** 1/2 JOE SATRIANI “Flying in a Blue Dream” <i> Relativity</i>

Bl-l-l-l-lurr. Dude! Joe Satriani is one vapor trail-blazin’ guitarist, scattering diz-bustin’ clusters of tap-dancin’ harmonic and woo-hoo! sustained sonic screeches in his wake, cookin’ like an amoeba on a hot plate. He kin also play it real purty, too, using 16 tons o’ slick pickin’ tech niques and--more important--a medium-rare sense of melody. Joe knows guitar.

‘Course the million or so folks who bought Joe’s last album (“Surfing With the Alien”) already know that, and if that particular disc wings your whammy bar, well, I know you’ll appreciate this. The difference is that Joe sings five songs on the new one in a serviceable voice, generally tricked up with some sort of audio gimmickry. No harm, no foul.

If none of the LP’s 18 tracks--several of which are simply li’l song-snatches--really stand out, it’s mostly because the whole 64:29 is such an in-yo-face experience. Crazed instrumental rock-god guitarists have been around since the daze of Link Wray and his Ray-men and Satriani can probably make a beautiful dollar cranking out these kinda instructional-manuals-in-disguise for years. Given his talent for organizing lunar soundscapes I’d say the future’s in film sound tracks, Joe, big-budget film sound tracks.