FunkFreak75 The Echoes are crumbling: falling into the allure and trappings of the more commercially-successful but soulless musics of Earth, Wind & Fire, Bob James, and Freddie Hubbard.

A1. "Space Lady" (6:40) great heavily-processed electric bass coupled with the clavinet and keyboard-generated electronic bass. Lonnie has definitely mastered the strings (must be a new keyboard he's using to generate them). Flute, saxophone and Fender Rhodes are exemplary at adding the smooth textures while the song remains totally grounded in Jazz-Funk. Brilliant! (9.25/10)

A2. "Mardi Gras (Carnival)" (6:02) raucous celebratory music so fittingly titled. Here Lonnie moves back to his acoustic piano while the percussion team and rhythm section hold fast to a Latin motif start to finish. Great energy and, of course, get-up-and-dance motivation. Nice contributions from the flutes, too. (8.875/10)

A3. "Starlight And You" (5:21) rich, chorused Fender Rhodes with airy flute and percussives open this before the bass, drums, and synth strings set up a gentle NORMAN CONNORS-like motif for Donald Smith to sing over. The problem comes in that Donald is singing a sexy love song--something that feels icky/uncomfortable for we the listener after all of his hymns to the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, and the Cosmos. Plus, the song has less jazz pinions and more pop-Soul/R&B foundations than anything I've heard before from Lonnie and the Echoes. (8.66667/10)

B1. "Mongotee" (5:44) back to some jazz-funk with percussion, bass and sax-and-flute providing the grist to the motif. Lonnie's synth strings take over the lead in the third minute, showing his skill at arranging and conducting for an orchestra. (8.75/10)

B2. "A Song Of Love" (4:05) the band tries returning to their more universal themes of praise and gratitude within a song that feels like the band has finally gone fully over to the making of Easy Listening Elevator music. It's good--for that genre--but it just feels so strongly as if it is loosing its jazz-soul to something more commercially-oriented--as if the band is more invested in getting something out for the sales and radio play than the expression of their inner longings and spiritually-elevating mission. (8.75/10)

B3. "Between Here And There" (2:36) Lonnie soloing on his heavily-treated Fender Rhodes. Loveley. (4.5/5)

B4. "Renaissance" (4:53) A high-quality soul/R&B song more akin to the pop-successful music of Earth, Wind & Fire, Rick James, or Steely Dan--complete with female background vocalists. The band has lost their center: allowed it to drop from the heart and third eye to the pelvis. And Donald! I commend your past commitment to the attainment of higher planes while worrying about the giving in to the temptations of the carnal world. (8.75/10)

Total Time: 35:34

Too much of this album is dedicated to showing off Lonnie's new found string synthesizer--and the skill he has at working orchestral strings arrangements into his music.

B/four stars; a collection of very nice, smooth easy listening songs bordering on pop directed. Maybe Lonnie was converted by the success Earth Wind & Fire had with their cover of his own song, "Reasons."

Sean Trane Sixth and last real Cosmic Echoes album for this band that was finally starting to be one, with some now-fairly-long-standing members in its ranks, such as Donald Smith, David Hubbard, Killian and more recently Al Anderson, Wilbur Fletcher and Guilhermo Franco. And while the continuous slide from the absolute perfection of Astral Travelling kept going, until the fairly mediocre Golden Dream, this album does indeed seem a bit better titled with its Renaissance. Yes, the present is an improvement, but it still has its share of overly sweet songs, but at least the superb (if somewhat pretentious) artwork depicting Liston as an artiste-painter makes up partly for it.

The BMG digipak CD reissue comes with a border of cabalistic signs I had no recollection of seeing on the outer gatefold cover of the vinyl back then, but it adds charms. I had picked the album up (along with its predecessor) in my teens, but quickly send it back to the used-vinyls store. Of course, I investigated in the mid-90’s some earlier of his works, after seeing some of his credentials in Rashaan’s or Pharoah’s band or Gato Barbieri albums. So a few years later I borrowed this album from the library with some understandable wariness, and to be honest, it didn’t reverse my opinion drastically, but it has crawled up a few echelons in my esteem and at least, there are no blatant disco songs.

Opening on the instrumental mid-tempo Space Lady with its delightful Smith-played flute and good Liston Rhodes and later Hubbard’s sax, the album continues with a Latin-inspired (Brazilian) Mardi Gras instrumental that takes a long stroll. Things slip rather badly with the awfully string-ladden arranged soppy Starlight And You, but not all is bad. I’m only slightly bored and let it glide along, because despite the candyfloss, the arrangements are awesome.

The instrumental ultra-funky but mid-tempoed Hubbard-penned Mongotee is another beauty, where SLS’s Rhodes is charming its way into our eardrums and the string arrangements are more sober than previously. The soppy Song Of Love interrupts the reverie (despite Smith’s excellent soul vocals), but the short cosmic Between Here And There reaches a mild blissness (not a word, I know ;o)) that prepares us for the title track finale, a decent soul-funk with again plenty string arrangements. Well, as said above, Renaissance certainly merits somewhat its name more than its predecessor Golden Dream, as there is one more good track than there are very-average ones.