- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
With three exceptions, the tracks are blissfully free of the overdubs and other studio manipulations that mar many of his posthumous recordings. Instead, we get a you-are-there document of Hendrix in the last volatile days of his great power trio with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the Experience.
-
On Valleys of Neptune, from ''Stone Free'' to ''Red House,'' most of these tunes are glaringly familiar. The good news: The alternate versions don't seem (too) redundant, since Hendrix was one musician whose castoffs ?and outtakes are worthy of obsessive scrutiny.
-
Of these 12 songs, half are relatively unfamiliar, although a journey into YouTube reveals that hardcore Hendrix fans have uncovered them all before, with different names or in different forms.
-
Are these tracks "finished" as Hendrix would've intended? Probably not. But as a glimpse of the guitarist extending his reach beyond the Experience trio, it's thrilling.
-
As completist-pleasing collections go, this has a lot to recommend it. Just don’t mistake it for anything but a postscript to a postscript to a brilliant career.
-
The album’s crisp production captures every nuance of Hendrix’ technical wizardry—drums snap and guitars burble in simpatico, offering a hazy and heavy backdrop to road-trip yarns (“Stone Free”), flirtations with bluegrass (“Crying Blue”) and show-stopping covers (“Sunshine of Your Love” and “Bleeding Heart”).
-
Revisited ‘Are You Experienced’ cuts ‘Fire’ and ‘Red House’ set the tone for power trio workouts topped by the title cut, while live favourites ‘Hear My Train A Comin’’ and ‘Lover Man’ show that Hendrix needed his own studio to replace the rubble they’d have left behind at NYC’s hallowed Record Plant.
-
Some tunes were “inexplicably excised from the original multitrack master,’’ the liner notes say, but the bottom line is that this is a potent release full of Jimi’s improvisatory guitar mania.
-
With the promise of 12 fully-completed, untainted studio recordings that have otherwise gone unheard by the public (and even the most inventive of bootleggers), I arrives with considerable significance to all things guitar-worthy.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 12 out of 17
-
Mixed: 5 out of 17
-
Negative: 0 out of 17
-
Oct 27, 2010