Are You Experienced

Are You Experienced is the debut studio album by English-American rock band the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released in 1967, the LP was an immediate critical and commercial success, and it is widely regarded as one of the greatest debuts in the history of rock music. The album features Jimi Hendrix's innovative approach to songwriting and electric guitar playing which soon established a new direction in psychedelic and hard rock music.

By mid-1966, Hendrix was struggling to earn a living playing the R&B circuit as a backing guitarist. After being referred to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and interested in managing and producing artists, Hendrix was signed to a management and production contract with Chandler and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. Chandler brought Hendrix to London and began recruiting members for a band designed to showcase the guitarist's talents, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In late October, after having been rejected by Decca Records, the Experience signed with Track, a new label formed by the Who's managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp.

Are You Experienced? (song)

"Are You Experienced?" is the title song for the Jimi Hendrix Experience 1967 debut album. It has been called one of Jimi Hendrix's most original compositions on the album by writer Keith Shadwick. The song is largely based on one chord and has a drone-like quality reminiscent of Indian classical music. It features recorded guitar and drum parts that are played backwards and a repeating piano chord, but no bass. Live recordings from 1968 are found on The Jimi Hendrix Concerts album and Winterland box set.

Recording and production

"Are You Experienced?" was recorded at London's Olympic Sound Studios on April 3, 1967, the final day of recording for Are You Experienced (along with the lead vocal for "Fire", overdubs for "Love or Confusion", and the master recordings of "Highway Chile" and "May This Be Love"). The backwards guitar track was recorded four times, with the last take being used for the final version. According to engineering assistant George Chkiantz, "The original idea [for the guitar recording] was to do a loop, but that gave a problem ... we tried looping it and then we couldn't get it to loop ... in the end Jimi got so impatient doing this, he said 'look, it's quite easy, we're just gonna play' and played it in". It is also possible that Hendrix performed some of the backwards drum parts on the song in addition to drummer Mitch Mitchell.

Psychic TV

Psychic TV (sometimes spelled Psychick TV) or PTV, is an English experimental video art and music group, formed by performance artist Genesis P-Orridge and video director Peter Christopherson after the break-up of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV signs to Some Bizzare Label working along with Alex Fergusson, musician and producer from Alternative TV.

The band began publishing a monthly series of 23 live albums in 1986, but stopped without explanation after only 17. The tenth, a picture disk most commonly referred to as Album 10, could only be obtained by submitting tokens contained in each of the previous nine releases. The band subsequently earned an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for most records released in one year.

Contributors to Psychic TV have included artists such as Coil, Current 93, Hafler Trio, The Cult, White Stains, Soft Cell, Fred Giannelli, XKP, Master Musicians of Jajouka, Matthew Best, Daniel Simon Black, Bill Breeze, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Derek Jarman, John Gosling, Timothy Leary, Rose McDowall, Stephen Kent, Vagina Dentata Organ, Andrew Weatherall, Larry Thrasher, Z'EV, Zef Noi$e, Jeff Berner, and many others.