Joe Satriani and Steve Vai released the track "Mayhem" from their joint album The Sea Of Emotion, which will be released on November 6. The duo, which chose the common name SATCHVAI for the project, previously presented the track "Dancing" from it. According to both guitarists, the album is the result of a friendship lasting several decades and a meeting of two different ideas about how music is composed. Rolling Stone France ↗
"We've been preparing this since 1973," Vai ironizes in a press release. "Just unconsciously." Satriani adds to this: "The biggest surprise is that we write completely differently. And that's what made the whole project so much fun." Rolling Stone France ↗
The album closes with a three-part suite "The Sea of Emotion", which is a journey back in time – to Carle Place Middle School on Long Island, where two teenagers were reshaping the world and dreaming about music. The third part contains a previously unreleased archival recording from a magnetic tape, captured during one of the first lessons Satriani gave to Vai. "It shows how long a road we've traveled," Satriani says about it. "We're the two guys on it who haven't yet found our sound, but are bursting with enthusiasm. We're going for something and we're determined." Rolling Stone France ↗
The teacher-student relationship is the starting point of both of their entire careers. Vai was born in 1960, began his professional music career in 1978 as an eighteen-year-old score transcriber for Frank Zappa, played in his band from 1980 to 1983, and launched his solo career in 1983. Since then, he has released eleven solo albums, won three Grammy Awards, and recorded or performed with Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, and Whitesnake, among others. Wikipedia ↗
For musicians, this duo has long been more of a textbook than a hit parade. On SuperMusic.cz, Joe Satriani has 151 recordings and Steve Vai has 106, mostly tablatures. The most accessed there is Satriani's Always With Me, Always With You, followed by A Train of Angels and Echo; for Vai, Sailing Ships and Bad Horsie are in the lead. Tablatures for their most famous pieces – Satch Boogie and For the Love of God – can also be found there. The album The Sea Of Emotion will thus probably end up in the hands of the same audience: people who don't just want to listen to a composition, but also play it.
Illustration photo: Joe Satriani at a concert. Photo: livepict.com / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Satriani and Vai Released Mayhem. Album Closes with Tape from Their First Lesson Together
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