Five albums from Joe Satriani – picked seemingly at random but not unappealingly – are collected on this budget-priced 2013 box set. The albums here – Surfing with the Alien, Engines of Creation, Strange Beautiful Music, Is There Love in Space?, Super Colossal – arguably showcase Satriani at his best, even if they don't focus on any particular time…

Surfing with the Alien belongs to its era like Are You Experienced? belongs to its own – perhaps it doesn't transcend its time the way the Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 debut does, but Joe Satriani's 1987 breakthrough can be seen as the gold standard for guitar playing of the mid- to late '80s, an album that captures everything that was good about the glory days of shred…

2008 five CD box. The Original Album Classics series, courtesy of Sony/BMG, packages together five classic albums from one of the most popular artists on the label's roster, housing them in an attractive slipcase. This set from the guitar hero features the albums Not Of This Earth (1986), Flying In A Blue Dream (1987), Extremist (1992), Joe Satriani (1995) and Crystal Planet (1998)…

Few "guitar shredders" of the late '80s were able to cross over into the upper reaches of the pop charts, but Joe Satriani proved to be an exception to the rule. And with over eight full-length studio albums in the shops by late 2003, Satch was ripe for a "best-of" collection – resulting in the release of the double-disc overview Electric Joe Satriani: An Anthology…

Recorded live at the Metropolis in Montreal, Quebec on December 12, 2010 and released as a double CD and 3-D Blu-ray, Satchurated was filmed live on the Wormhole Tour in support of Joe Satriani's 2010 album Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards…

With Crystal Planet, Joe Satriani made an effective return to his signature sound following the erratic blues-rock detour of Joe Satriani. For the follow-up to Crystal Planet, Satriani is once again exploring novel territory in an effort to keep his music fresh, and Engines of Creation is the biggest stylistic shift he's made yet – to electronic music…

Time Machine is an excellent double-CD set providing something for just about everyone who's interested in Joe Satriani's music. Disc one reprints four tracks from the 1984 Joe Satriani EP, while also showcasing nine new studio tracks and a loose jam session, and disc two is a collection of 14 of Satriani's best live performances…

Dreaming #11 is something of an oddity: a mini-disc released in 1988 with three live tracks and one new studio track. The live tracks, taken from the Surfing with the Alien tour and featuring the powerful duo of Stuart Hamm on bass and Jonathan Mover on drums, showcase Satriani's outstanding talents in a live atmosphere; however, they've been heard before ("Ice Nine" was on Surfing with the Alien and "Memories" and "Hordes of Locusts" came from Not of This Earth)…

Surfing with the Alien belongs to its era like Are You Experienced? belongs to its own – perhaps it doesn't transcend its time the way the Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 debut does, but Joe Satriani's 1987 breakthrough can be seen as the gold standard for guitar playing of the mid- to late '80s, an album that captures everything that was good about the glory days of shred…

What's a guitar hero to do now that the masses prefer electronic beats and rap-metal to killer scale runs? Joe Satriani seeks that answer on Strange Beautiful Music. Satriani set himself apart from other would-be kings of the six-string in the 1980s by combining impeccable technique with great feel and pop hooks. With those qualities, he produced great guitar-driven albums like Surfing With the Alien and Flying in a Blue Dream. On his 2002 release, Satriani tries to make his music fresh by incorporating world music influences and a bit of techno flava…

The most frightening thing about "Super Colossal" is that it starts off sounding horrifically similar to the chorus of Billy Squier's "The Stroke." Thankfully, this is remedied immediately, and Satch returns to familiar territory…

Drawn from a concert recorded May 3, 2006, at the Grove in Anaheim, CA, Joe Satriani's Satriani Live! comes as both a double-CD and a simultaneously (and separately) released DVD. The audio version presents more than two hours of typical Satriani guitar work…

While a lot of guitar heroes sling their axes for the sole purpose of proving that they are the fastest shredder in the showroom, picking their Mixolydian scales to the nth degree, on the ridiculously named Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock Satriani shines in his ability to hold back and write tasteful verse/chorus songs with memorable hooks…

Apparently his time in Chickenfoot made Joe Satriani want to get back to where he once belonged, so he goes retro on 2010’s Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards. About as far away from the heavy-footed party rock of Chickenfoot as possible, Black Swans is pure guitar prog, filled with compressed boogies, sci-fi synths, exotic flourishes, and all of Satch’s phasers and flangers in full-tilt overdrive…