Satoko Fujii’s newest combo is This Is It! and their debut album ‘1538’ can’t get much closer to improvisational music perfection.

It’s always a good indication that the music is working the way the artists intend for it to work when you struggle to pigeonhole it but can easily get a firm grasp of its emotional impact. Syrinx Effect ‘s ‘A Sky You Could Strike A Match On’ does just that.

The all-originals ‘Ours’ and all-covers ‘Theirs’ are both bulls eyes from Thumbscrew and a strong way to persuade the quality label Cuneiform to not give up the fight.

It’s that opaque fickleness juiced by prowess on their instruments that makes Spencer Friedman and Paul de Jong’s ‘Functions’ both so different and yet so compelling.

Satoko Fujii is issuing an album in every month of 2018, and if there’s one musician with enough ensembles, projects and ideas to pull it off, it’s her.

Anteloper’s ‘Kudu’ suggests that there is so much art waiting to be tapped with only a trumpet, drums and a little bit of circuitry.

One can’t help to think that Steve Lacy would have loved the originality Ben Goldberg and Michael Coleman brought to these personal expressions of his.

The term “code girl” came randomly out of the mouth of Halvorson’s primary mentor Anthony Braxton but it could have easily been directed at Halvorson herself

It gets harder to be artful in an original way in these days, but Logan Hone and his quirky quartet does it and does it well.

The new album by Roberto Maria Zorzi, Michael Manring and Scott Amendola relentlessly delivers surprises with sounds heretofore unheard.