Walter Becker has a message for us from beyond the grave on how we should approach 2021. Check out the new (to us) song “Golden City” from the folks at Walter Becker Media.

Like their previous five long players, Throttle Elevator Music redefines rock-jazz by blending a different kind of rock with a different kind of jazz. It’s organically pure spiritual joy.

There were two discoveries with ‘Science Friction +size’: When a quartet discovered new possibilities with a trumpeter, and when Tim Berne scraped a shiny disc off the floor.

It’s amazing how the tight musical partnership of Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii is able to embrace just one more musician and build a set of performances that fully represents the talents of all three. With drummer Ramon Lopez, ‘Mantle’ musical democracy at its finest.

‘Threads’ is the kind of opening statement that usually takes several tries to nail down, but the Caterpillar Quartet blends a variety of styles to make ostensibly jazz that’s often hard to neatly categorize when you dig deep into these songs.

Thankfully ESP-Disk made the call to get out to the world Owl Xounds Exploding Galaxy’s ‘The Coalescence,’ a valuable relic from an audacious NYC Downtown band that shouldn’t be forgotten.

‘Anemone’ by the Andrew Barker + Jon Irabagon Duo is sax-and-drums improvisation at its most impulsive and connective.

We already knew that Chris Potter is good, but know we now know that he’s good even he has to do everything by himself.

Dave Douglas never stops looking for new ways of getting his message out, and ‘Marching Music’ is music with a purpose that also widens Douglas’ already expansive palette.

‘Natural Selection’ is an advancement of bold, rock-oriented ideas drummer Dan Weiss first put forward a couple of years ago and justifies his decision to keep going down this path.