Apart from his collaborator Arto Lindsay, Thiago Nassif’s ‘Três’ much unlike anything else you’re likely to hear from a very broadly defined pop realm that includes its rogue elements.

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.

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.

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.

Expanded reissues from the Residents allow us to peer inside the earliest mad musical manifestations of possibly America’s most enigmatic musical troupe.

None of the great talent assembled here gets stretched near their limits for this Desertion Trio excursion, but this diversion is for an altogether different mood.

Here’s the part of the annual Best of 2017 lists that’s the most fun to pull together.

‘Err Guitar’ by Elliott Sharp, Mary Halvorson and Marc Ribot is three masters of the outside guitar pushing each other to go even further out, making this a notably delirious entry in the catalogs of all three.

Kelly Moran’s ‘Bloodroot’ is not your common minimalist record, and even those who hadn’t embraced that style of music could be drawn to the strange peacefulness wrung from a prepared piano.