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.

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

Quoan’s ‘Fine Dining’ is a feast of so many ways two horns and a rhythm section can generate excitement and keep us guessing what happens next.

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.

Albert Ayler’s violent alchemy of Africa and Europe imbues ‘Copenhagen Live 1964’ with historical importance because more than fifty years hence, these ideas put into practice sound as radical today as they did back then.

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.