XLIIs presents collections of Grateful Dead live recordings — complete shows, sourced from the highest-quality tapes available, with historical documentation for every performance.
Every three months, we acquire four collections on loan from collectors around the world. Each collector has spent years — sometimes decades — assembling a set of recordings around a single idea: a particular era of the band, a specific sound engineer, a run of shows that changed something. We present their collections as they organized them, with their original cassettes and J-card inserts photographed for the app.
Collections rotate every three months. A new season means new collectors, new recordings, and a new visual identity. We don't know what the next season will look like until the collections arrive.
Each season, we commission one artist to create artwork for all four collections. The artist chooses the medium. This season's artist is Marta Vidal, a printmaker in Porto who worked in hand-carved rubber stamps. Next season will be a different artist, a different approach. The artwork changes with the collections.
XLII is the designation for Type II high-bias cassette tape — the tape that Dead tapers used to record and trade live shows. Maxell XLII. TDK SA. The good stuff. The name is a nod to those tapes and the culture of collecting and sharing them.