CARLOS SANTANA
1/ Angel of Air (Santana,Coster) 11.19
2/ A Love Supreme (J. Coltrane) 6.49
3/ Illuminations (Santana,Coster) 4.31
4/ The Life Divine (McLaughlin) 6.44
5/ Naima (J. Coltrane) 4.05
6/ Angel of Sunlight (Santana,Coster) 14.49
7/ Bliss: The Eternal Now (A. Coltrane) 5.50
8/ Meditation (McLaughlin) 1.58
9/ Bliss: The Eternal Now — Return (A. Coltrane) 4.04
Created at Orange Music Studios, West Orange, New Jersey
Engineer : Robert Musso
Reconstruction and mix translation by Bill Laswell
Tracks 1,3,6,7 and 9 originally engineered by Glen Kolotkin and George Engfer
Tracks 2,4,5 and 8 originally engineered by Glen Kolotkin
Tracks 1,3,6,7 and 9 originally produced by Alice Coltrane, Carlos Santana and
Tom Coster
Tracks 2,4,5 and 8 originally produced by Carlso Santana and Mahavishnu
John McLaughlin
Material Design : John Brown
Axiom/Text Coordination : Bill Murphy
Realization : Steven Saporta/Invasion Group
Mastered by Michael Fossenkemper, Turtl Tone Studio, NYC
Carlos Santana : guitar; Armando Peraza : congas; (1,3,6,7,9) Alice Coltrane : acoustic piano, harp; Tom Coster : electric piano; Jules Broussard : soprano sax; Phil Browne : tamoura (male); David Holland : acoustic bass; Jack DeJohnette : drums; STRING SECTION - Murray Adler (Concert Master), Ron Folsom, Bill Henderson, Nathen Kaproff, Gordon Marron, Paul Shure and Charles Veal : violins; Anne Goodman, Glenn Grab, Jackie Lustgarten and Fred Seykora : celli; Marilyn Baker, Myer Bello, Rollice Dale, Alan Harshman, Myra Kestenbaum and David Schwartz : violas; James Bond : bass; (2,4,5,8) John McLaughlin : guitar, piano; Khalid Yasin (Larry Young) : organ; Doug Rauch : bass; Billy Cobham : drums; Don Alias : drums; Jan Hammer : drums; Mike Shrieve : drums.Strings arranged and conducted by Alice Coltrane
2001 - Columbia/Legacy (USA), CK 61384 (CD)
Tracks 1,3,6,7 and 9 taken from the 1974 Alice Coltrane/Carlos Santana album ILLUMINATION'.
Mid '70s albums like Love, Devotion and Surrender and Illuminations seared with the same unmistakable guitar sound and torrents of Afro-Cuban percussion as the radio hits, but this was challenging, intricate music. He and his crew back then were as polished and passionate as Return to Forever, Weather Report and the other major jazz-rock fusion groups of the day. But the long-winded musical expressions were too much for album-rock radio even back then, and way too hard for Top 40 to handle. Enter Bill Laswell, restless plunderer of underground sounds for the head -- and long-time fusion freak. Three years ago, Panthalassa, his reworking of Miles Davis' electric explorations, helped encourage a fresh and favorable look at the most maligned era of Miles' music. Divine Light aims to capture some of that same excitement around another musical icon, and it may very well succeed.
Using tracks from the two aforementioned albums as source material, Laswell creates an astonishingly seamless and breathtaking suite. The seamlessness is an especially nice trick, considering that the two albums were radically different. Love, Devotion and Surrender featured a full band including organist Larry Young and fellow guitar-hero/student-of-Eastern-philosophy John McLaughlin. Illuminations, though, featured Coltrane's widow Alice on piano, harp, and strings conducting.
But Laswell mixes up enough glue to bring all the pieces together. There's a balanced and logical flow from track to track, with Laswell using the opposite styles of the source LPs to great advantage. The vigorous version of Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" fades almost imperceptibly into the slowly swelling "Illuminations," setting the stage for the pulsating "A Love Divine," whose conga solo on the long fade-out sets the stage for the tender Coltrane ballad "Naima," and so it goes. Trance-like elements ease the transitions, and keep the spiritual vibe intact from start to finish. Of course, the real glue here is Carlos Santana, whose fluid finger-work and deeply felt tone sound almost, for lack of a better word, supernatural.
Mark Reynolds (courtesy of the Hear/Say website)