The Grateful Dead spent most of 1975 creating new music from the ground up inside Bob Weir’s home studio - “Ace’s.”
At long last, the chaotic, circulating tapes from these sessions have been sorted into a uniform, complete collection. A devoted band of fan-archivists discovered approximately 24 hours of unique material on the tapes - eliminating duplications, identifying the best source for each minute, and solidifying the dating of all material.
As a result, listeners and scholars can now follow the Dead’s creative process across the year, from protean ideas through (and beyond) the recording of “Blues for Allah,” packed with additional hours of music that was only ever played in these sessions. (There are gaps in this audio development story, because some session tapes do not circulate.)
The archivist group outputted two audio collections, each with its own, information-rich set of liner notes:
You can download “The Complete Circulating Ace’s Recordings” (24 hours) here, choosing between FLAC and MP3. This collection is organized as individually dated folders - archive style - rather than carrying a single “album” name. The folder also contains the liner notes separately. These notes are a significant contribution to Dead scholarship - highly recommended.
These 24 hours of chronological sessions, including every note, noodle, and chat, is an amazing fly-on-the-wall experience, when you’re in the mood for it. However, it’s probably not the best way for most people to encounter this new-and-improved version of the 1975 sessions.
The curated “Angels in Flame” compilation presents approximately half of the material (~ 11 hours), organized in a more listener-friendly way. In addition to including at least one version of every theme/song pursued in the sessions, it tracks the development of many musical ideas from their earliest appearance to their final (or last known) form. It even curates some of the best banter. The liner notes for “Angels in Flame” provide detailed commentary on each theme/song.
Anything more you’d like to know about the music or the archival project itself can be found in the liner notes for each set.