At the start of the 1980s, it dawned on somebody in charge of Jimi Hendrix's musical legacy that a whole generation of new listeners had come of age since the guitarist's demise. That meant it was time for a fresh raid on the vaults and a fresh, authorized album release to fly the flag of the Hendrix estate, amid the steady stream of bootleg, gray market, and other unauthorized collections of his early work starting to fill up record store bins and browsers. Kiss the Sky did not just resurrect and recycle old familiar recordings, but included a pair of tracks that were new to most listeners and had a lot of meaning for serious fans…

Chicago born Jeff Liberman is a guitar player in the best tradition of 70s guitar Gods like Hendrix, Trower, Clapton or Zappa. The perfect mix between virtuosity and feeling with a gift for brilliant songwriting. Between 1975 and 1978, Liberman self-released three albums on his own Librah label which were some of the first private pressings to gain recognition amongst psych collectors in the 80s. For his third album, released in 1978, guitar wizard Jeff Liberman incorporated to his heavy guitar psych style some cool cosmic funk, soul-jazz and A.O.R influences. Superb musicianship, psych / prog-rock flashes, acid guitar soloing, soulful vocals, occasional synths & analog keyboards, flowing rhythm section.

Jefferson Airplane's first live album demonstrated the group's development as concert performers, taking a number of songs that had been performed in concise, pop-oriented versions on their early albums – "3/5's of a Mile in 10 Seconds," "Somebody to Love," "It's No Secret," "Plastic Fantastic Lover" – and rendering them in arrangements that were longer, harder rocking, and more densely textured, especially in terms of the guitar and basslines constructed by Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady…

Funky Queen, the 2017 debut EP by rock newcomers Black Mirrors melted speakers everywhere: and yet the Belgian fourpiece was simply warming up for bigger things to come. Look Into The Black Mirror is a prime example of all the wonderful stuff that can happen when you sell your soul to snotty garage rock, blues, psychedelia and stoner rock! The beautifully unchained Marcella Di Troia sings, screams, croons and whispers on otherworldy ballads like ‘‘Moonstone‘ and over the danceable grooves of ‘Lay My Burden Down‘ – and the band keeps the hypnotic beats and thunderous riff walls coming. The Belgian crew succeeds at crisp Josh Homme-style stompers like ‘Günther Kimmich‘ as easily as they pull off a monolithic jam like album closer ‘Burning Warriors‘. These guys and gal will be HUGE!

Like their music, the personal and creative relationships of Japanese rock & roll deviants Speed, Glue & Shinki were in a state of total disarray during the recording of their eponymous double-vinyl sophomore album in 1972. The ostensible bandleader, guitarist Shinki Chen, was already partially distracted from the proceedings, and original bassist Masayoshi "Glue" Kabe had completely checked out to resume his hobo-like travels, which left preternaturally wired vocalist and drummer Joey "Speed" Smith to jump into the driver's seat and accelerate the band's psychedelic rock school bus right over the cliff of reason.

The debut LP from the group Coven is noteworthy for reasons more historical than musical. That is not to say it is a bad record; it is more of an interesting record that is unique and listenable. With an elaborate package released on Mercury in 1969, a good trivia question can be made of the fact that bassist Oz Osborne performs on this album, whose opening track is "Black Sabbath."…

Who could ever have thought, going back to the Pretty Things' first recording session in 1965 – which started out so disastrously that their original producer quit in frustration – that it would come to this? The Pretty Things' early history in the studio featured the band with its amps seemingly turned up to 11, but for much of S.F. Sorrow the band is turned down to seven or four, or even two, or not amplified at all (except for Wally Allen's bass – natch), and they're doing all kinds of folkish things here that are still bluesy enough so you never forget who they are, amid weird little digressions on percussion and chorus; harmony vocals that are spooky, trippy, strange, and delightful; sitars included in the array of stringed instruments; and an organ trying hard to sound like a Mellotron…

Speed, Glue & Shinki's landmark debut album, 1971's Eve, is one of the greatest contradictions of its time (maybe all time): a primitive, deranged, and at times downright sloppy mutation of acid blues and proto-metal, akin to the Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills Super Session crashing headlong into earliest Zeppelin and Sabbath records, as performed by musicians whose instrumental chops were actually beyond reproach…but you'd never be able to tell from this!

Australian quartet Buffalo's third long-player in as many years, 1974's Only Want You for Your Body found them honing their songwriting into far more focused and compact heavy rock nuggets, in a natural progression from first album Dead Forever's oftentimes trippy, post-psych meanderings and second album Volcanic Rock's even mix of lengthy jams and piledriving proto-metal. If anything, for what they lacked in terms of timelessly savage riffing (see Volcanic Rock's "Sunrise" and "Shylock"), new barnstormers like the leering "I'm a Skirt Lifter Not a Shirt Raiser," the comparatively well-behaved "Stay with Me," and the head-nodding chug-groove monster single "What's Going On" (which set a template abused by literally dozens of '90s stoner rock bands) were arguably more well-rounded band performances.

As this expansive (though not entirely as "complete" as promised) anthology reminds us, Comus' frightening musical visions surely represented the darkest side of England's late-'60s folk-rock movement. Like a Fairport Convention from Hell, the group pushed folk boundaries into alien progressive, psychedelic, and acid rock realms, capping it with desperate and macabre subject matter and warping all the genres involved (and numerous minds) in the process. 1971's disorienting, often terrifying debut, First Utterance, could have doubled as (and may have well inspired, in part) the soundtrack to Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man a few years later, given its recurring pagan themes and varied blend of voices (some male, some female, some…?) and instrumentation (flute, oboe, strings, etc.).

Volcanic Rock is the second studio album by Australian proto-heavy metal band Buffalo, recorded and originally released in 1973 on the Vertigo label. The album was stylistically a much harder, heavier and rawer release than its predecessor (Dead Forever…) – marking a move away from the band's previous progressive rock influences, although retaining a psychedelic element to their sound. Volcanic Rock had been recorded effectively as a live-in-the-studio effort, with only vocal and additional guitar overdubs added later during the recording sessions.

As a single-disc compilation, The Ultimate Experience is hard to beat. Drawing from all of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience albums, the 20-track collection hits all of the major highpoints – "Purple Haze," "All Along the Watchtower," "Little Wing," "Red House," "The Wind Cries Mary," "Highway Chile," "Angel" – and gives an accurate impression of why Hendrix was so revolutionary and influential…