THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE Vinyl & CDs

Review: Packaging not just one of the greatest guitarists in history, but arguably a micro-era and culture too, is always going to come at a price. This one is particularly steep, but then reissues like this special edition really don't come along every day, sporting iconic clear wax and beautifully designed booklet. Whether that's enough to win you over probably depends on a couple of things (do you already own the record, for example), but we can safely say for the purposes of this write-up, all that is pretty irrelevant.

What really matters is the music itself - because that's what people are really buying into here. And yes, about 30 seconds into 'Purple Haze' you feel the magic start to take hold. That utterly inimitable hybrid sound that's somewhere between blues and raw, expressive heavy rock, the sound of pure possession of spirit. Then the rest of the album takes it away. Still timeless, still priceless. Well, sort of.