Music Frees Your Spirit — A Review of Layers by Les McCann

Rating: 9/10

Rating: 9/10

Once you get into a certain style of music, it ceases to sound the same. You begin to hear all those little subtleties — the little differences between songwriters, players, and rhythms. The music you are listening to expands into a whole different world, a landscape of sound and feeling for you to explore.

The album Layers by Les McCann is one of those unique albums that seems to be made for some sort of hypothetical universal music church. No lyrics — No tropes — no fluff — this is music that is both of the 70s and completely unique within it.

Chances are you’ve never heard of it, though if you like solid grooves and early synthesizers, this is probably the album you’ve been searching for all along.

Layers is one of the more forgotten 70s albums I’ve found in my time scouring through music catalogs and Spotify playlists. It’s a shame that many of us haven’t been exposed to Les McCann before; though, in my opinion, this would be a great time to start educating ourselves. So sit down for your lesson, children, cause we’re about to take a journey to a 1970s funky spacetime planet where everything is groovy, peaceful, and joyful.

Album opener “Sometimes I Cry” rests easy on solid back beat that combines a traditional drum kit with some light conga work. On top of this groove, Les layers some laid-back electric piano and a synthesizer sound that feels as if its skirting along the clouds right at the apex of the atmospheric drift of this groovy planet.

At some points, the song even sounds like it could have been lifted from one of those dreamy New Age albums of the 80s and 90s, minus the solid backbeat of course.

Les isn’t just content with letting you enjoy some easy listening RnB textures and solid melodic work. He contrasts all of this with grumbling and groaning tones, movements that play a central part on songs such as the “Harlem Buck Dance Strut,” where floating flute lines trade parts with a grainy organ, finally giving way to Les’s atmospheric synthesizer, which plays a central part on nearly all the songs on Layers.

Between all this are some interludes that allow the listener to pause for thought and reflection before being pulled back in the album’s incessant groove. “Before I Rest” is an outlier track that foregoes rhythm to float along some alien world’s desert sands, only serving to make the forward momentum of follow-up track “Let’s Play” even more moving.

The two-part song “Soaring, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2” totals almost 14 minutes over two tracks, and provides one of the most trance-worthy performances of the decade. Every bit of excess weight is removed from the production of these songs, allowing them to soar into the proverbial stratosphere, lifting you high up on a deep but gentle ride through the never-ending dance of groove that Les has curated.

“Soaring, Pt. 1” injects your ears with the gentle takeoff of some electric piano wobble which moves across the space of the song. Soon the rhythm moves in, pairing up a classic RnB shuffle with some latin accentuation so subtle you might even forget it’s there. The same effect is imparted on “Pt. 2,” which pulls you up so gently you won’t even remember how you were carried into this ecstatic world of melodic groove.

By the time you’re lost in the trancey hook that takes over the latter half of the song, you can’t even imagine such an effortless track ever ending. It’s as if this music has existed since the beginning of the universe, and only now has it been discovered moving through the infinite web of space and time.

Since the album is completely instrumental, the music allows you the ability to sink down completely into its warm bed of groove and melody. More specifically — there are no words to distract you from the translucent groove that McCann and his band lay down track after track. ’Cause when your groove is this righteous, who needs words anyway?

In retrospect, Layers seems the opposite of a commercial album. According to the liner notes, McCann felt some music growing inside of him and just NEEDED to lay down some tracks, so he called his producer and did just that. I don’t know if he meant to lay down such a classic of space-age funk and groove, but that he did, and we are all thankful for it.

So lay back, turn Layers on, and dream of yourself high above the earth, floating on the eternal groove of heavenly music that cats like Les have blessed us with. You won’t regret treating your ears to this delight of early 70s laid-back experimentation.