Crystal Planet - Joe Satriani

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03 - CRYSTAL PLANET (Recommended Listening)
A fast and building riff starts the song, building tension before bouncing into a heavy, fast, powerful chordal movement. The main melody, although in reality is fairly slow in pace it is excited by the backing instrumentation driving the song forward. The main melody is somewhat haunting. My only dislike of this song is it looses direction, although probably intentional, if you stick ...
...a minute left which is a great ending to the song.

04 - LOVE THING
A much slower paced rock ballad, with some lovely, delicate work on guitar. This song is really good and I like it a lot. The melody will probably sound a little odd because of the wah wah effect (modifying between accentuation bass or high frequencies going over a range between them). This is the first feel good track of the album, and provides a tender, and ... more

Released in 1998 after his Joe Satriani - Joe Satriani album, which overall wasn't my cup of tea! So with high hopes of some great new material would I be satisfied? Hey…no lyrics on this album anywhere either! Traditional Satch style rock!

Just a little background information to those of you who are new to this dear fellow, those of you that have read my other past reviews on Satriani's music might like to skip to the ===== line below this section!

Well this album is Joe's ninth studio album, and one of my personal favourites! Although Joe hasn't always had rock on his mind, back in high school he was shaping up to be a promising American football player, but decided to drop all of that and become the now well deserved titled of "Guitar God" the day he heard that Hendrix had died. Since that time he picked up the guitar got lessons, and has taught the likes of Steve Vai (If you haven't heard of this name think of the film "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey", then think of the air guitar captions and final guitar solos they do on that!) Kirk Hammet, lead guitarist of Metallica to name but a few.

Since then Joe has played with bands such as the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple on occasions! He is one of the most inspiring guitarists that us humble guitar players envy! If you want more information on him then check out www.satriani.com. There are also some nice sound clips of some of his work, of which I will be reviewing now.

01 - UP IN THE SKY (Recommended Listening)
With a great little introduction, the song is defined with a raunchy up beat movement, propelled along with a "chop-chop" chugging rhythm which you can easily set your tapping foot going. The song remains uncomplicated in its texture allowing all the instruments to be audible. The main melody is catchy and this song really is a great opening to the album, dispelling all my fears it was going to be another heavily influenced "blues album" which just isn't my thing.

02 - HOUSE FULL OF BULLETS
A more laid back approach to this track, but the tempo is still mid-fast range and the chuggin' rhythm started by the last song can also be felt in this one. Although its not as good as the first track in my opinion, its still not bad, and has a chill out, groove atmosphere which is facilitated with the effortlessly fluid melody dancing over the fat bass line.

03 - CRYSTAL PLANET (Recommended Listening)
A fast and building riff starts the song, building tension before bouncing into a heavy, fast, powerful chordal movement. The main melody, although in reality is fairly slow in pace it is excited by the backing instrumentation driving the song forward. The main melody is somewhat haunting. My only dislike of this song is it looses direction, although probably intentional, if you stick with it, it hits a very nice passage with about a minute left which is a great ending to the song.

04 - LOVE THING
A much slower paced rock ballad, with some lovely, delicate work on guitar. This song is really good and I like it a lot. The melody will probably sound a little odd because of the wah wah effect (modifying between accentuation bass or high frequencies going over a range between them). This is the first feel good track of the album, and provides a tender, and strong bridge to the middle part of the album.

05 - TRUNDRUMBALIND
I think I spelt the track title right… anyhow with a distorted voice calling what sounds like "crazy horses" the song breaks into its main riff, which seems to be a tad over washed with echo loosing some of the melodic detail. It does seem to go on a little too long at 5minutes and I think some people would get tired of it and skip the track. But the next one…

06 - LIGHTS OF HEAVEN (Recommended Listening)
With a clean melody introduction, hiding the all out assault that's about to occur, all you need to do is sit back. Let the melody take you, and you'll find it relaxing and there's something about the main melody that's a dominant theme through that pieces that makes me take an instant like to this song. A nice song, good for going jogging to because of the high tempo and happy melody.

07 - RASPBERRY JAM DELTA V
Coming in with a rather funky riff, it progresses into a variation of the same theme, and it reminds me of something sci-fi based, but not really sure as to why! A nice filler track that keeps the momentum of this much more faster paced album (well compared to the last one!) going and provides some new tricks on guitars to keep listeners audibly pleasured!

08 - CEREMONY (HIGHLY Recommended Listening)
If there were a song that could showcase a musician's talent in one song this would probably be one of the contenders! When the heavy introduction kicks in from the slow build up you know it means business…your speakers might hate you as you turn them up to feel the groove. The main melody although nothing as recognisable as say "Surfing with the alien" holds it's own, and provides a nice melody until it hits the part I have been waiting for. Around 2 minutes in the song builds up and then BANG! What a show case of speed and precision…and he pulls off the same live. When you hear it you will know what I am talking about. It's very impressive! The ending is top trumps too; the lingering fade out with a lovely chord progression leaves me walking back over to the CD player to play the song again.

09 - WITH JUPITER IN MIND
The introduction is a little odd sounding, and lends itself to a more experimental type of song. However the main melody retracts slightly from this passage remaining well on the track until about 2:30minutes in and it strays into a more strange passage. Not one of my favourites.

10 - SECRET PRAYER (Recommended Listening)
A simple but very nice opening riff in my view, which leads very well onto the main body of the song. The tone of this is almost sombre, and sad, with hints of hope lingering in the melody. This track is another show case for simplicity with instrument texture, proving that less is more making this track much more enjoyable.

11 - TRAIN OF ANGELS (Recommended Listening)
A train like sounding drum beat heralds in this song, and it's a nice uplifting tuneful composition. For almost four minutes we get a nice lively bouncy melody that quite avidly captures the train feeling really well. Well worth a listen!

12 - A PIECE OF LIQUID
A creepy introduction on a clean guitar persists for much of the song with small breaks in the song for a distorted lead guitar to come over the top. This song is very slow in its progression which is maybe why it doesn't seem to progress in my eyes, and hence appears to be less interesting than the other tracks on here.

13 - PSYCHO MONKEY
A nice drumbeat allows a rather heavy and pounding guitar section to enter, which leads to a really interesting chorus section. Overall this song is probably one that's going to grow on you as you listen to it more and more and pick up subtle notes that you would have probably missed the first time around.

14 - TIME (Recommended Listening)
A rather heavy styled track with a fantastic tight and rigid feel too it. The chorus passages act as crescendo-ing parts building tension to be released when going back into the verse. This all leads to a really euphoric sounding middle section, which is most definitely worth a listen! The whole song leads to this point, and its magic when it hits it, it's a dramatic style change, but it works so well.

15 - ZZ'S SONG
This song never really gets off the ground in my opinion and follows a similar line to A Piece Of Liquid. Honestly it should have ended with track number 14 and gone out on a high, this just seems like a slower version and modification to track 12.

Flicking through the little booklet that you often get with albums it's interesting to note some of the names on the extra credits for some of the songs most notably one. ZZ Satriani, which I am guessing is his son who has also aided Joe's composition, isn't that nice awww!

Overall, I have lost count of the number of times I have played this album, there are always gonna be a few tracks the people don't like, but this has a lot of "HITS" in my book on it, and was a MASSIVE improvement in returning to his older style from the Satriani - Satriani album.

 

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