T.REX - Electric Warrior 1971 - 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition - 2CD - 320Kbps # DrBn

Electric Warrior is the fundament of glam rock. Falling between T.Rex and The Slider, and released in September 1971, its achievement is remarkable given that it came almost a full year before the release of Roxy Music and The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust….

T.Rex at this moment still offered the rarefied version of what the next wave (Mud, Sweet, Glitter, Slade) would soon convert into hod-carriers’ high camp – rock ’n’ roll for rouged roofers. The secret lay in the time-travelling eclecticism of all three; Bolan had been laundered through the washing machine of successive 60s subcultures, from Mod to psychedelic folk, but already in Tyrannosaurus Rex the nostalgic troubadour impulse had been lavishly embellished with orientalist, rococo degree of pantomime that bordered on kitsch – onyx statuettes glimpsed through aspidistra leaves.

Bolan’s very public friendship with John Peel ensured plenty of radio exposure in the previous years, but he began to cut the DJ dead around now, jumping from the sinking Perfumed Garden/Middle Earth ship and restyling himself as a galactic rock star retooled for the 1970s. Even the ambience of Tony Visconti’s production is very different from the Joe Boyd/John Wood-style sound of folk-rock: Bill Legend’s drums swathed in a claustrophobic flutter-echo; Mickey Finn’s stipplings of congas and bongos; supermarket string arrangements; thong-tight humbucker fuzz from Bolan’s guitars; and his breathy vocal close up to the mic and shorn of its woolliest Tyrannosaurus Rex tics. No longer the clatter of a band in a room, the soundworld of Electric Warrior is an artificial acoustic palace of mirrors, curling smoke and follow-spots.



EXTRAS: This edition includes the more sedate hit “Hot Love”, plus B sides “There Was A Time/Raw Ramp”, and “King Of The Mountain Cometh” and “Woodland Rock”, a smooth fusion of Chuck Berry and backwards-guitar psych.

The bonus audio disc is a real treat, containing unheard alternative versions and startlingly intimate home demos recorded by a lone Bolan.