The new Carmen Gomes download Ray! is really very very good, music as well as sound. Following the Arch Manifest, (wherever that came from, but nonetheless quite an interesting concept);
Each recording starts and ends with the main artist alone in the hall the only interplay being the acoustics of the hall and his own mind. No audience is present except the ghosts from the past. When the band enters the music must create an Arch, going from the single instrument performance to the more complex band performance and back to the last solo performance. The same principle goes for the engineering; each recording starts out with only one microphone (stereo). As the music gains in complexity more microphones may be deployed, the only limit being the imagination and technical skills of the recording engineer.
