Aerial Boundaries

Hedges wrote it, and it was recorded live to two-track digital at Windham Hill Farm in West Townshend, Vermont, in the Fedco Audio Labs remote truck, with Steven Miller engineering and Tom Arrison and Nick Gutfreund assisting. We found no recording dates. Miller recalled saying he would take it another step further than "Rickover's Dream", and that after the first mix Hedges left the truck for the woods and returned hours later; Ackerman recalled Hedges, who had expected a more acoustic record, being horrified by the monster sound, and after several listens Hedges decided it was pretty wild. It was performed alone with no overdubs, using hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping, fingerpicking and harmonics to build counterpoint, with heavy strings and very high action. A blog reports Hedges called it a systems piece in the manner of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and gives the tuning, from a single source only; a tab site says the opening rhythm came from a dumbek player at a belly-dance performance.

S. Victor Aaron describes a repeated pattern that gradually develops, with Hedges covering guitar, bass and percussion roles at once, compared to Terry Riley's minimalism. Setlist.fm shows it played 46 times in all, counting other artists; the first by Hedges listed there is July 19, 1984 at the Montreux Jazz Festival, which is unconfirmed, and it opened 1997 shows at the Birchmere, the Somerville Theatre and the Bottom Line. Andy McKee played it most recently on the list, on July 28, 2026. It was not a single and had no video.