The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Axis: Bold As Love (Mono)

A separate mix from 1967

The mono edition of Axis: Bold As Love presents a distinct version of the Experience's second album. Jimi Hendrix, producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer worked on both original mixes in 1967. The mono version was prepared separately. It offers its own balance of the recorded voices and instruments, with a history reaching back to the album's original release.

That makes it particularly relevant to music created as the Experience expanded its studio possibilities. Hendrix on guitar and vocals, Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums remained the foundation. Additional guitars, voices and small instrumental details were introduced around them. Mixing meant organising these elements into a coherent performance. In mono, their relationships occupy a single shared channel.

Following the moving trio

“Spanish Castle Magic” and “Little Miss Lover” provide useful starting points for following the ensemble. Mitchell responds to the guitar figures with a flexible drum part, while Redding's bass remains a connecting voice. Their relationship establishes the rhythmic identity. Hendrix can shape a vocal phrase or bring the guitar forward without reducing the other musicians to background functions.

“Wait Until Tomorrow” connects a narrated situation with a clearly defined song structure. “Ain't No Telling” compresses the band's activity into a particularly brief form. Both reveal an aspect of Hendrix that can be overlooked beside his reputation for extended improvisation: his sense of economical musical development. Redding's own composition “She's So Fine”, featuring his lead vocal, adds another perspective to the Experience's range.

Between dreams and miniature scenes

The opening “EXP” stages an invented radio interview, with Mitchell and Hendrix taking the parts. Recording techniques alter their voices. In “Little Wing”, a glockenspiel played by Hendrix contributes to the instrumentation. The ideas are different, but both reflect curiosity about how a song can gain another dimension through an unexpected sound or a small theatrical device.

“Castles Made of Sand”, “One Rainy Wish” and the concluding “Bold As Love” develop the album's narrative variety further. Their words use imagery while the music moves between restraint and greater emphasis. With the mono version, entrances, relative levels and the relationship between singing and accompaniment offer particularly useful listening points. These decisions belong to the mix and the performances themselves, and can be followed without left-to-right placement between speakers.

This mono UHQR

AUHQR 0002-45 identifies the Analogue Productions mono edition. It presents the thirteen-track album across two 200-gram Clarity Vinyl LPs playing at 45 rpm. Bernie Grundman handled remastering and lacquer cutting from what the publisher specifies as the original master tapes. Quality Record Pressings manufactures the records, with plating directed by Stan Bishop. Limited to 2,500 copies, this edition has a gold-foil-numbered jacket and comes in a clamshell box with a 16-page booklet and hand-signed inspection certificate.

More from the series: UHQR

Also in another edition: Axis: Bold As Love

More by The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced?

Artist page: All titles by Jimi Hendrix

Customer question: Collecting UHQR records: limited editions of great albums

Series: UHQR – all 31 editions with pressing run and mastering

Musicians

Documented selection of participating musicians. Personnel may vary by track; this list does not claim to be complete.