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.

Approaching his 70th birthday, trumpet maestro Natsuki Tamura made the very personal ‘Koki Solo’ with a youthful frivolity that belies his age and signals that he remains in his peak period.

Indigenous Lifeforms’ ‘Siberia Extreme’ captures the essence of spiritual, shamanic story-telling, combining very Western improvisation with soaring vocals.

Wherever Thollem travels during an Astral Traveling Sessions jaunt like the ones he made with Alex Cline and Susan Alcorn, it’s a journey into the vast unknown areas of music that few dare to venture. But Thollem, he lives there.

This is obviously not music for all tastes but if you know about Fred Frith and Ikue Mori, then you know how good they are at making noise; for ‘A Mountain Doesn’t Know It’s Tall’ they make beautiful noise together.

Kuzu’s third album ‘The Glass Delusion’ continues this noise-jazz trio’s reputation for making some of the most individualistic and rewarding music of this genre.

For their newest album ‘Asteroid Ekosystem’, the adventurous Alister Spence Trio shook things up by inviting a guitarist — fellow Australian Ed Kuepper — to join them for the recording sessions. In Kuepper, Spence brought a real provocateur into the party.