Held in high regard in collectors’ circles for albums such as Soul Village and Coral Keys, pianist Walter Bishop Jnr was a tasteful, elegant player with a solid grounding in hard bop and modal jazz who embraced the advent of funk and fusion at the end of the 1960s to good effect. His work on electric piano captured the imagination of many a crate digger-hip-hop producer and he excels again on the instrument, bringing deeply soulful warmth to original material such as another version of ‘Soul Village’, a beautifully ethereal melody that also showcases the talents of Ronnie Laws, a young saxophonist destined for stardom later in the 1970s. Having said that, the excellent sextet Bishop leads here also has one foot in the ‘heavy sounds’ of John Coltrane, and a piece such as ‘N’dugu’s Prayer’, complete with Tyner-esque chording and ripping percussion, is a forthright reminder of how skilled an exponent of serious and spiritual music Bishop was. A welcome reissue for a rarity that deserves to be more widely heard.