This is also the album with some of Santanas most unforgetable work ever. Black Magic Woman ring a bell? How about Oye Como Va? This is the album that sold way back then, and it still sounds great.

The instrumentals are also great. Singing Winds, Crying Beasts is one great track. Also Samba Pa Ti is one of the most beautiful guitar solos I have ever heard.

The variety on this recording makes it impossible for anyone not to like it. It is amazing when you look at the different styles it is presented in. You should really check this album out. Is this Santana's best? I don't know. It really rocks, thats for certain!

One of the greats
A few years ago Time magazine published a list of the best albums of the (last) century. The top rated CD was Bob Marley's Exodus, followd by Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, then the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Obviously these things come down to personal taste, but I have all three of these albums, and I would put this one at the same level.

The things that really distinguish the sound of Santana are the latin rythyms and percussion section behind the high pitced guitar of Carlos Santana who solos in a style that is both melodic and intensely rhymthmic. This style reaches its acme on hot numbers like Black Magic Woman, Oye Como Va, and Samba Pa Ti, but there is tremendous intensity in the whole album.

This edition includes an add-on of three numbers recorded in London more or less contemporaneously with the album, so you get a nice little live concert as a bonus. I'm not sure that this adds much to the original shortish album, but it takes nothing away.

I am insufficiently expert to comment on the sound engineering, but when I first owned this album it was on cassette tape and played on a transistor cassette/radio. It sounded fine. In this version it sounds fine to me both in my car and on the Bose system I use at home.

Carlos Santana had enjoyed something of a commercial rennaissance in recent years, no doubt due to demographics favoring the latin pop movement that includes others like Ricky Martin, Christine Aguilera, etc., but this is his greatest album, and the one that made him famous. If you listen to it, you will understand why.

As I have posted a number of reviews, here is what I mean by my star ratings:

* A really worthless CD
** A CD that has some good stuff, but some major defects.
*** An OK CD that will please fans of the artist in question.
**** An excellent CD that represents the best work of the artist in question and can be bought with confidence.
***** An absolute classic that is the best, or among the best, of its genre. Your collection should start here.

Disraeli Gears, Axis and Abraxas
There are some people who believe that Carlos Santana does not belong in the same company as Clapton and Hendrix. These people include Santana himself. He is dead wrong. Not only is Santana's stellar guitar work on par with both men but he frequently surpassed them. While others were content to wring chords out of the blues, Santana leaped for the stratsophere with an older vision: more tribal, more latin, more african and in the end created a music that was paradoxically, both past and future at once. Don't think that Hendrix didn't notice. Abraxas is where it came together for the first time. The abstract songs are the best, but it's telling that a throwaway like "Hope You're Feeling Better," still out-Claptons all of Layla. Carlos did not sing (unlike Clapton and Hendrix), but that only made his guitar more urgent than ever. It had to be, it was his only voice. Hard to believe that American tastes were so sophisticated once, but this was one of the biggest selling albums of the seventies.

DTS Entertainment really blew this one
In my humble opinion, this is the finest album by Santana. The music is an absolutely fabulous fusion of latin/caribbean rythms and rock. And no one can get into the meaning of a note the way Carlos Santana can. I have owned this album on vinyl, CD, SACD, and now on DTS. The music is 5 star, and this is truly an essential album in any collection.

However, THE POWERS THAT BE in the music industry really blew it both when they converted the album to SACD and to DTS. To my ears, when THE POWERS produced the SACD, rather than go back to the original analog master tapes, they went back to a 24 bit digital master. On my near audiophile system, I hear there is no discernable difference between the CD and the SACD.

With the DTS version, THE POWERS THAT BE made a different mistake. On the positive side, some of what is on the DTS version is absolutely amazing. Notes and instruments and some vocals which were edited out of the original album show up, making a different experience and take on the music. However, it appears they forgot to mix in the bass. What is there sounds like blead over of the bass picked up on different microphones, or the engineer/producer or someone really didn't know the sound of the original album when they mixed this version. Santana's work is very dense, with tons of percussion and Santana's incredible guitar work. The bass anchored and gave the rest of the music a primal feel. Its absence on the DTS is really missed, and leaves the music feeling incomplete.

So, I give this version of Abraxas 3 stars for the mistakes.

Proof that even the
Santana may have sacrificed his musical integrity for top ten hits in recent years, but Abraxas is still a crowning achievement in the unique guitarists extensive catalog of music. The band's eclectic blend of blues, afro-cuban poly rhythms and jazz sound absolutely stellar on Abraxas. From the Tito Puente classic "Oye Coma Va", to the delicately beatiful samba ballad, "Samba Pa Ti". The band's biggest hit was of course "Black Magic Woman", even here Santana showed he could start a fire with pop hooks and experimentation, he also proved he didn't need 20 matchboxes to get it started.