The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (Mono) [180g Vinyl LP]

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (Mono) [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: LP, Album, Reissue, Mono, 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl
• Catalogue Number: MOVLP724
• Barcode: 8718469532285
• Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Blues Rock, Hard Rock
• Label: Music On Vinyl / Experience Hendrix LLC
• Originally Released: August 1967 (US) / May 1967 (UK)
• Reissue Released: 20 March 2013
• Pressing: 180 Gram Audiophile Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

In the autumn of 1966, former Animals bassist and manager Chas Chandler brought a young James Marshall Hendrix from New York to London, paired him with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, and began recording at a pace that would produce one of the most transformative debut albums in the history of popular music. Chandler, serving as producer, kept sessions tight and purposeful, working at De Lane Lea Studios and CBS Studios in London before moving to Olympic Studios where the core of the album was completed with engineer Eddie Kramer — a working partnership between Kramer and Hendrix that would define the sound of the guitarist's entire studio career. Recordings began in October 1966 and the UK edition of Are You Experienced was released on Track Records in May 1967, one week before Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The US edition followed in August 1967, after the Experience's electrifying appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June had broken Hendrix to American audiences. Reprise Records reconfigured the album for the American market, replacing three tracks from the UK version — 'Red House', 'Can You See Me', and 'Remember' — with the band's first three UK singles: 'Purple Haze', 'Hey Joe', and 'The Wind Cries Mary'. It is this US sequence that forms the basis of the Music On Vinyl MOVLP724 pressing, presented with its original Karl Ferris infra-red fish-eye cover photograph and Ed Thrasher art direction — one of the most visually striking sleeves of the era. The US mono edition was available only briefly after its original release, making this reissue a rare opportunity to hear the album as it was first experienced by American audiences in its intended monophonic form.

The album synthesised psychedelic rock, blues, jazz, and soul into a sound that had no real precedent. 'Purple Haze', built on a dissonant tritone interval that Hendrix had absorbed from jazz, established the template for heavy rock guitar in one three-minute burst. 'Manic Depression' deployed an unusual 3/4 time signature over churning Afro-Cuban rhythms that Mitchell drives with barely controlled intensity. 'Third Stone from the Sun' is a largely instrumental jazz-influenced excursion that pointed toward the cosmic experimentalism of his later work. 'The Wind Cries Mary' demonstrated the gentler, more poetic dimension of Hendrix's writing, while the backwards guitar and drum tracks of the closing title track remain genuinely disorienting more than half a century after their recording. Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 30 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

This Music On Vinyl reissue presents the album in its original mono configuration, mastered entirely from the original monophonic master tapes using an all-analog process. The mono mixes — created in 1967 by Chandler, Hendrix, and Kramer — differ meaningfully from the stereo versions, presenting a more focused, punchy sound in which the rhythm section carries particular weight. The pressing is housed in the complete original US artwork sleeve, with a printed inner sleeve. Note: the title 'Foxey Lady' appears on the sleeve with the original spelling used on early US pressings.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Purple Haze
2. Manic Depression
3. Hey Joe
4. Love or Confusion
5. May This Be Love
6. I Don't Live Today

Side B

1. The Wind Cries Mary
2. Fire
3. 3rd Stone from the Sun
4. Foxey Lady
5. Are You Experienced?

Credits

• Jimi Hendrix – vocals, electric guitar
• Noel Redding – bass, backing vocals
• Mitch Mitchell – drums, backing vocals
• Produced by – Chas Chandler
• Engineered by – Eddie Kramer (primary); Dave Siddle (De Lane Lea Studios); Mike Ross (CBS Studios)
• Recorded at – De Lane Lea Studios, London; CBS Studios, London; Olympic Studios, London
• All-analog mono mastering from original monophonic master tapes
• Label – Music On Vinyl / Experience Hendrix LLC