Welcome: Santana. CBS 474145.

Reviewed by Ken George.

A very smooth album indeed. In fact, probably the first one that they have produced for a while that can be just plain old listened to. No blow your bass speaker out heavy metal thump, no dazzlingly brilliant extended solos where you are supposed to sit and admire the virtuosity of it all, no wonderfully intricate pieces of inspired musical composition, no avant garde free form adventures, in fact almost none of the things which have become musically fashionable but tend to be a bit boring after the first couple of listens.

Still unmistakeably Santana, they have gone in this album further into jazz and latin-american types of music than on any earlier album. They have augmented their basic line-up, (presumably for the recording only), with a number of new sounds. The band itself is exactly the same as the one that toured New Zealand, including the negro jazz vocalist Leon Thomas, but with two female vocalists, Wendy Haas and Flora Purim, the latter sounding very much like Cleo Laine plus a wind and string section, among other things.

A nice full sound, with everybody playing all the time. As for the composing, almost everybody in the band contributed. Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, also plays on the album.

All in all a very tight crew, extremely competent, and memorable for its polish and professionalism. This album could well appeal to a much wider audience than any of their earlier ones, especially jazz fans. Some of the pieces are so smooth it's almost cabaret, and if you ever wondered what Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 would sound like with an electric guitarist, here's the answer.