It might have arrived four decades late but this is a remarkable collection. The 12 studio tracks were recorded by Jimi Hendrix in 1967 and 1969 with the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums) and, when he fell out with Redding, Hendrix's African-American army buddy, Billy Cox, on bass, sounds like a natural fifth album after Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), Electric Ladyland (1968) and the live Band of Gypsys (1970).

It has the same unique guitar playing, which still sends shivers up the spine and has done for every rebellious 16-year-old guitar hero over the past four decades. It has the same incendiary hard-rock sounds that made Hendrix so distinctive and it reaches deep into the language of Chicago blues for inspiration.

If this album, released by the Hendrix estate 40 years after the guitarist's death, had been released in 1969 it would have been lionised as another important chapter in the Hendrix evolution. By the time of these recording sessions, Hendrix's importance as a player was well established (it is now widely accepted that his major innovative contribution was to view the electric guitar as a unique instrument with a broad palette of sounds rather than just an electrified acoustic guitar with a solid body).

This is an album of well-recorded material ranging from glorious electric blues, such as a cover of Elmore James's Bleeding Heart (with every note infused with Hendrix's distinctive vocals and guitar playing), through a marvellous, near-seven-minute-long instrumental version of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love (the similarity between Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience is a reminder of the kind of heavy riffing, blues-saturated sound that was the stock-in-trade of British rock in the late 1960s), to the remarkable Valleys of Neptune, which, when released as a single in February, reached No. 1 in the US ahead of Lady Gaga.

Of the rest, there is a sharp, funky version (with Cox on bass) of Stone Free, which was originally released as the B-side to Hey Joe in 1966.

But all this rock history should be irrelevant. The album stands up as a legitimate and valid recording because Hendrix, rare among hard-rock guitarists, could really capture a sense of the immediacy and urgency of a live performance in the cold and clinical surroundings of a studio.

This album is remarkably fresh and emotionally intense. As John McDermott points out on the excellent cover notes that chronicle the history of these recordings: "These are not his last recordings and these are not his lost recordings. We've been very careful about that. But it's important to recognise that these are also not sketchy one-guitar demos. This is real stuff that he obviously felt very strongly about." No Hendrix fan will be disappointed.

