Jimi Hendrix
First Rays Of The New Rising Sun

THE REVIEW

From the title itself, a premonition and a feeling of painful bitterness.
What would today's music be like if Hendrix hadn't died too soon, if he had continued to shine beyond the "First Rays of the New Rising Sun"?
And to think he was a step away from starting a new music project with Miles Davis... What would have happened if two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century had joined their ideas at the height of their creative fervor? Unfortunately, we cannot know. We are left to listen and re-listen to one of the absolute masterpieces of the Seattle guitarist, to discover, each time amazed and ecstatic, new nuances, arrangements, and revolutionary sounds, riffs that express in their swift synthesis the subversive and compelling power of rock.

This album came out only in 1997, but it collects tracks mostly already released in the myriad of albums released after his death, albums that often served only to fill the pockets of those who speculated on Jimi's art for years.
Conversely, the tracklist of "First Rays" was precisely as Hendrix wanted it, and it is Eddie Kramer, the sound engineer who worked with him on the production of the tracks, who tells us this (to understand the fruitful symbiosis between artist and technician, the DVD documenting the production of Electric Ladyland is unmissable).

Reviewing this album is no easy feat; one might need to write a book, only to perhaps realize that writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture, as someone once said.
There's everything in this work: there are wild funky rhythms and poignant ballads. There are solos that make it clear how guitarists should be distinguished by eras "before Hendrix" and "after Hendrix" (b.H. and a.H.), there are tracks that seem less committed, but that reflect another important aspect of the approach to music and changing times: "My friends" recreates the atmosphere of a typical jam session, as they occurred in the clubs of Greenwich Village in New York, late at night; when you could see Jimi improvising a blues with Stephen Stills who happened to be there. Or, you could, for example, bring a guitar or percussion and play, and if you were lucky, you could find yourself in the studio witnessing the recording of the latest album of a rock star... I never met Vasco Rossi (with the necessary distinctions, of course, it's the first name that came to mind) at the pub below my house!

But the main theme of "First Rays Of A New Rising Sun" is inherent in the title itself. Hendrix resumes in the studio the experiments started with Electric Ladyland and pushes his music toward unexplored areas, as befits every self-respecting genius.
The timbral research resulting from the aforementioned collaboration with Eddie Kramer leads blues and rock to appropriate the new instruments available (similar to what Miles Davis was doing at the same time). However, the experimentalism never gives way to the communicative power of art.
The strictly compositional aspects amaze today for their volcanic creativity and for the capacity that, at times, can be defined contrapuntal of our insights.

If it is true that art, to progress, must surpass the universe of commonly assumed language, it is also true that there are characters who reconcile the two apparently antithetical tensions, achieving an incredible and extraordinary squaring of the circle.

One of them was Jimi Hendrix.