Joe Satriani – Professor Satchafunkilus And The Musterion of Rock

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Sony BMG
Produced by Joe Satriani & John Cuniberti

Arguably the original instrumental guitar hero Joe Satriani issues his 13th record to date mixing, as the utterly ridiculous title might suggest, funk and rock in largely equal measures.

And the result is Joe’s most accessible CD for many years. Somewhat like a Lenny Kravitz record an underlying funk theme runs through it, but unlike a Lenny Kravitz record there are no weak tracks and no I-desperately-want-another-hit-single attempts (although admittedly on a guitar instrumental album this isn’t really a consideration). The first three tracks sit mostly in the rock field, with the grooving Glenn Hughes-esque Overdriver being the pick of the trio.

The first full-on funk track is the part-title track Professor Satchafunkilus, four songs in, and then everything mellows out for a while and blurs a little too much into one. Revelation could arguably be accused of being a ballad, but the album’s true ballad is Come On Baby, followed by another slow, all high notes track in Out of The Sunrise

The thoroughly progressive Diddle-Y-A-Doo-Dat, with some Deep Purple style organ playing kick-starts the tail end of the album as things pick up pace again with Asik Vaysel, sounding like something Steve Morse would produce for the first 50-seconds or so, before a fast-paced backing and some unmistakably Satriani playing take over for the rest of the song, becoming a true tour-de-force towards the end, and given it’s hugely bombastic ending and comparatively epic seven-and-a-half-minute length, I’d have closed the album with it.

Instead Andalusia closes. Slightly out of place against the rest of the album for its first two minutes of latin guitar, it too ends up being a classic Satriani shred-fest for the final four minutes, but doesn’t quite reach the heady heights of Asik Vaysel, and this highlights perhaps Joe’s only real mistake on this disc – not the inclusion of any particular track, but the ordering. Both of these latter two will prove outstanding live selections, but Asik Vaysel is stronger and should have closed. Equally packing all three mellow tracks together in one go in the middle of the album destroys the momentum built up by the first four.

This is still Joe’s most widely listenable album for a while. Although perhaps guitar aficionados might prefer some of the others, this is going to have great appeal to a wider audience. Some reshuffling of the tracks to separate the slow ones (three is perhaps too many?) would have made it even better.

“ widely listenable ”

Tracklist: Musterion / Overdriver / I Just Wanna Rock / Professor Satchafunkilus / Revelation / Come On Baby / Out of The Sunrise / Diddle-Y-A-Doo-Dat / Asik Vaysel / Andalusia

Photo(s): Patrick Cusse | www.ccphotoart.biz

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Hard Rock, Instrumental, Joe Satriani