JIMI HENDRIX

Valleys of Neptune

[Experience Hendrix/Legacy]

Jimi Hendrix was active as a recording artist for only about four years before his death in 1970 at age 27. Luckily for us, he appears to have been playing and recording during practically every moment of that relatively brief period—enough to sustain posthumous archival releases for 40 years now. The latest, Valleys of Neptune, is drawn mostly from the transitional period in 1969 when original Jimi Hendrix bass player Noel Redding quit the group and was replaced by Billy Cox. It’s a period that saw Hendrix reeling in the free-ranging experimentalism of the previous year’s Electric Ladyland, consciously correcting course by revisiting early songs like “Fire” and “Red House.” As have all the lovingly curated posthumous releases produced since the Hendrix family won control of his vaults in the mid-1990s, Valleys of Neptune only further serves to prove the boundlessness of his genius—and his scrupulousness about getting the products of that genius on tape for posterity. – CN


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