With Steve Winwood sitting in on organ and Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Casady on bass, its groove is canyon-deep, its detours intense and brightly colored. The original 15-minute “Voodoo Chile,” recorded to sound like the inside of a smoky nightclub, could turn even the most fervent blues skeptic into a believer. The galloping romp “Rainy Day, Dream Away” jams its way across three-plus minutes then picks back up three tracks later as “Still Raining, Still Dreaming,” as if you’ve stepped out for a smoke break and returned to find them still wailing away. Some of the finest moments are the ones where the band stretches out and flexes its improvisational muscle. The soul burner “Long Hot Summer Night” lives up to its name, as does the frantic, hallucinogenic “House Burning Down.” “Gypsy Eyes” is punchy psychedelic blues-rock, while harpsichord and wah-wah guitar come together on the fever dream “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp.” They even dip their toes into ambient sounds on the interlude “Moon, Turn The Tides… Gently, Gently Away.” In revved-up rockers “Crosstown Traffic” and “Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)” you get, respectively, history’s best use of kazoo in a rock song and one of Hendrix’s most iconic covers - albeit not even the most momentous recording of another artist’s song on this album. The album’s 87 minutes contain multitudes. OK, technically, bassist Noel Redding, who had formed his own band and was in the process of becoming estranged from Hendrix, contributed “Little Miss Strange.” But even more than the rest of Redding’s Experience tracks, that one has always felt like an odd interruption, a sudden return through the looking glass before stepping back into Jimi’s dimension. A month before the Beatles unveiled their own genre-hopping double-disc behemoth, Hendrix delivered one all his own - the difference being that only one creative visionary, not four, was responsible for all this disparate inspiration. Having mastered two distinct breeds of LP, Hendrix then spent most of 1968 letting his creativity explode in every direction.Įlectric Ladyland is the most adventurous album of Hendrix’s career, skipping from style to style while maintaining the same fantastical spirit. Axis: Bold As Love, released less than seven months later, had more of a consistent aesthetic, as if many of the songs were cut from the same fabric. First came Are You Experienced, a pile of surefire hits that cohered into an album by sheer force of personality. It’s wild to consider that this band released its whole storied discography in under a year in a half. Any of the LPs Hendrix released during his brief moment in the spotlight could reasonably be called his best, but Electric Ladyland, with its pointed ambition and dizzying cross-genre sprawl, stands as his magnum opus. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s third and final album, released 50 years ago today in the US, is a vast realm to get lost in, the sound of the universe that big-banged into existence with Are You Experienced expanding in all directions faster than anyone can keep up. Original 1975 US press.Ī2 Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)Ĭ3 Moon, Turn The Tides.Have you ever been to Electric Ladyland? Chances are if you’ve ever fallen in love with classic rock guitar heroism, you’ve paid a visit to Jimi Hendrix’s personalized dream world some time in the past five decades. Only a couple light sleeve marks not effecting play, clean labels, VG+ condition. Both discs are super clean, as usually these are pretty worn out. Jacket has some faint ring wear, minimal shelf wear, bright colors, VG+ condition. Really nice copy of a classic Hendrix essential for anyone out there.
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