Thumbscrew continues to perform greater than the sum of its considerable parts, as ‘Multicolored Midnight’ retains all the freshness of their first time together.

Tomas Fujiwara’s twin trios double the chops and double the fun with the welcome Triple Double followup, ‘March.’

Even the most forward-thinking musicians dig simply constructed chorales. Ben Goldberg is another one who does, but for ‘Everything Happens To Be.,’ he also digs deeper.

The highly distinctive musical personalities of Mary Halvorson, Michael Formanek and Tomas Fujiwara and their superhuman telepathy are the only ingredients that carry over from one Thumbscrew album to the next. ‘Never Is Enough’ is full of new daring feats by this amazing trio.

A new horn section, deeper experimentation and the presence of Robert Wyatt make this a significant progression from Mary Halvorson’s poetry debut.

There might not be a better vehicle for the genius of Anthony Braxton than Anthony Braxton himself, but in tackling a few choice selections of his material, Thumbscrew revealed further facets of his ingenuity just in how they use those compositions to take his vision to new places.

Here is S. Victor Aaron’s Best of 2018 list for modern and mainstream jazz releases.

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.

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

Richard Lloyd Giddens Jr.’s ‘Mimosas’ brings in disparate colleagues and disparate composing pens, and molds them into a united musical statement that one can sense portrays the complexion of its singular leader.