With another year gone, the time for lists is upon us. I’ve already toiled over my list of favorite metal albums and my list of pop/rock/whatever albums, so the unenviable task now falls to identifying 2012′s favorite jazz records.

Brilliantly off-kilter, completely unquantifiable, Xenat-Ra is, at any given moment, the best prog/free jazz/hip hop/metal band you’ve never heard of.

Vancouver native and saxophonist Michael Blake came back to this Canadian city after residing in NYC for a quarter century, and brought home a wealth of ideas with him.

I would bet a pepperoni pizza that Jeremy Morris is the most prolific artist in the history of recorded music. The Portage, Michigan resident sings, writes songs, plays a flurry of different instruments and runs his own label.