This five-disc set, contained in a cardboard sleeve that bundles standard jewel cases, consists of Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes' four albums for Flying Dutchman – Astral Traveling (1973), Cosmic Funk (1974), Expansions (1974), and Visions of a New World (1975) – along with their first for RCA, Reflections of a Golden Dream (1976). Some of the albums were intermittently elusive, at least when it came to the CD format, throughout the years, so this was a convenient – and affordable – way to get them in one shot. However, it went out of print quickly after its 2009 release.

In 1971, the Jazz Crusaders reinvented themselves for the first time. First they dropped the word "jazz" from their moniker, and secondly they wholeheartedly embraced electric bass and guitars in their mix. Their new "debut" is a wonder of jazz-funk as a natural evolution out of hard bop and soul-jazz. While the wonderful horn interplay between saxophonist Wilton Felder and trombonist Wayne Henderson is still everywhere evident, the badass, beat-driven rhythm section has Joe Sample playing funky Rhodes piano against Chuck Rainey's basslines and an orgy of guitars – led by Larry Carlton's brilliant lead work. These are all anchored by Stix Hooper's never out-of-the-pocket, popping kit work. Certainly other acts had used the same instrumentation, but the sheer sophistication in the Crusaders compositions and charts combined with their dedication to grooved-out accessibility – and Stewart Levine's magnificent production – made them a singular entity even in the up-and-coming jazz-rock fusion scene.

CAMERA SOUL is a powerful jazz-funk ensemble, produced by Mr. Marco Rossi of Azzurra Music (Verona) and released and marketed in the Americas by Kathryn Ballard Shut of TIMKAT Entertainment (Denver, Colorado). Inspired by legendary horn line, soul, R&B, and jazz-fusion artists such as Earth, Wind and Fire, The Commodores, Tower of Power, and Stevie Wonder, as well as neo-soul grooves by Incognito, Erykah Badu, and Jamiroquai, the group is based out of southern Italy (Bari), and led by veteran composer-arranger brothers Piero and Pippo Lombardo.

Recognized most for his keyboard work but also a composer, producer, arranger, and vocoder-armed vocalist, Brandon Coleman is among the flock of jazz-rooted musicians hatched out of Los Angeles during the early 2000s. The musician is connected with virtually all West Coast luminaries of his generation – Kamasi Washington, Ryan Porter, Miles Mosley, Thundercat, and so on – and has ventured stylistically afield with Babyface and Anthony Hamilton among those who have sought his talent. Moreover, Coleman is likely the lone link from smooth jazz stalwart Boney James to polyglot experimentalist Flying Lotus, the latter of whom featured him on Until the Quiet Comes and You're Dead!, and issued Resistance on his Brainfeeder label. This is actually Coleman's second album as a leader. His first, Self Taught, received a low-key release in 2011 and a few years later was reissued in Japan. Like it, Resistance enables Coleman to indulge in his affinity for late-'70s/early-'80s electronic funk from a jazz perspective. As a teenager, around the time he started learning to play, his head was spun by Herbie Hancock's vocoder-ized Sunlight, and that work, as well as other openhearted moments of the master's catalog from Man-Child through Lite Me Up, informs the material here. Considering Coleman's rare spotlight, truckload of stockpiled gear (20 instruments, just for himself), and accommodation of fellow instrumentalists and background singers numbering in the dozens (including many L.A. players), Resistance is extraordinarily condensed.

The Peterson Brothers - keyboard player Ricky, bass player Billy, drummer / guitar player Paul and their nephew, saxophonist Jason - are true brothers in arms, Minneapolis institutions, members and survivors of that city's musical revolution. They lay the music out like an uptown groove buffet.

John Lee and Gerry Brown's Blue Note debut pairs the duo with producer Skip Drinkwater, who strips their fusion approach to its bare essentials to create a moody, deeply funky sound that smolders with intensity. Bolstered by session aces spanning from Motown studio great Wah Wah Watson to Belgian guitarist Philip Catherine, Mango Sunrise burns as slow and steady as a stick of dynamite – while Drinkwater's production is undeniably slick, it also eliminates the superfluous sounds and technical wankery that undermine so much of Lee and Brown's subsequent output.