By the end of 1968, Austin's Sonobeat Recording Company had enough experience under its belt to begin experimenting with new techniques to match the new sounds that experimental Central Texas bands, like New Atlantis, were trying. Producer Rim Kelley (Bill Josey Jr.) built a bizarre sound processing device -- that Sonobeat co-owner Bill Josey Sr. dubbed the "Sonotone Black Box" -- and used it to turn the lead guitar into a threatening Chimera in New Atlantis' frenetic version of Fire.

Whenever the Joseys demonstrated the Black Box, the response was wild speculation about how it worked and appeals to "open it up", but neither Rim nor Bill Sr. ever revealed its inner secrets, so the Black Box gained local notoriety.

An analog ancestor of today's digital audio processors, the Black Box accepted two inputs -- usually a guitar and "something else", often a microphone -- and morphed them into one output. Back in the '60s, the Black Box's sound was nothing short of sonic sorcery. For New Atlantis's recording of Fire, the Black Box inputs were lead guitar, tapped at its amp speaker, and a variable sine wave generator "played" in sync with the guitar. The results ranged from low growl to screaming banshee. The Black Box was a surprisingly simple ring modulator that used just two small audio transformers and four diodes, built from a schematic Rim found in an issue of Popular Electronics magazine.

Below , pulled from the Sonobeat vault more than 40 years after it was recorded, is a stereo trial mix of Fire from the original New Atlantis master tapes. This mix would have served as the basis for balancing the vocals against the instrumental for the final release mix, had there been one (alas, Sonobeat never released any of New Atlantis' recordings). Some parts of the band's performance on Fire conjure images of Vanilla Fudge's 1967 hit You Keep Me Hanging On.

In addition to the Black Box-ified lead guitar on Fire, this track showcases many of the recording and mixing techniques Sonobeat was then using, now commonplace or even recording cliches, but at the time cutting edge: the kit was covered with six mikes, including one above and behind drummer Jay Meade to add an illusion of spacial breadth and depth; the Hammond B3 Leslie speaker box was double miked -- one on the treble rotor and one on the bass rotor -- and mixed to a wide stereo spread; the vocals were compressed to the point of occasional audible pumping; the bass was directly injected into the mixing console; and the mix was equalized across nine frequency bands to thicken it into a wall of sound. The original session "take" went on for almost 7 minutes and was edited -- at the end of the long instrumental break -- for this mix. Both the recordings and mix were made in the early morning hours, a time that is itself magical to musicians, producers, and recording engineers.