As electronic music hits ever-higher peaks in the current
market, the ability to create music has fallen into the hands of anyone with enough
cash for a computer and sufficient time to learn how to run the latest music software.
And as the scene floods with disk after disk of techno dreck, a question burns quietly
among true music fans: What would happen if an actual musician got his/her hands
on some of this highfalutin' gear? Would they produce a record with a crafty modernist
sensibility and the heart and skill of a bona fide player?
Engines of Creation can be said to mark a startling new phase of creativity for Joe
Satriani, one of the most celebrated and accomplished guitar players of the last
decade. The record is diversely cutting-edge, riddled with musical riddles and satisfying
answers, laced with stunning sonic handiwork and astounding melodic assaults. At
first listen, you may not realize this was a record made by a guitar player--but
once you've heard the guitar, you'll most certainly know who's playing it.
Yet Engines of Creation also simply represents a new level of sonic achievement for
an artist who has for years been employing electronic textures, severely altered
guitar tones and jump-cut dynamic and compositional gestures. The disk is as much
a snapshot of where that evolution has taken him and his listeners as it is, only
coincidentally, a musical statement which speaks directly to the current state of
electronica, ambient, drum 'n' bass, and hip-hop. Since the beginning of his recording
career, Satriani has been a searching producer and eccentric composer--one who, only
coincidentally, happened to be a monstrously talented guitarist as well. His first
album, a ground-breaking self-titled white-label job sold out the trunk of his car,
was created entirely by altering, re-tuning, battering and otherwise manipulating
the guitar in the pursuit of utterly new and striking sounds.
And for all its wildness and scope, Engines of Creation is the result of a meticulous
effort to again tap into those artistic areas, rather than simply to superimpose
a batch of virtuoso guitar performances onto modernized rhythm tracks. The burning
"Devil's Slide" is a classic Satriani structure underpinned by forward-thinking
grooves and sinister harmonies, while cuts like "Borg Sex" and "Slow
and Easy" radically morph any idea about what guitar melodies should sound like.
With the exception of portions of the single "Until We Say Good-bye," which
features bass work by noted guitarist Pat Thrall and the drumming of "Late Show
with David Letterman" mainstay Anton Fig under the production eye of Kevin
Shirley (Aerosmith, Black Crowes), all the Engines tracks were recorded by Satriani
and his co-producer Eric Caudieux. Caudieux is best know for his expert digital editing
and programming work alongside legendary producer Trevor Horn (Seal, Rod Stewart);
and for his extensive editing of the recent Guns N' Roses live anthology. Engines
of Creation grew from Satriani's experimental recording sessions in the wake of his
recent band project Crystal Planet. Taking the rare opportunity to compose at a keyboard
in his home studio, and entranced with such recent music as Crystal Method's Vegas
album, the guitarist wrote a group of tunes which he gradually honed during breaks
between tours and collected into malleable MIDI files.
When enough friends and colleagues heard the material and insisted that he make the
tracks into a proper album rather than an obscure side project, the guitarist acquiesced
and turned to Caudieux for production assistance. Over a period of several months
at a rented house in Laurel Canyon, Engines of Creation emerged through intensive
sessions with nothing on hand but keyboards, guitars, effects and computers.
The result is a heaping helping of sound collage, jarring leaps and mind-altering
segues, ripped apart by sudden percussive blasts and liquid flurries of notes. Because
of the conveniences afforded by the computer medium, lapses of near-silence can erupt
into passages of huge orchestral splendor or ripping space-guitar, while synth pads
and chugging basslines move in and out of the music seamlessly It's music equally
at home on the dance floor or coming through headphones in the lava-lamp glow of
the smoking room.
Though thoroughly and aggressively rooted in topical tones and modern production,
Engines of Creation recognizes and holds fast to Satriani tradition; "The Power
Cosmic" contains many of the melodic filigrees and displays of warped fretboard
virtuosity that landed the guitarist on magazine covers worldwide, while the coda
of the bluesy "Champagne?" is a solo treatment of suspended chords as popularized
by Keith Richards, the guitarist Satriani temporarily replaced as Mick Jagger's foil
when the Rolling Stones frontman embarked on his first solo tour in 1988.
At that time, Satriani was riding the first peak in his long career, having just
released the instrumental, highly experimental Surfing with the Alien and watching
it ascend the pop charts to eventually sell over two million copies worldwide. In
just a short time, he was a long way from Carle Place, Long Island, where as a local
guitar hero he was visited by a younger schoolmate named Steve Vai, who showed up
at his house with a five-dollar guitar in search of lessons. After an inspired period
of mentoring-- Joe's student roster would soon include jazz upstart Charlie Hunter,
Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Primus' Larry LaLonde and many others-- Vai returned the
favor by getting Satriani signed to his record label, beginning a whirlwind of global
acclaim and a series of gold and platinum albums, including Flying In A Blue Dream,
The Extremist, and Time Machine.
The years since have seen Satriani mount similar challenges and scale new heights:
countless readers' poll awards from magazines, numerous Grammy nominations and sold-out
cross-continental tours. His versatility attracted a recent but politely declined
invitation to join legendary heavy metal pioneers Deep Purple, with whom he toured
in the '90s as a replacement for Ritchie Blackmore. Satriani also masterminded the
phenomenal G3 tours, which brought to renewed worldwide attention the talents of
guitar artists as varied as Steve Vai, Michael Schenker, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robert
Fripp, Eric Johnson and many others.
Featuring nothing but computer-generated rhythms, timbres and his six-string, Engines
of Creation is in some respects a throwback to Satriani's first solo recording, a
personal journey through music and sonic mayhem now combined with a raging artistic
desire to harness the technology that's developed so radically over the intervening
decade. It's a complex blend, but remains Satriani, pure and simple.
