The Hendrix Estate has announced that March 9th will be the release date for a new album of studio recordings from the late guitar maestro, Jimi Hendrix. The tapes of sessions, in which the plan was to create a new concept sound, have been stored in a vault for 40 years.
Called Valleys of Neptune, it was remastered by Eddie Kramer, the same engineer who was there to record the (likely) bluesy, churning songs that are typical of Jimi's style at the time.
If it's anything like his 1994 album, :Blues, it should be amazing.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122456834. (Photo: Creative Commons)
Called Valleys of Neptune, it was remastered by Eddie Kramer, the same engineer who was there to record the (likely) bluesy, churning songs that are typical of Jimi's style at the time.
Kramer says he spent a year remastering the old analog tapes, using state-of-the-art digital technology to clean up the sound. But not too clean: Kramer says he was trying to bring out the essence of Jimi Hendrix.
"This is Jimi, when he plays the guitar, and it jumps out of the track. The hair on the back of my neck just stands up," he says. "It's so raw and in your face."
"He was the greatest guitarist I ever had the privilege of working with," he says.
If it's anything like his 1994 album, :Blues, it should be amazing.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122456834. (Photo: Creative Commons)
I actually have the track listing and am pleased to share it with my fellow Neatorama readers:
Jimi Hendrix - Valleys of Neptune
1. Check. Check One. Check Two.
2. Hey Freddy--Is the Tape Rolling?
3. Just Let Me Tune Here for a Second
4. Of Course I'm not Taping, Baby, Now Let's Get You Out of Those Clothes
5. I'd Like One Large Pepperoni and Two Bottles of Pop
6. Damn, I Broke A String
7. I'm Not Home Right Now, But You Can Leave a Message After the Beep/Hey These New Answering Machine Things Are Groovy
8. Dude, I Thought You'd Never Get Here with That Quarter Ounce
9. Grave Robbers (feat. Tupac Shakur)
Disc One - it's where we begun;
it's all our greatest hits;
and if you are a fan then you know that you've already got 'em.
....
Disc Four - Never released before;
and you can tell why;
it's just some demos I recorded in my basement.
....
Disc Six - A dance remix;
so I can catch the latest trend;
and it'll make you scratch your head and wonder
where my taste went.
==============
That was a great song, poking fun at box sets and re-releases, and released at a time when I was buying box sets I could barely afford. That song probably saved me a couple hundred dollars when I was a teenager, because it made me think about what kind of value I was really getting from these releases.
Can't wait to hear it, I'm thinking of mash up possibilities of these being paired with spoken word performances by William Shatner.