-Tuned Piano" more than Neu! or Tangerine Dream. McGuire's guitar lends a church bell quality to the work as it drifts toward a starker, more static area. The trio's abilities as a whole are on display, with each member circumventing the whole with well placed and unselfish playing far beyond the maturity of most musicians in their early-twenties. Which isn't to quantify Emeralds' talents in terms of their age; these improvisations would be impressive for anyone. The proximity of their work to synthesizer legends of the past serves as testament to this. Never mere impersonators, the group manages to find its own worlds of sound through the means of decades past, but with the ears of today.

The closing "Disappearing Ink" slides across the speakers with monolithic grace as it unwraps its own sonic world. McGuire's guitar tones stand out in their lulling rhythms, staying warm without ever slipping into post-rock wankery. As the piece evolves, it emerges as a wall of vaporous, spectral beauty, as rich as an Eno instrumental with the weight of Popul Vuh or Ash Ra Tempel's best work.

In interviews, Emeralds often speak of the importance of volume in their music. To see the group live is to understand the true capacity of their music to physically manifest itself. Too often their albums are heard with this crucial factor lacking. For the complete experience, What Happened is a fine example. Each song materializes as it is meant to while Elliott, Hauschildt and McGuire, chisels in hand, continue in shaping the walls of sound before them.

Donny Hathaway - Everything Is Everything

From AllMusic:

Already a respected arranger and pianist who'd contributed to dozens of records (by artists ranging from the Impressions to Carla Thomas to Woody Herman), with this debut LP Donny Hathaway revealed yet another facet of his genius -- his smoky, pleading voice, one of the best to ever grace a soul record.

Everything Is Everything sounded like nothing before it, based in smooth uptown soul but boasting a set of excellent, open-ended arrangements gained from Hathaway's background in classical and gospel music. (Before going to Howard University in 1964, his knowledge of popular music was practically non-existent.)

After gaining a contract with Atco through King Curtis, Hathaway wrote and recorded during 1969 and 1970 with friends including drummer Ric Powell and guitarist Phil Upchurch, both of whom lent a grooving feel to the album that Hathaway may not have been able to summon on his own (check out Upchurch's unforgettable bassline on the opener, "Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)"). All of the musical brilliance on display, though, is merely the framework for Hathaway's rich, emotive voice, testifying to the power of love and religion with few, if any, concessions to pop music.

Like none other, he gets to the raw, churchy emotion underlying Ray Charles' "I Believe to My Soul" and Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," the former with a call-and-response horn chart and his own glorious vocal, the latter with his own organ lines. "Thank You Master (For My Soul)" brings the Stax horns onto sanctified ground, while Hathaway praises God and sneaks in an excellent piano solo.

Everything Is Everything was one of the first soul records to comment directly on an unstable period; "Tryin' Times" speaks to the importance of peace and community with an earthy groove, while the most familiar track here, a swinging jam known as "The Ghetto," places listeners right in the middle of urban America. Donny Hathaway's debut introduced a brilliant talent into the world of soul, one who promised to take R&B farther than it had been taken since Ray Charles debuted on Atlantic.