Mind-altering music is usually about textures; Jaimie Branch and Jason Nazary do that part well while also bringing their improvising gifts to the table.

Sun of Goldfinger’s ‘OZMIR’ is strangely enchanting even as it challenges you, and the only thing more astonishing is that such fully developed pieces of depth, mystery and just damned fine playing can be cooked up so quickly.

Roberto Zorzi, Scott Amendola, Jason Hoopes and Elliott Sharp are capable of anything, making for an unpredictable mix of textures, technology and prowess.

Extraordinary music usually results when extraordinary musicians like Nels Cline and Ben Monder step out of their comfort zones and put themselves in challenging situations that gives them no other out but to lean on their innate sense of creativity.

When left entirely to his own devices (literally), Natsuki Tamura’s imagination runs wild. With ‘Summer Tree,’ he gave himself more places for his imagination to run, thanks to multi-tracking.

Every Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber project was treated as a major work by the late Greg Tate, and with ‘Angels Over Oakanda,’ he leaves intact his legacy of leading a band of boundless imagination and chops.

Only by being so open-minded and outside the box leads to truly original art, and guitar/banjo virtuoso Wendy Eisenberg has just made more of that kind of art again with the latest release, ‘Bloodletting.’

Ari Lehtela’s album is a godsend of sanity in the year the Earth stood still, getting everything right when everything else just went wrong.

Pastoral psychedelic drones are the order of the day with Ross Hammond and Kevin Corcoran’s ‘Music For Lighthouses 2,’ minimalist renderings using Delta bluesmen tools of trade as a foundation.

The Fourth Qorld Quartet’s ‘1975’ documents that brief time talented brothers and a colleague came together and really went for it blending free jazz, rock and modern classical.