JOE SATRIANI: “Time Machine” (Relativity/Sony)

THE FASCINATION with Joe Satriani’s guitar work dates back to his spine-tingling indie release Not Of This Earth. Since then his delicate touch, rigorous quality-control, and fret-vision have fuelled a career that sees him release this double-pack as a multi-platinum artist who has defied the odds by doing so with a predominantly instrumental approach.

To his credit, a penchant for shuffles, boogies and ballads hasn’t prevented him experimenting with more complex rhythmic landscapes over which his high sense of melody constructs an aural fantasia. As a post-punk guitarist he implicitly rejects any notions of sixties hippiedom. As a musical chiropractor, Satriani knows how to send shivers up the spine.

Quite how he permitted this to escape, then, is a mystery. With Satrianites hanging around shop-counters waiting for the latest consignment to arrive, the prospect of a new studio album coupled with a live set the pulse racing and this, no doubt, will sell on the back of his splendid The Extremist – yet the grooves prove disappointingly tame.

Commissioning extensive sleeve notes which take almost as long to read as it does to listen to the album is perhaps indicative of a lack of confidence and numerous hearings of the first eleven tracks bears this out. These cuts comprise a disjointed series of technical manoeuvres and more accessible rockers which make up a haphazard collection which would’ve best been left for some posthumous box set. Curious though they are, they offer little progression apart from admirable chord changes that merely hint at a possible darker path for Satriani and, alone amongst the studio cuts, ‘I Am Become Death’ offers an eerie interpretation of Oppenheimer’s reaction to the first atomic test in suitably bleak and twisted tones.

The live set, on the other hand, confirms its superiority in no uncertain terms and includes some excellent versions of Satriani favourites like ‘Satch Boogie’, ‘Always With Me, Always With You’, and a genuinely intriguing rendition of ‘Rubina’.

Not, regretfully, the kind of offering to win new friends and one to raise questions for the converted.

• Paul O’Mahony