Review: Santana – Sentient
Santana – Sentient
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: Candid Records
Release: 2025
Text: Martien Koolen
Carlos Santana’s newest album called ‘Sentient’ is a retrospective of his successful musical career and the album contains eleven songs, of which three were previously unreleased. When I first listened to Sentient, I immediately thought about Santana’s successful album ‘Supernatural,’ released in 1999. And although Supernatural was a huge commercial success worldwide it never reached the high musical level of Santana classics like: ‘Abraxas,’ ‘Caravanserai,’ ‘Santana 3’, or ‘Moonflower.’
As a matter of fact, I even lost “trace” of this guitar hero after listening to mediocre albums like ‘Shape Shifter,’ ‘Africa Speaks’ and ‘Blessings And Miracles.’ This new album features guest musicians like: Michael Jackson (what the hell??), Smokey Robinson, Miles Davis, Darryl DMC McDaniels, and Cindy Blackman Santana. The album’s opening track is called Let The Guitar Play and Carlos indeed plays some really mean guitar here, but some of his impressive solos are ruined by the awful “rapping” voice of Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, starting this album in a rather doubtful way….
Smokey Robinson’s Please Don’t Take Your Love is the soulful first single of ‘Sentient’ and although it is a rather “simple” track, it features a never before heard – I beg to differ by the way – guitar performance by Carlos… The instrumental (recorded live) cover of Michael Jackson called Stranger In Moscow features Santana’s soaring and breathtaking guitar picking at full force, while Whatever Happens, featuring The King Of Pop on vocals, is really the odd one out on this album, as I am certainly no Jackson fan, and that is a euphemism indeed.
Highlights on ‘Sentient,’ at least for me, are: Rastafario, featuring Miles Davis, I’ll Be Waiting from the amazing Santana classic ‘Moonflower,’ which features Greg Walker on vocals, Coherence (great guitar picking by Carlos) and the classic Blues For Salvador. The latter of course being the title song of the legendary instrumental ‘Blues For Salvador’ album, released in 1987 and it features some of Carlos’s best guitar playing ever, so bring out your air guitar, play it LOUD and try to play along, which in my case is impossible indeed…. Overall, ‘Sentient’ is a mixed album with a couple of brilliant tracks, but also some mediocre, skippable tracks, so, make up your mind if you want to buy this album, or not…. I think I will listen to Santana’s live masterpiece Lotus again instead!!
Tracks:
01. Let the Guitar Play – Radio Version (Featuring Darryl “DMC” McDaniels)
02. Stranger in Moscow
03. Whatever Happens – Sentient Version (Featuring Michael Jackson)
04. Please Don’t Take Your Love – Sentient Version (Featuring Smokey Robinson)
05. Get on – Sentient Version (Featuring Miles Davis & Paolo Rustichelli)
06. Vers Le Soleil – Sentient Version (Featuring Paolo Rustichelli)
07. Rastafario – Sentient Version (Featuring Miles Davis & Paolo Rustichelli)
08. Full Moon – Sentient Version (Featuring Paolo Rustichelli)
09. I’ll Be Waiting
10. Coherence (Featuring Cindy Blackman Santana)
11. Blues for Salvador
Website: https://www.santana.com/