Electric Warrior (Remastered + Bonus Tracks)

"This special edition of 'Electric Warrior' includes seven bonus tracks. The detailed sleeve notes and digitally re-mastering are courtesy of original producer, Mr. Tony Visconti.

Singer / songwriter / guitarist Marc Bolan was the originator of glam rock and one of the most successful UK pop stars of the 1970s. After departing John's Children in 1967, he teamed up with percussionist Steve Peregine Took to form Tyrannosaurus Rex. This acoustic duo made three albums, before Bolan replaced Took with Mickey Finn for the electric 'Beard of Stars' (1970).

With the name shortened to T. Rex, Bolan and Finn made the charts with "Ride a White Swan," the first of ten straight Top Ten hits. From there Bolan added rock musicians to fill out the sound and made several landmark albums, the best of which are 'Electric Warrior' (1971), 'The Slider' (1972), and 'Tanx' (1973).

Sadly, Marc Bolan was killed in a car crash in 1977, and in this day and age, much of his work is still regarded as legendary."
- GEOFF

At last this classic rock album has been re-mastered and it still sounds mighty fine, over 30 years down the track - in fact, even better!

'Electric Warrior' was recorded in 1971, when Marc Bolan was at his creative peak. These songs leap out at you with an instantly remembered distinctiveness and a freshness borne of re-clarified and re-stated originality. They display beautiful musicality and great breadth of emotion, with very expressive vocals from Bolan.

A number of factors combine to produce the stunning atmosphere of ethereality and fairy-tale fantasticality on this album: Bolan's rather eccentric sense of harmony (alluded to in the excellent sleeve notes); the almost compulsive (but always effective) use of the string section; the other-worldly backing vocals of 'Flo & Eddie' from Zappa's Mothers Of Invention (surely the most creative and disciplined of backing bands); and Tony Visconti's wildly imaginative instrumentation.

The re-mastering has rendered this wondrous album in glorious pin-sharp clarity and presence. You can almost see the band giving their all in the studio room - Visconti comments on how much spill there was through the mikes as they all played together, which contributes to this atmosphere enormously, but would usually be frowned on today. The listener is transported into the midst of the songs, and thence to Marc's private mythical head-lands within his unique lyrical poetry.

The well-known tracks - "Jeepster", "Get It On", "Life's A Gas" - are wonderful to hear in their restored studio-clarity, but don't imagine there are any fillers on the rest of the album. "Rip Off" is a thumping rocky thrash, but it highlights Bill Legend's tremendous drumming, Bolan's original chord work, and the peculiar orchestral drone coda at the finish frames it as something much more interesting than a garage band bang.

These sessions were borne out of an evident great joy of successful talented friends playing together. And it's all here to be shared in, thanks to recent digital audio technology and a re-think in the audio mastering world, in a way that has never before been attainable.