Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Mike Moreno: Lotus

7

Mike Moreno: Lotus

By

View read count
Mike Moreno: Lotus
A blooming lotus is like a magnet for the eyes, calling those who appreciate beauty, vibrancy, and shapeliness to gaze upon one of nature's small wonders. Guitarist Mike Moreno's Lotus has a similar draw, summoning the ears with its enchanting sonics and chimerical ideals.

On this, Moreno's fifth album, the lyrical and the fanciful stand united. The music itself can be serene and surreal, filled with iridescent colors, attractive lines, broken grooves, and beautifully shaped melodies. In a way it hearkens back to Moreno's work on pianist Aaron Parks' landmark Invisible Cinema (Blue Note, 2008), an album that also glows with a prismatic quality. Three-quarters of the band from that date—Parks, Moreno, and drummer Eric Harland—appears here, so that comparison, also noted by Moreno himself, is an apt one.

Lotus opens on a freely executed, classically-infused acoustic guitar introduction that cleanly leads into "The Hills Of Kykuit," a spellbinding number that demonstrates how harnessed intensity can serve a song. Then there's the soothing title track and the wonder-filled "Hypnotic." The former is a balm for the ears and the soul while the latter finds Harland playing with, against, and around the rest of the band.

In much of this work, Moreno is able to boil things down to their essence. And that's not say that this is simple music, because it's not. It just isn't needlessly complex. Pieces like "The Empress" and "Can We Stay Forever?" allow the beauty of Moreno's writing to shine through without any distraction. Even a more daring number like "The Last Stand," opening on Harland's excitable drumming and moving swiftly along, seems unencumbered, left to fly free of any structural overburdening. With Lotus, Moreno finds the right balance between sophistication and clarity.

Track Listing

Intro; The Hills Of Kykuit; Lotus; Hypnotic; The Empress; The Last Stand; Can We Stay Forever?; Blind Imagination; Epilogue-The Rise.

Personnel

Mike Moreno
guitar

Mike Moreno: acoustic guitar, electric guitar; Aaron Parks: piano, Rhodes piano; Doug Weiss: bass; Eric Harland: drums.

Album information

Title: Lotus | Year Released: 2015 | Record Label: World Culture Music

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.