Following the release of last year’s seven-disc box set “Hampton/Winston-Salem ’97,” which captured a pivotal funky moment in the evolution of Phish, another thematic archival release has arrived in the form of “Chicago ‘94” (JEMP Records), featuring two stellar Phish performances recorded six months apart at Chicago’s UIC Pavilion.

1994 was probably the busiest year Phish has ever seen. In March, Elektra Records released the band’s fifth studio album, “Hoist,” a record that helped Phish reach a wider audience with songs like “Down with Disease,” “Wolfman’s Brother” and “Sample In A Jar.” As drummer John Fishman told Richard Gehr in “The Phish Book,” “Both we and Elektra wanted to have something on the radio, so we tried to write a hit single. But we never committed ourselves to it totally.”