I didn’t know who Les McCann was, or what kosmigroov was as a genre, but somehow (I assume from Sea of Tranquility) I picked up a copy of McCann’s Invitation to Openness and haven’t looked back. Or forward, really: I’ve pretty much just stayed with this album, but if this is indicative of what the keyboardist/ composer does on his other albums and I’ll need to rectify that soon. Both meditative and funky, psychedelic and jazzy, it’s a gorgeous record that can match me when I need to send into the clouds or come down from the ledge.

In my limited experience, the closest thing I can equate Invitation to Openness to is Miles Davis’s In A Silent Way, but that doesn’t capture the funky accents McCann and his colleagues bring to the three meaty tunes. There’s a clear sense of improvisation, finding a groove and really laying into it. Maybe throw some of Davis’s Cellar Door Sessions in there and you start to get a sense of things.

It opens with the 26-minute epic “The Lovers” and if there’s one Les McCann track to listen to, it’s this one. Completely improvised on the spot according to the recollections of producer Joel Dorn, who also assembled the musicians to play the session. It opens with McCann very much channeling the kind of spacey, ethereal washes and melodies I think of right before Davis went full jazz rock. Eventually the drums kick in, and with guitarists David Spinozza and Cornell Dupree in tow the beat starts to come in, giving a more ominous feel as McCann plays in front, behind and around the rhythms, the funk slowly starting to emerge from the mists at the five-minute mark. Saxophonist Yusef Lateef takes the exotic themes over, and his playing is sublime here, also contributing oboe, flute, and more percussion.

As “The Lovers” moves through its close to half-hour runtime, the groove shifts the tone from ambient jazz to funk to psychedelic soul and back again, a marvel of holding things together if this was truly all improvised on the spot. And if it were the only thing on Invitation to Openness it would be enough, but the second side has two more funked up compositions. “Beaux J. Poo Boo” was originally an acoustic number on McCann’s 1965 album of the same name. Here it’s completely electrified and the length is doubled to let the players stretch out and create a much more cosmic soul groove than the upbeat original had (still really good, listen here), with Lateef’s flute playing being the standout. The percussion comes from four different drummers, and although there’s no credits listed for who does what on each track, seeing names like Bernard Purdie, Donald Dean, and William “Buck” Clarke contributing reinforces the caliber of player McCann and Dorn put together.

The album proper closes with “Poo Pye McGoochie” whose puerile name is supposed to evoke the fun, sometimes nasty things McCann and his friends would get into as children. The opening moments however convey a much different, torch like vibe before the music again kicks in with the drums to something more playful. And though either this nor “Beaux J. Poo Boo” have the same weight as “The Lovers” you can certainly hear the same ideas and structures working to the songs’ benefit. With such long tracks I have no idea how compressed a vinyl version of Invitation to Openness would sound, so thank you Omnivore Recordings for putting out a stellar CD reissue that also has a bonus live cut of “Compared to What” from 1975.

It all sounds amazing, and if you’re into this period of jazz at all, I might just consider this essential.