Is Jimi Hendrix still the future of the electric guitar? – Telegraph Blogs

Is Jimi Hendrix still the future of the electric guitar? – Telegraph Blogs:

"‘Valleys Of Neptune’ (out in March) has 12 tracks, sixty minutes of music, mainly recorded by Hendrix and The Experience (bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell) over four months in 1969, with the guitarist exploring new musical avenues in the wake of his (last) double album, ‘Electric Ladyland’. These are the turbulent sessions that led to Hendrix breaking the group up and briefly forming the Band Of Gypsies (with whom he released one live album). Some of this material has previously been available in dubious versions of poor sound quality on illegal bootlegs, but it presumably took the death of the last surviving member of The Experience (Mitchell passed away in 2008), a lot of contractual wrangling and technological improvements in audio mastering to get it to a stage where anyone but an obsessive collector would want to hear it.

Sonically spruced up and sympathetically edited, what you get is an album of jazzy psychedelic experimentation. Hendrix was going through his Miles Davis phase, trying to create a rock guitar equivalent of ‘Sketches Of Spain’. It is probably not for the faint of heart, yet there are at least three tracks where it really comes into focus, studio versions of Elmore James ‘Bleeding Heart’ and Cream’s ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ and the seven minute title track, a psychedelic funk epic. It all points in directions Hendrix would attempt to explore more fully on what should have been his next album, posthumously assembled as ‘First Rays Of The New Rising Sun’." Sphere: Related Content