In his 1970s rise to renown as a bandleader, Lonnie Liston Smith made his name on a spiritually-funky soul jazz that was both euphorically pretty and made to move to, a graceful-yet-kinetic sound that narrowed the boundaries between meditativeness and danceability. But while his stretch of LPs on Flying Dutchman with the Cosmic Echoes were just the earliest in a long run of sessions through the late ‘90s, it was the most popular source material for hip-hop and acid jazz heads looking to capture and reinterpret his immaculately balanced sense of intense peacefulness. Considering Smith had been on an extended studio hiatus since 1998’s Transformation, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge’s induction of Smith into their Jazz Is Dead pantheon could be considered a remarkable coup, but it’s also something of a stylistic homecoming: a taut, funky small-combo reiteration of his keyboard-driven sense of reflective energy. The Midnight Hour players are at a somewhat different angle than the Cosmic Echoes were: singer Loren Oden’s voice leans a bit further into the intense epiphanies that Lonnie’s brother Donald once added warm textures to, the funk-heavy percussive contributions of drummers Greg Paul and Malachi Morehead are resounding tidal waves that crash heavier than almost anything Smith riffed alongside back in the day, and the Muhammad/Younge instrumentation — the former on bass, the latter on guitar/bass, both on keys — is densely rich. But while this is one of the heaviest sets Smith has ever played on, his light-fingered nuance still shines through, a source of grounded calm in the eye of the storm.