The crux of pianist Aaron Parks’ fifth album as a leader: time and tide. Time, in that even from the first notes of the “Travelers” leadoff cut, Parks puts meaningful lapses into a pattern suggesting sifting snowflakes. At medium tempos, brisk tempos, double-or-quadruple time keyboard runs, he effortlessly switches between staccato stand-alone tones and slurred slushes, the timbres of a kid running muck-crazy through slightly-melted powder. Tide, in that each piece tilts a given direction on its way out, then gains (or loses) ferocity, complexity, starkness, in impeccably plotted trajectories. In short, a man, and a (mostly-) quartet who know their game almost as well as Mother Nature knows hers.

Parks played piano with Terence Blanchard on A Tale of God’s Will and Christian Scott on Live at Newport, but he isn’t afraid to experiment with flute-like mellotron tones (the slowly-building, sinister “Nemesis,” enticed along by Mike Moreno’s sly guitar lines through the head melody) or electronic keyboards of varying intensities of oddness. For “Nemesis,” he even overdubs himself on glockenspiel, chiming back at Moreno and adding measured and menacing cadences of his own. Bassist Matt Penman and drummer Eric Hartland, the go-to man for time mastery (his ride cymbal riding sometimes a galaxy or so ahead of his snare), hold everything together—even if, with a crew this sure, “holding everything together” sometimes means something as subtly elegant (and difficult), as giving everyone enough space to shine between beats. Settle yourself before Invisible Cinema and explore the majestic holes through its confident cosmos.