Lotus Debut New Single on New Year’s Eve

Photo via Lotus’ Facebook page

Lotus closed 2025 with a headlining show at Buffalo, NY’s Town Ballroom. Partway through their first set, the group debuted “Oblong Shapes,” the first single off the forthcoming LP, Rise of the Anglerfish. The record, which is slated for release on February 13, is said to explore “a dichotomy between light and dark blending live guitar, bass, drums, and keys with warped samples, modular synths and electronic beats.”

In a statement, Lotus co-founder Luke Miller explained, “On January 26, 2025 an anglerfish rose to the surface off the coast of the Canary Islands. This creature had spent its entire life beneath the ocean in total darkness, never seeing sunlight, only its own bioluminescent glow. For me this story reflected the process of taking these strange, sometimes weird musical ideas and bringing them to the surface, into the sunlight. We started the album by taking some little ideas and improvising with them live. Eventually we sculpted those into more structured song shapes. I think this process pushed us into new sounds, while keeping the Lotus live sound on the album.”

His brother, Lotus’ bassist, modular synths player and producer Jesse Miller, adds: “The seed of the album was a set of new music we wrote for our 2024 Summerdance festival. The concept was to use dance beats and tempos that we hadn’t explored too much with the band. We drew from UK Garage, footwork/juke, EBM and breakbeat. There is still that Lotus sound with indie rock and jazz in the mix, but we were pushing ourselves to more experimental places in the compositions and recordings. ‘Oblong Shapes’ is definitely the most jazzy on the album harmonically. It opens with a big jumping bass line groove before a harmonized guitar and electronic piano melody. Modular synth arpeggios are sprinkled in until the track opens up to a Tim Palmieri guitar solo – probably my favorite solo of the album. It stretches outside of the scale while also consistently hitting catchy patterns.”

Later on New Year’s Eve, Lotus also offered a new additional surprises. The group officially rang in 2026 with a countdown during “It’s All Clear,” before segueing into “Aspic” and a set-closing “Shimmer and Out.” The quartet then returned for an encore and proceeded to cover The Beatles’ “The White Album” track “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” using the tune as a coded area nod to “Buffalo Bill.”

This evening, Luke Miller also team up with former Disco Biscuits drummer Allen Aucoin for a live/DJ hybrid set at Denver, CO’s Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox .Lotus will kick off an extensive winter tour in Ft. Collins, CO’s Washington’s on January 15.