Mike Pardew

Mike Pardew: Azul

by Glenn Astarita
May 1, 2009

Portland, Oregon area guitarist Mike Pardew executes the first several tracks of this trio date with sleek jazz grooves and meticulously designed phrasings. Then he occasionally undercuts some of the passages with ominous theme building maneuvers atop his rhythm section's deep and pulsating grooves. But on the later tracks, Pardew turns up the heat with distortion and sustain techniques, where he treads upon jazz-rock, jazz-fusion, and progressive-metal frameworks.

With bassist Damian Erskine's cleanly enacted, pumping electric bass lines, ...