Wadada Leo Smith and his band of free jazz icons show the young guys how it’s done.

With or without the fourth player, the Core Trio exemplify what free jazz sounds like when the minds behind it are set free.

Embracing technology in the making of music doesn’t guarantee good results, of course, but it always helps when time-honored principles and philosophies are also applied. And, of course, an open, creative mind. Johnny DeBlase held true to all of these things when crafting the darkly ambient ‘Guided Motion.’

Earlier this year, outlier saxophonist Johnny Butler made an EP titled Raise It Up, pulling most everything from the pantry and throwing it into a logic board-laden blender. You May Also Like: Sam Butler – Raise Your Hands! (2015)

This improvised music supergroup is truly a democratic musical commune.

Unpredictability and real passion characterizes ‘The Darkseid Recital’ as a whole, just as it did for Jones’ and Shipp’s amazing ‘Cosmic Lieder’, but those things are magnified from doing it from the stage. That’s the perfect way to follow up on that earlier, acclaimed duet.

ree-form jazz doesn’t need to go on for mind-numbingly lengths if the musicians know what they’re doing. The Sputnik Trio have this all figured out.

Provocative and fanciful, they bring Ellington and Strayhorn closer to us.

Two Bay Area pacesetters of improvised and avant-garde music will soon join forces.

It doesn’t matter if the experimental music is being rendered by electric guitar or banjo, Seabrook uses technology, virtuosity and a deviously fertile mind to blow the minds of anyone who comes across these recordings. ‘Sylphid Vitalizers’ expands the world of what is possible with a banjo. And guitar, too.