Anthem of the Sun is the second studio album by American rock band the Grateful Dead, released on July 16, 1968, by Warner Bros-Seven Arts.

The band was also joined by Tom Constanten, who contributed avant-garde instrumental and studio techniques influenced by composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The album was assembled through a collage-like editing approach helmed by members Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh (along with soundman Dan Healy), in which disparate studio and live performance tapes were blended together to create new hybrid recordings.

[7] However, determined to make a more complicated recorded work than their debut release, as well as attempt to translate their live sound into the studio, the band and Hassinger changed locations to New York City.

[7] Eventually, Hassinger grew frustrated with the group's slow recording pace and quit the project entirely while the band was at Century Sound, with only a third of the album completed.

It has been reported that he left after guitarist Bob Weir requested creating the illusion of "thick air" in the studio by mixing recordings of silence taken in the desert and the city.

[9] Kreutzmann explained, "Phil and Jerry were the ones who figured out that we could exploit studio technology to demonstrate how these songs were mirrors of infinity, even when they adhered to their established arrangements.

[10] Drummer Bill Kreutzmann's description of the production process describes the listening experience of the album as well: ...Jerry [Garcia] and Phil [Lesh] went into the studio with [Dan] Healy and, like mad scientists, they started splicing all the versions together, creating hybrids that contained the studio tracks and various live parts, stitched together from different shows, all in the same song — one rendition would dissolve into another and sometimes they were even stacked on top of each other...

[9] Likewise, the rest of the band used a large assortment of instruments in the studio to augment the live tracks that were the base of each song, including kazoos, crotales, harpsichord, timpani, trumpet, and a güiro.

"[8] Jerry Garcia's longtime friend and songwriting partner, Robert Hunter, had made his first lyrical contributions to the band the previous year for "Dark Star".

However, significant fragments of "Alligator" (e.g. the post-vocals "jam section") are known to come from the February 14, 1968, show at San Francisco's Carousel Ballroom (the venue that later became the Fillmore West).

[16] Q writer Johnny Black considers it to be one of numerous 1968 concept albums that applied different approaches to the use of "conceptuality" popularised by the Beatles' Sgt.

[13] Rough Guides writer Ken Hunt credits Garcia for the project's direction, "deploying live and studio performances collage-fashion".

"[18] David Gans of Musician considers Anthem of the Sun to be the best example of Lesh's resurfaced pre-Grateful Dead influences, due to the "passages of musique concrète directly traceable to Berio's electronic music".

[23] Edwin Pouncey of The Wire writes that the song's latter part features Constanten's tape montage and prepared piano work, applied with "enthusiastic participation" from Garcia and Lesh.

He adds: "Collaged from superimposed performance tapes, his experimental symphony suddenly folds into a bout of musique concrète that falls somewhere between Varèse's Déserts and the respective keyboard deconstructions of John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow.

[22] Rolling Stone reviewer Jim Miller commented on the fusion of studio and live work, describing it as a mix of "the carefully crafted" and "the casually tossed off" with the results being spliced together.

"The end product," he wrote, "is one of the finest albums to come out of San Francisco, a personal statement of the rock aesthetic on a level with the Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing at Baxter's."

"[20] Lou Weinstein of The Lexington Herald wrote that the album has much to offer for fans of psychedelic rock, commenting that the group "have certainly established themselves" and forged their own sound.

[26] Victoria Daily Times writer Russell Freethy grouped Anthem of the Sun alongside The Collectors' eponymous album and Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation for containing "[t]he best in electronic rock".

"[28] James Belsey of Bristol's Evening Post panned the record, saying that compared to Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead sound like "amateurs set loose in the world of weird music".

[31] Writing for New Musical Express in 1974, Nick Kent described "Anthem of the Sun as "a grandiose project unfortunately landed with an atrocious 'mix' that left it hamstrung as more of an intriguing experiment than an innovative success."

Now it amounts at least to the ears of this once-believer, to the sum of its individual parts and no more – like the Airplane's similarly experimental After Bathing at Baxter's, a muddled, but quaintly grandiose, acid curio.

[35] In a positive review for Mojo in 2002, Jon Savage described it as the album on which the Grateful Dead's reputation deservedly lies, writing: "Anthem of the Sun is a still dazzling montage of studio and live performances mixed with heavy air into a constantly shifting, multi-layered whole that, with Jimi Hendrix's '1983', represents the ultimate psychedelic production."

"[40] AllMusic reviewer Lindsay Planer wrote that while uninitiated listeners could find the record "unnervingly difficult to follow," it nonetheless "obliterated the pretension of the post-Sgt.

Planer noted that the band's intention "to create an aural pastiche from numerous sources – often running simultaneously – was a radical concept that allowed consumers worldwide to experience a simulated Dead performance firsthand.

"[32] In The Great Rock Discography (2006), Martin C. Strong wrote that the addition of Hart gave the band a "a more subtly complex rather than powerful sound", which – along with Constanten's avant-garde influences – added to the "psychedelic stew" displayed on Anthem of the Sun, saying: "An ambitious collage of live and studio pieces, the album was another flawed attempt to seize the essence of the elusive beast that was the band's live show."

"[45] "That's It for the Other One" was included in Mojo's 1997 list of "Psychedelia: The 100 Greatest Classics"; Savage wrote: "From the time when musicians talked about taping air, this 12-minute sequence mixes the thunder of the Dead in full flight with Phil Lesh’s musique concrete and a gorgeous guitar melody about seven minutes in, which by itself justifies Jerry Garcia’s reputation.

Confusingly, the promotion for this reissue emphasized the use of original mixes (particularly those of the Workingman's Dead and American Beauty albums which had been remixed for previous high resolution digital releases).