Customer Reviews
Brilliant release!
It's right up there with Steve Vai's Tender Surrender. I just want to say that the title track on this album is absolutely one of the most brilliant guitar instrumentals ever released.
great stuff
I didn't even know this was a collection of B-sides until just recently. This is a fantastic album, although I admit that it took some time for it to grow on me. If these are the B-sides, you know how good the stuff is that made it on the other albums. The title track is fantastic, and The Mighty Turtle Head is one of my favorite Satch songs, in fact my second favorite Satch song (a very close second behind the incomparable shred anthem that is Crushing Day) I just love the way Turtle Head moves. It's playful, energetic and it just flows so well. I love this song more every time I hear it. Both Banana Mango songs are a lot of fun, and Thinking Of You is a great ballad number. Speed Of Light moves fast, as the title implies, and Dweller On The Threshold just knocks your socks off. Even the vocal track, Crazy, is pretty good. The only one I'm not too jazzed about is the last track, Woodstock Jam. It's way, way too long and doesn't appear to go anywhere. But all in all, a sensational album, and I haven't even covered the live disc, which is also great. A must have for any Satch fan.
3 1/2 stars really, nice compilation for fans.
It is divided into two discs, a studio record and a live record, each stretches over an hour in length. A curious collection of rarities, outtakes, new recordings, and live material, "Time Machine" is an intriguing mix and a worthwhile investment.
The studio record contains performances from a number of sessions-- the new material was all recorded in 1993 for this record. The best of these is probably the title track, "Time Machine", a dense, churning, powerful piece filled with tension begging to explode that never quite does. A large portion of material were outtakes from "The Extremist"-- the album was evidentally heavily pared down to keep it fairly lean ("Flying in a Blue Dream" felt a bit long to me at least, so the change of pace was nice). Some of this material is superb, including the "Tears in the Rain"-styled "Baroque" and ballad "Thinking of You", which really shows how far Satriani has come as a lyrical and emotive soloist. From the "Surfing With the Alien" sessions one leftover is yielded, the frantic "Dweller on the Threshold", a moody and explosive piece not dissimilar to material on "Not of This Earth". There's also a handful of rarities-- most crucially the "Joe Satriani EP" which never received wide distribution. While i tlacks much of the polish even of "Not of This Earth", this hastily assembled material has its own charm, and certainly having it is as valuable as the material simply because of its rarity.
Still, for all this nice material, there's quite a bit of throwaway too-- Billie Holliday's "All Alone" gets a reasonable reading, and Satriani never ceases to surprise with his ability to stretch, but its just not too intriguing, "Banana Mango II" (left off "The Extremist") just seems to lack any real energy to it, and the closing "Woodstock Jam" has a lot of interesting ideas, but ultimately doesn't hold together.
The live disc fares much better, with unnervingly brilliant performances from the course of Satriani's career-- there's really not a bad cut on here, and particularly superb readings of "Always With Me, Always With You" and a ferocious "Big Bad Moon" are real highlights. Of extraordinary note is the presence of several extra pieces from the same performance that produced the live tracks on "Dreaming #11".
All in all, its a pretty mixed bag-- the live disc is better than the studio, and I kept waffling back in forth on three or four stars. Recommended for fans, newcomers should start with "Surfing With the Alien".
. You can see a complete list of all Joe Satriani discography, or go back to the Joe Satriani tabs
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