The set will also include a volume of outtakes from the sessions, Electric Ladyland: The Early Takes, originally captured by Hendrix himself in a New York hotel room in 1968. A pared-down version will be available on streaming services.” The accompanying 48-page book includes essays by Rolling Stone’s David Fricke and producer John McDermott along with photos Eddie Kramer captured during that time, Hendrix’s handwritten lyrics and notes to his record label, and more. In addition to the documentary, titled At Last … the Beginning: The Making of Electric Ladyland, the Blu-rays contain the 5.1 surround sound mix and the original stereo mixes in 24-bit, 96 kHz sound.
As Rolling Stone notes, “Famed engineer Bernie Grundman remastered the album from the original analog tapes and carried out an all-analog, direct-to-disc transfer for the vinyl edition. The Electric Ladyland 50th-anniversary deluxe edition will be available as both a 3-CD/1-Blu-ray set and as a 6 vinyl LP/1 Blu-ray set. When I first started working with him, Chas Chandler told me, “The rules are, ‘There are no rules.'” We could just kick down the doors to convention and experiment with wild things and Jimi’s sound. Jimi was very much in the realm of experimentation. The Electric Ladyland deluxe addition will feature outtakes, live concert recordings, a documentary on the making of the album, photo inserts, a book, and more, and is set to be released on November 9th.Īs one of Electric Ladyland‘s engineers, Eddie Kramer, explained to Rolling Stone, Now, fans can revisit Electric Ladyland and that creatively fruitful period in Jimi’s brief life from every angle with an upcoming 50th-anniversary deluxe edition package. The album has been lauded as one of the greatest of all time, largely because of the famously inspired, experimental state of mind that Hendrix maintained while working on the record. The sprawling double-LP opus proved to be the last studio album Hendrix would release before his death in 1970. As such, it's the least engaging of these new mini-documentaries, although still worthwhile.On October 16, 1968, The Jimi Hendrix Experience released their final album, Electric Ladyland.
But this mini documentary focuses more about chronicling the growing rift and ultimate split between Jimi on one side, and Chas and Noel on the other, than celebrating and dissecting the music itself.
There are also some cool images and film footage of Jimi shown while the music takes center stage. Kramer does some interesting track isolating on "Crosstown Traffic," "Voodoo Chile," "1983," and "Gypsy Eyes" (where he shares some alternate intros). The 2010 Legacy edition adds a short documentary DVD featuring interviews with Chas Chandler, Mitch Mitchell, and Noel Redding, as well as Eddie Kramer in the studio with the multi-track masters. With this double set (now on one compact disc), Hendrix once again pushed the concept album to new horizons. As an album, this influential (and as far as influencing more than one generation of players, this was his ultimate statement for many), the highlights speak for themselves: "Crosstown Traffic," his reinterpretation of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," the spacy "1983.(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)," and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," a landmark in Hendrix's playing. What Hendrix sonically achieved on this record expanded the concept of what could be gotten out of a modern recording studio in much the same manner as Phil Spector had done a decade before with his Wall of Sound. Kudos to engineer Eddie Kramer (who supervised the remastering of the original two-track stereo masters for this reissue) for taking Hendrix's visions of a soundscape behind his music and giving it all context, experimenting with odd mike techniques, echo, backward tape, flanging, and chorusing, all new techniques at the time, at least the way they're used here. But Electric Ladyland is so much more than just background music for chemical intake. When revisionist rock critics refer to him as the maker of a generation's mightiest dope music, this is the album they're referring to.
The result was not only one of the best rock albums of the era, but also Hendrix's original musical vision at its absolute apex. Jimi Hendrix's third and final album with the original Experience found him taking his funk and psychedelic sounds to the absolute limit.