Jimi Hendrix and his frangible canticles to the plenteous winds of planet love were mainstays in the psychedelic verity of the 60s and early 70s. His music not only soundtracked the peace grunts as they swept into the streets like enraged demon ants bathed in the alien mists of tear-gas, but also documented the real grunts as they huddled together in drug-crazed jungle nightmares waiting for their big o-d to come leaping into their midst in a banshee wail of searing metal and torn flesh. Hendrix’s work made a magical connection which gave both of these cinematic pools a common ground. Inescapable and brittle, his music reached into the penetralia of America’s darkening heart and unearthed a new kind of existence filled with endless waves of energy. It also became immortal. Or so the corporate necromancers would have us believe.
More fusty tapes have been “discovered” and released containing Hendrix’s music than any other musician of his times. Albums like Crash Landing, and Midnight Lightning, which had Hendrix literally jamming from the grave, were nothing more than calculated attempts to accrue necrosimoleons from a gullible public. Others like the imported Loose Ends, and War Heroes contained music that was as close to the spirit of the man as anything he’d released during his lifetime. And it’s just this kind of irresponsible and arbitrary approach that has led many of the new generation of compotating mega-teens to dismiss Hendrix as “old” hippie music. It’s a shame. The little gits don’t know what they’re missing.
With the release of Nine to the Universe, the soul of Hendrix is once again lolling around in the windy corridors of planet love, just waiting to strike out at future-shocked zombies lost in the moving death of disco and herniated heavy metal. The Shotgun of sonics is finally resurrected with fitting reverence. This record will be a joy not only to the mega-teen, but also the booboisie that are their parents, those leftover fleshpools of the 60s whose only emotive hard-ons come when they recall those “wild” days of tear-gas battles and search and destroy, those times when they were first forced into the fast descriptions of reality and commitment. This record won’t make Frank Marino very happy.
It is with beamish pride that I say this album is a bolide in the fermament of the dawdling 80s, racing back to the old ideals with barbaric fury. Nine to the Universe is a mote in the eyes of the melt-down of modern music, with toonographs like “Easy Blues” and “Drone Blues” showing the unfettered creative spark Hendrix possessed. He flows in between the rest of the instrumentation with a fleering you-can’t-catch-me attitude, his guitar a complete extension of his soul. Sonic fables abound. Velocity is at hand.
Nine to the Universe is a monochrome to sonic pyromancy. It evokes eidolons of lost loves, lost prices, and lost emotions, and performs its task with a soulful strut and a nod to the gods of life. Soul music at its functional best.
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