The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Electric Ladyland

THE REVIEW

1967 is the year that saw the release of both "Are You Experienced" and "Axis: Bold As Love" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, while in April 1968, "Smash Hits" hit the market, the collection that marked the end of the collaboration between the producer and former bassist of the Animals Chas Chandler and the Anglo-American group.

The difficult gestation of the third studio effort is the most distressing experience that the artist from Seattle had to endure, dedicating an enormous effort to weaving and unraveling the elaborate and multifaceted musical tapestry that would ultimately birth a varied kaleidoscope of sounds, reflecting a greater awareness that doesn't detract from the instinctiveness that had brought him to light until that point. It was a year that Jimi mostly spent alone or with numerous collaborators (Steve Winwood and Chris Wood from Traffic, Jack Casady from Jefferson Airplane, Buddy Miles, and others), relegating Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell to the role of little more than luxury session musicians. The prolonged sessions had the primary objective (successfully achieved!) of researching and ultimately recording a pretentious combination of psychedelia, blues, and a vigorous sonic expressiveness to seal it all.

The opening is left to the brief tumult of "...And The Gods Made Love", which drags us straight to the moving "Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)", where Hendrix's falsetto vocals effortlessly lead us to the boogie convulsions of "Crosstown Traffic". In "Little Miss Strange", composed and sung by Redding, the lightness and pleasure of the sixties sounds of the period emerge, along with the tempting opportunity for great embroidery work that Hendrix certainly does not let slip away. More reasonableness and cerebral quality for this album, where not only standout tracks like "Burning Of The Midnight Lamp" with its epic chorus or the abrasive yet touching "Gypsy Eyes" (appeared as the B-side of "Crosstown Traffic" for both the UK and US markets), recorded about seventy times and dedicated by Jimi to his mother, but also "Rainy Day, Dream Away" - with Mike Finnigan on organ and Buddy Miles on drums among others - where jazz and blues are sublimely married, seamlessly flowing into the thrilling reprise of "Still Raining, Still Dreaming". There is also room for two covers: "Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)" is a blues & roll by Earl King, reprised with extraordinary respect, while the famous "All Along The Watchtower", borrowed from Bob Dylan who included it in his "John Wesley Harding" released a year earlier, is reinterpreted here, conferring upon it an unknown electric elegance, boasting the collaboration of Dave Mason (Traffic) on bass and Brian Jones (The Rolling Stones) on percussion. It might seem disrespectful not to mention all the album's tracks, but it would certainly be even more so if we forgot to cite "Voodoo Chile" as a delectable jam session that leaves Hendrix an infinite freedom of creation-expression through his gleaming Stratocaster, presenting himself as the Van Gogh of the seven notes, capable of reproducing singular musical rainbows, as yet undiscovered. The monumental "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)" is a slow and relentless magmatic flow, where the balance between the instruments - where one provides to the other what it needs - manages to conceive a splendid example of psychedelic blues. The concluding "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" drags us with a whirling introduction into a maelstrom of sounds with an acidic taste, where that innovative stylistic inclination culminates in a clamor never an end in itself.

The third album of the Experience has all the cards to eventually become one of the apogees of rock music, where intensity is articulated through the passion of the tracks that find relief in a natural outpouring capable of reflecting the transparent brightness of the soul. A record chapter that, to be fully appreciated, certainly needs more listens, which will result in the necessary connecting bridge, with those sounds capable of igniting our most recondite imagination.

[The shiny tri-fold package of the most complete remastered edition includes a DVD titled "At Last...The Beginning...The Making Of Electric Ladyland", but also a juicy 36-page booklet where you can view the shots taken at Central Park in New York by Linda Eastman for the album cover that was about to be released with the title "Electric Landlady" - as renamed by a studio technician - the mistake of which Hendrix promptly noticed and corrected. The images of the future Mrs. McCartney were then preferred to that which reproduced the 19 electric ladies (as Jimi called the groupies) nude, with the image of the guitarist prominently displayed.].