Expansions - Lonnie Liston Smith (1975)

Not necessarily a mainstay of the 70s jazz people still talk about, but Smith did his own thing. That thing subsequently fits really well into the modern world of jazz records blending funk, soul, spiritualism, grooves, psychedelic feels, and trance beats.

Each track here takes a slightly different route to get to the same blissed out aesthetic.

The opening title track might be mistaken for disco until you get the much more filled-in and fleshed-out vocal and flute parts

Desert Nights rides a wobbly bass groove and adds from there.

Summer Days has a definite early 60s Coltrane vibe, with a constant bed of Liston’s piano and everybody else playing on top

Voodoo Woman, on the other hand, looks forward to that 21st century jazz I was talking about. It reminds me heavily of Matthew Halsall’s orchestral nu jazz.

The rest of the album fills in somewhere around all of these things, making the whole affair a great record to listen all the way through.