Funkadelic: Maggot Brain Armageddon Red Vinyl

Why you'll love it

ORG Music's Armageddon red edition is all-analog, mastered direct from tape to lacquer. Pitchfork named Maggot Brain the 17th best album of the 1970s, and Rolling Stone ranked it No. 136 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums.

This edition

Armageddon red vinyl
All-analog mastering
Mastered direct from tape to lacquer
Stereo mix

About the album

George Clinton reportedly gave Eddie Hazel one of the more unusual instructions in recording history: play as if you'd just been told your mother had died. Hazel took it seriously. The ten-minute title track that opens the album is, in effect, a single improvised guitar solo, drenched in fuzz and wah in the spirit of his hero Jimi Hendrix, which Clinton then echoed back on itself until it sounded like it was coming from somewhere far beyond Detroit.

Clinton produced the album at United Sound Systems in Detroit across late 1970 and early 1971, the last record by the original Funkadelic lineup. After that cosmic opener come sweet, sour harmony-group numbers like "Can You Get to That" and "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks," the stomping "Hit It and Quit It" and "Super Stupid," with Hazel back at full volume, before the sprawling, chaotic jam of "Wars of Armageddon."

It charted in the R&B Top 20 and its reputation has grown ever since, with critics calling that solo an emotional apocalypse of sound. Hazel reportedly nailed it in one take. We've needed more attempts than that to alphabetize the funk section.

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