Hi-Fi Choice - May

100 White Lung
Paradise
101 Accademia Bizantina
Haydn Symphonies
101 Xiayin Wang
Tchaikovsky/
Khachaturian
piano concertos
BACK IN THE nineties, Carlos Santana appeared
to be a spent force. His records had stopped
selling, the inspiration had dried up and he was
dropped by Columbia. Then in 1999, and already
into his fifties, he teamed up with a star-studded
cast of young singers including Lauryn Hill, Cee Lo
Green and Wyclef Jean to record Supernatural.
It seemed like the last throw, but it worked
spectacularly. Supernatural gave him his first
number one since 1971 and won nine Grammy
awards. Further hit albums repeated the all-star
guests formula. Yet although his guitar playing was
as burnished as ever and the youthful collaborators
felicitously contemporised his sound, for long-time
fans it was no substitute for the Afro-Latin rock
fusion which set alight the 1969 Woodstock festival.
Now for the first time in 45 years Santana has
reunited with Woodstock survivors Gregg Rolie on
Santana
Santana IV
keyboards and vocals, guitarist Neil Schon and
percussionists Michael Shrieve and Michael
Carabello. Only bassist Michael Brown, who died in
2000, and conga player Jose ‘Chepito’ Areas are
missing, replaced by Benny Rietveld and Karl
Perazzo respectively.
The classic lineup which Santana put together in
the late sixties stayed together for just three
albums, hence the title of their ‘reunion’ album,
which sounds gloriously like you might have
expected Santana IV to sound if they had made it in
1972. If that seems conservative, then bear in mind
how radical and quite unlike anything else in the
rock firmament Santana sounded at the time. The
group’s combustible fusion of Latin rhythms,
Afro-percussion and electrifying psychedelic-blues
guitar solos was revelatory, a thrilling hybrid of
global styles two decades before the term ‘world
CD Thirty Tigers
music’ had been invented. The band are now all in
their late sixties, of course, although they play with
an energy that effortlessly rolls back the years. The
opener Yambu swirls around Hammond organ,
crunching guitars and an African chant to sound
like a first cousin to Jingo from the group’s 1969
debut. Anywhere You Want To Go has a Latin-soul
rhythm reminiscent of Oye Como Va from 1970’s
career-defining Abraxas. Fillmore East is a spacey,
acid-rock instrumental jam, All Aboard is a
contemporary update on their Woodstock
showstopper Soul Sacrifice, the moody Latino
tones of Sueños evoke the slow burn of their classic
Samba Pa Ti and Blues Magic delivers exactly what
its title promises. You cannot recreate the past. But
Santana IV is living proof that when nostalgia is
celebrated with such freshness and energy it can
be jubilantly irresistible. NW
MAY 2016 99