Columbia/Legacy has restored some of the best music in its catalogue, and this album gets a royal treatment. The three bonus tracks are from a live performance and give you a taste of the band's stage persona, but the sound quality is tweeked to perfection, if you have the old one, this is well worth the price. This album is essential to anyone concerned with an eclectic mix of rock. Blues influences are predominant, but the mix of jazz-fusion and Afro-latin rhythms make every track listenable and exciting. If your going to buy one Santana album, this is the one to start with, then go to his first and third albums. The rest will work out in time. A wonderful remastering to one of the greatest albums of all-time.

This album, along with the first and third Santana albums, is Carlos at his best. I consider this original line up of Santana's band to be the best. Songs like "Incident at Neshabur" and "Se A Cabo" burn with a firey Latin intensity. There is GREAT singing and Hammond organ playing from Gregg Rolie on just about every song. Another highlight is "Hope You're Feeling Better", a more "straight-ahead" rocker-less "Latin-sounding" than most Santana songs. Also, the live bonus tracks are a real treat. The remastered sound quality is PRISTINE on the studio tracks- a real treat to hear that great Santana percussion so crystal-clear. While you listen to this album, marvel over how each song has such a "live" feel to it, not the sterility of many studio albums. It almost sounds as if the band is plugged in and playing live at your house! I can't recommend this highly enough-as well as Santana I and III. Do yourself a favor and get them ALL!

Wow what an album! Recorded in 1970, it proves that great musicianship is timeless and always delightful to hear. Carlos Santana is one of the greatest guitarists of the 20th century and he shows his technique here especially in "Black Magic Woman". Gregg Rollie (sp) blends his vocal talent perfectly to the style of music that Santana was playing. This is a great CD to any Rock-N-Roll fan especially on the end of the CD when you hear "Black Magic Woman" recorded live. A must have!

I'm not sure why reviews of the gold, DTS and other versions are all on this page when clearly this page refers to the re-issued "re-mastered" 1998 version with bonus tracks but in any case, I'll review this version in case anyone's interested.

The cd itself has got great liner notes explaining a brief early history of Santana which is a nice touch. The bonus tracks, all previously unreleased, actually enhance the listening experience which seldom results as many other attempts at adding bonus tracks to otherwise classic albums tend to take away somewhat from the overall quality of the album. Also, given the fact that these last 3 tracks were recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, the sound quality is very good.

However, it's with the main course of this meal and not the dessert that I have my beef with. I don't know how much of this is due to a severely deteriorated master source but the sound quality of the album proper (i.e. the first 9 tracks) is quite poor. The volume levels are low overall and the bass seems to overpower everything else.

To its credit, nowhere on the cd does it claim that this album has been remastered only that it has been mastered by Vic Anesini which gives us hope that the powers that be can still seek out a better master source from the vaults or do a proper remastering job with today's state of the art equipment to truly do justice to this brilliant classic rock album.

And now to the quality of the songs: Carlos Santana who once played with Miles Davis is very obviously heavily influenced by him, Tito Puente and Gabor Szabo (Gypsy Queen) and this is very evident on this album. Peter Green from the original Fleetwood Mac and the composer of "Black Magic Woman" was also involved in the making of this cover version of his song which is arguably even better than the original which may not be the case for the other cover "Oye Como Va" wherein Tito Puente's version with lots more percussion probably is better and yet both tracks are every upcoming guitarist's dream jam songs.

Speaking as a guitarist myself I can tell you that there are few joys that surpass that of jamming to "Oye Como Va" with a band and "Black Magic Woman" is one of the first songs that I learnt to play note-for-note when I first started playing years ago. Although most people remember the album for these 2 tracks, the rest of the tracks are also very good and "Samba Pa Ti" is just a brilliant piece of mood music and great tone and phrasing on the part of Carlos on guitar.

There is little doubt in my mind that Santana will make the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame soon if they are not already in there and that this album will be the main reason why. My recommendation is to wait for the May release of this album on mini lp sleeve replica and hopefully with better sound quality by our friends in Japan who tend to do a better job of sound production generally and so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, having already pre-ordered my copy.

If you don't mind too much about sound quality, then go ahead and get this album if you are a fan of great classic rock and/or you are an aspiring rock guitarist as this is essential listening if you belong to either category.

Recommended.

This is a review of the sound quality of the latest MoFi remastering of this album, NOT a review of the merit or stature of Abraxas (we already know it is classic).

Having had several iterations of this album over the years, most recently the last Sony remaster, this MoFi blows everything else away. Incredible clarity, great 3-dimensional imaging... it's hard to believe that after all these years, Sony hasn't been able to get so much musical information out of the mastertape for their previous releases of Abraxas and that MoFi just did. I should note that the earlier MoFi release of this paled in comparison. It was surpassed by the last remastering of Abraxas that Sony did, BUT it was state of the art at time of release, and that's been many, many years ago... FIVE STARS!!!