Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes - Expansions (2025 BGP/Flying Dutchman AAA Reissue Gatefold LP)

Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes - Expansions | Vinyl LP - 2025 BGP/Flying Dutchman AAA Reissue (XXQLP 145, 180g Gatefold, Frank Merritt/The Carvery)

Lonnie Liston Smith spent the late 1960s and early 1970s as a sideman in some of the most intense bands in jazz. He played with Art Blakey. He played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He was Pharoah Sanders's pianist on Karma and Izipho Zam. He worked with Gato Barbieri and with Miles Davis. When he formed the Cosmic Echoes in 1973 with his brother Donald on vocals and flute, Cecil McBee on bass and a rotating cast of percussionists, the band drew on everything those years had given him.

Expansions, recorded across two days in November 1974, was their third album and the one that reached the widest audience. The title track builds from a bass vamp and Fender Rhodes figure into a slow, rolling groove that Donald Smith's tenor voice carries without urgency. It went to No. 2 on the Billboard jazz chart and has since been sampled by so many hip-hop producers that listing them is its own genre exercise.

The rest of the album operates on a different level from the title track's fame. "Desert Nights" and "Voodoo Woman" are the most openly jazz-rooted pieces, Smith improvising modally over Carvin's drumming with Hubbard's soprano weaving through the texture. "Summer Days" shifts to a Latin feel, Franco's percussion driving a lighter groove. "Peace" and "My Love" are softer, closer to the spiritual jazz that Sanders had been recording throughout the same period. "Shadows" features Hubbard's soprano saxophone and oboe against Smith's sustained Rhodes chords, creating an atmosphere that the Ace Records liner notes identify as the album's most overlooked moment.

This is the 2025 BGP Records/Ace all-analogue reissue (XXQLP 145), cut by Frank Merritt at the Carvery from the original master tapes, 180g, gatefold.