Visitors - Automatic Man

With its second and final album, Visitors, Automatic Man unveiled a new lineup. Lead singer/keyboardist Bayeté (real name: Todd Cochrane) and guitarist Pat Thrall were still on board, but bassist Doni Harvey and former Santana drummer Michael Shrieve were gone-and their replacements were bassist Jerome Rimson and drummer Glenn Symmonds. The Bay Area quartet was still interracial (half white, half black), but with the personnel changes came a more commercial approach. While Automatic Man's self-titled debut album of 1976 was an uncompromising, fairly abstract effort that had to be accepted on its own terms, Visitors finds the band making its progressive rock/space rock funkier and more accessible. Automatic Man definitely increased the funk/soul factor on this LP, and tunes like "Daughter of Neptune" and "Give It to Me" have an immediacy and a directness that the first album lacked. This isn't to say that Visitors is a better album; Automatic Man was the more creative and risk-taking of the two, although Visitors is generally likable. Nonetheless, Visitors wasn't the commercial breakthrough that Automatic Man was hoping for-and regrettably, the band broke up after this album. ~ Alex Henderson, All Music Guide