Description
Re: early December 2024
The bizarre legacy of Lotus transcends its status as both the definitive onstage document of Santana’s career and one of the most spectacular live albums ever released. Originally issued in 1974, the triple LP contains exhilarating performances recorded at two shows in early July 1973 at the 2400-seat Osaka Kosei Nenkin Kaikan concert hall. It bears witness to the eight-piece collective playing with a chemistry, inventiveness, cohesiveness, and soulfulness no other Santana lineup would ever surpass. Lotus also remained the only completely live Santana album for almost two decades — and took nearly as long to see domestic release.
Sourced from the original master tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and housed in deluxe trifold packaging faithful to that of the original pressing, Lotus benefits from reference audiophile treatment on Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 3LP set. Featuring rich tones, smooth dynamics, excellent separation, deep soundstages, and involving presence, this reissue pays tribute to both the virtuosic lineup and the indispensable fusion of Latin- and Afro-Cuban-influenced jazz, rock, psychedelia, R&B, and blues. The complexity of the spiritual passages, demands of the crescendos, delicacy of the calm transitions, electricity of the solos: everything is rendered with superb balance free of harshness, compression, and fatiguing peaks that would otherwise distract from the presentations at hand.
You also get a generous taste of the ambience of the venue, and a definite sense of the interplay and improvisation that transpired as much by feel as by architectural necessity. The weight of the bass, extension of the highs, punch of the mids, texture and reverberation of the percussion: Mobile Fidelity’s organic version of Lotus stakes an immediate claim to demonstration-disc status of how a live recording should sound. And look. Paying homage to the original, this reissue includes four double-sided flat photo inserts and two 24 x 36-inch double-sided fold-out posters. (Note: It does not have an obi strip or red Japanese insert.)
Tracklist:
- Meditation
- Going Home
- A-1 Funk
- Every Step of the Way
- Black Magic Woman
- Gypsy Queen
- Oye Como Va
- Yours Is the Light
- Batukada
- Xibaba (She-Ba-Ba)
- Stone Flower (Introduction)
- Waiting
- Castillos de Arena, Part I (Sand Castle)
- Free Angela
- Samba de Sausalito
- Matra
- Kyoto
- Castillos de Arena, Part II (Sand Castle)
- Se a Cabo
- Samba Pa Ti
- Mr. Udo
- Toussaint L’Overture
- Incident at Neshabur
