DIVINE LIGHT

This strange but delightful album is a reworking of two of Santana's greatest solo albums (Love, Devotion, Surrender and Illuminations) from the early 70's. I am generally very wary of this type of "démarche artistique" as I have heard many atrocities especially when mixings are mentioned. So before picking this up, I heard roughly half of it at the store and headed on out with this record safely tucked in my jacket's pocket. Speaking of the jacket, or cover, the album boast a completely new artwork not reminiscent of the original ones: we have a superb digipack with a sober blue artwork, but once you open up the fold-out, you will be convinced of the seriousness that was paid to this object.

On of the first thing I must is that Laswell did not screw around too much with the original tracks, just mixing the tracks from both album together and just content of linking them up by creating discreet bridges. So even if both albums are not complete on this single disc issue, the original oeuvres are completely respected and the purist can safely indulge into them. Yes, there is one track missing from LDS and two from Illuminations but we get Eternal Now twice. I will not spend time describing the music on this album, because it is written in the original album reviews. Happy reading and a superb listening.