I’m relatively new as a member, but was a lurker for a long time. I always thought that if I ever moved out of lurking, one area I’d never participate in was a poll. So yeah... I stink at predicting the future. While I think my hearing is still good, I don’t have the skillset to analyze things as deeply as others here do. With that out of the way...
I gave this an 8. Given the option, I might have gone 8.5. (Don’t know... are we supposed to revert to our early school math days and round up?)
As I mentioned elsewhere, this is my first time with this album in any format other than hearing Song of the Wind in the past. It’s nice for my first, focused experience with albums to be quad/5.1/Atmos. And I do love the quad mix of this album. While I love Atmos these days, I get just as much excitement and joy from a good quad mix.
I’ve seen the comments in the album thread about some harshness. I don’t doubt it and if I were to sit down with one of you, you could likely point out things I miss. But nothing stood out to me (with my musical analytical inexperience) as I listened. And I do try to take into account the age of the recording.
I’m not as much into the vocal songs, but they’re not terrible by any stretch. For me, it just messes with the flow of the other songs a bit. I know early Santana is a mix of vocal and instrumental. But when an album is mostly instrumental, the vocal songs stick out more to me.
Generally, I love the packaging of these 7" releases. As someone who used to collect comic books as a kid and took good care of them in mylar sleeves, I’m used to needing to be careful. Once I get these 7" packages and look through everything, I put the CD in a DiscSox. I never again open the full package. While impressed with the work that goes into the paper bits, I’ve never felt the need to look at it more than once.
One reason for that... on this one, even with a careful first opening, the fold-over flap tore about halfway. That’s a risk with this sort of packaging and it also caused me to drop the score a bit. There’s a line between needing to be careful to keep the packaging in mint condition and being terrified to touch it because you could tear something. I lean more on the terrified side with these 7" releases.
Overall, I love this series. My first Santana album was Shango, but I was generally familiar with the band before that... just didn’t pay much attention to the music beyond the singles on the radio. Hearing these albums in full for the first time in quad has been a lot of fun and I’ll be pre-ordering each upcoming release.