Shapeshifting

This is the seventeenth studio album, released on 10 April 2020 through Sony Music's Legacy imprint as 19439720872, thirteen tracks. It is the last record Satriani made for Sony; the next one, The Elephants of Mars, moved to earMUSIC. The idea behind it runs backwards. Normally a song is finished to fit the artist's style, he has explained; here he asked what would happen if he changed his own musical style to make each song work. He put it as a half-joking, science-fiction reading of the old shape-shifting myths, and it opened up every direction he could write in at once, which gave the band a freedom that shows in the energy of the playing. The album was cut at Jim Scott's PLYZR Studio in Valencia, California. Scott, who co-produced, was new to Satriani; Kenny Aronoff, whom he had been touring with on the Experience Hendrix tour, recommended him. The band was Satriani, Aronoff, bassist Chris Chaney and Eric Caudieux, and they found a ten-day window between August and September 2019 when all four could be in the studio together. Nineteen Eighty was the lead single. The running order here is the import CD's as printed.