Breaking up ‘Off the Record’ into four EPs afforded Makaya McCraven the opportunity to construct discreet ‘suites’ whereby he uses his studio sorcery to provide the connective tissue between these primal jams.

This creative burst mostly came with help from jazz luminaries, but ‘The Omnichord Real Book’ still sounds like the singular Meshell Ndegeocello.

No artist is pushing harder to expand jazz’s frontiers than Makaya McCraven, and ‘In These Times’ opens up further possibilities of how the music form can progress upward.

On his third album ‘Reality Check,’ pianist Theo Hill is advancing his craft forcefully, a positive sign of creative restlessness.

Makaya McCraven’s ‘Universal Beings’ is a handmade mishmash of sounds that isn’t alien, but is never completely familiar, either.