MoFi SACD - Santana "Abraxas"

Ranked #207 on Rolling Stone’s List of the Greatest Albums of All Time: Santana's Abraxas Teems with Psychedelic Vibes, Cosmic Grooves, and Spiritual Playing

Mobile Fidelity's Numbered-Edition Hybrid SACD Offers Full-Scale Detail and Corrects Long-Time Channel Error

Abraxas remains the consummate Latin rock album. The confident sound of Santana stretching out and carving out a distinctive new genre, the 1970 set is daubed with psychedelic accents and Afro-Latin grooves. Abraxas immediately captured the public's ear, spending six weeks as the nation's No. 1 album and spawning the cosmic "Black Magic Woman" as a Top 5 single that's since become one of the most recognized songs in history.

Befitting such a classic, Mobile Fidelity's numbered-edition hybrid SACD of this epic presents the music in stunningly rich, incredibly dynamic sound. Sourced from the original master tapes, it overflows with information, textures, and colors. And it corrects a longtime error. Until Mobile Fidelity fixed it with its reissues (including this version), Abraxas had never been heard correctly.

For nearly four decades, copies were produced with the left and right channels reversed, meaning that everything was placed in a backwards manner. This even extended to compilations on which individual songs from Abraxas were included. Rest assured that, in addition to boasting audiophile fidelity, this edition gets all the specifications right. Now you can experience Abraxas the way it is meant to be heard, with the instruments and musicians placed in the proper channels. In addition to correcting the imaging, this disc captures the full tonal range of Santana's guitar and nuances of his distinctive touch. Musical information is brought to the forefront and properly scaled, enhancing your emotional connection to this legendary record.

A confluence of celebratory vibes, bluesy jams, mellow vocals, and hip-shaking grooves, Abraxas is a creative cornerstone. Picking up on the momentum of its excellent 1969 self-titled debut and drifting into more versatile territory, Santana reimagines what's possible in melding various disciplines and styles. Mysticism and spirituality abound amidst cohesive performances involving a vibrant mélange of purring organs, conga beats, and fluid bass lines. And that's to say nothing of the bandleader's extraordinary playing.

Wild, free, and loose, the group conjures the feeling of mountains and rivers on the lead-off instrumental "Singing Winds, Crying Beasts," leads a salsa parade on the definitive version of Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va," and explores its sensual side on the stellar showcase "Samba Pa Ti," a tune indicative of the album's Latin vibes and percussion. Sonically, Abraxas takes advantage of then-novel studio techniques such as cross-fading and mixing absent from its predecessor.  

As stated in The Mojo Collection: "Dissatisfied with the sound of their debut, the group brought in as a co-producer veteran jazz engineer Fred Catero, whose skills proved invaluable in balancing the new range of musical flavors Santana [was] bringing into its sound: the result was a giant step on from [the band's] debut."