4.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

This record belonged to my dad, and my sister started listening to it when she began hanging out with more potheads and becoming a teenager. She pilfered my dad’s 60s records. As a kid, around 12 or 13, I remember hearing my sister play the track ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)’ and it totally blew my mind. It’s quite progressive in its song structure with a few different parts making up the whole track, I loved the ambient tape loop feedback manipulations which segue the different sections of this piece. I think Hendrix plays every single instrument on it as well, except the drums. His bass-playing though, is absolutely gorgeous, it’s so fluid – there’s no element of “attacking” in any of his playing. I am inspired by the classic songs, including ‘All Along The Watchtower’, and all of the main reasons that anyone finds the album so amazing. Also, I think the album art had the first naked women that I ever saw.