Listen to one of Thurston Moore’s favorite guitar recordings.

In 1967, a young electric guitarist named Sonny Sharrock joined flute player Herbie Mann’s jazz band. It was a relatively unconventional move, adding Sharrock’s oft-spastic guitar jams to a flute-led quartet exploring near the intersection between post-bop and free jazz. But it was ’67 and a lot of wild stuff was going on.

Sharrock tore through the next decade, letting loose a series of searing guitar-driven solo albums and guest appearances with artists including Pharoah Sanders, Roy Ayers, Wayne Shorter, and Don Cherry. Something about playing with Mann, though – maybe the sonic contrast between flute and distorted guitar? – drew out the beast in Sharrock, a truth that Sonic Youth cofounder Thurston Moore isolated at some point during the pause-tape cassette era (likely the 1990s).

Pulling out his collection of Mann-Sharrock records, Moore located the guitarist’s solos and created an audio collage to connect them. A 17-minute masterpiece of cassette editing, it reveals the ways that Sharrock evolved his technique, tone and mode of attack. It also offers a portal into the formation of Sonic Youth’s own approach to electric guitar music.

“It was one of the best things I had ever seen and heard,” Moore has said of a Sonny Sharrock Band performance he attended at the Knitting Factory. “It was enlightening. It kind of informed me further, as far as what I wanted to do with the guitar.”

Here’s the track-list and time codes:

00:00 ‘Footprints (from Windows Opened)
00:56 ‘Windows Opened’ (Windows Opened)
02:23 Hold On, I’m Comin’ (Memphis Underground)
05:06 Concerto Grosso in D Blues (Concerto Grosso in D Blues)
07:21 Philly Dog (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go)
10:10 Miss Free Spirit (Stone Flute)
12:02 Kabuki Rock (Memphis Two-Step)
14:39 Memphis Underground (Live Montreux Jazz Festival)