With its fifth album Imaginary Mountains, Paris’ Ghost Rhythms continues on its idiosyncratic path as one of the most unique and gifted instrumental bands in the world. Composed, as is most of their music, by keyboardist Camille Petit and drummer Xavier Gélard and recorded at home during France’s Covid-19 lockdown, Imaginary Mountains takes its title literally, providing themes for a variety of mountainous fantasies as found on old maps. As always, the band takes its cavalcade of influences – jazz, progressive rock, folk, classical music, chanson – and applies them to a cornucopia of melodies, moods and textures.

Animal Logic is the kind of band that could've existed only in the late '80s – a cross between fusion, art rock, and album rock, all blended with a slight eye on the charts. Since Stewart Copeland and Stanley Clarke provided the musical backbone of the project, there's little question that the outfit had the potential to be a dynamic exploration of the middle ground between adventurous rock and jazz.

For his second release "GROOVE WARRIOR" on ESC Records, Guitarist Dean Brown has again put together a stellar group of musicians. Besides his critically aclaimed debut CD "HERE", he is best known for his work with Marcus Miller, Billy Cobham, David Sanborn, The Brecker Bros. and a veritable who's who in the electric jazz world. Dean has spent the last 20 years performing worldwide and has recorded on over 100 albums, including 4 Grammy Award winners.

As one might guess from the album's title, this Joe Farrell date is a bit rock-oriented in places. Guitarist Joe Beck is the co-star, and Farrell (who switches between tenor, soprano and flute) is also joined by bassist Herb Bushler and drummer Jim Madison; "I Won't Be Back" has Farrell, Beck and Bushler joined by keyboardist Herbie Hancock, drummer Steve Gadd and the conga of Don Alias.

Deluxe edition includes two bonus tracks. 2016 album from the acclaimed jazz artist. Esperanza Spalding presents Emily's D+Evolution, a rekindling of her childhood interest in theater, poetry and movement, which delves into a broader concept of performance. Taking a new approach to her on-stage persona, the remarkable Spalding taps into new creative energy, delivering musical vignettes inspired during a "sleepless night of full moon inspiration." As she puts it, "Emily is my middle name, and I'm using this fresh persona as my inner navigator. This project is about going back and reclaiming un-cultivated curiosity, and using it as a compass to move forward and expand. My hope for this group is to create a world around each song, there are a lot of juicy themes and stories in the music. We will be staging the songs as much as we play them, using characters, video, and the movement of our bodies".

From their beginnings as an attempt at bold jazz-rock fusion in 1967 through a run as a high-powered R&B/soul-rock singles act with singer David Clayton-Thomas two years later, Blood, Sweat & Tears were always a kind of fascinating experiment, and a commercially successful one at that. The first album from the Clayton-Thomas-fronted band appeared in 1969, spawned four high chart hits, won a Grammy as Album of the Year, and went on to sell some three million units. The next two albums, Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 and 4, generated a few more hits, but the band was gradually running out of creative steam by this point, and when Clayton-Thomas left the group after the fourth album, well, that was the end of the line commercially for Blood, Sweat & Tears. A jazzier, but definitely not as commercial, version of Blood, Sweat & Tears showed up for two of the albums collected in this set, 1972's New Blood and 1973's No Sweat, with the third album here, 1976's More Than Ever, featuring the return of David Clayton-Thomas to the fold.

If you're an air guitarist, Al di Meola has likely been your man since his days as an unknown 21-year-old addition to Chick Corea's Return to Forever in the mid-'70s. Over the years since leaving RTF, he has been afforded the opportunity to record regularly, and this CD represents a good overview of his discography, primarily for the Columbia family of labels. His early dates Land of the Midnight Sun, Elegant Gypsy, and Casino are well represented, in addition to his collaborations with Jan Hammer on Tour de Force: Live. His middle-period efforts are not all that vital, as repeat ideas and predictable flash lost their original value even to the staunchest fans, therefore making this collection less than essential.

On 2015's double-disc Live at Orion, Indonesian jazz fusion sextet simakDialog stretch out across their lengthiest recording yet, opening new avenues of exploration for their grooves, improvisational fire, and often astoundingly telepathic interplay. The album was cut live before a deep-listening audience at Mike Potter's prog-centric Orion Studios in Baltimore, Maryland during September 2013, the same month that simakDialog's third MoonJune album, The 6th Story, was released. Naturally, the live set includes several numbers from their concurrent studio outing, but while both The 6th Story and Live at Orion consist of nine tracks, the former was one hour in duration and the latter sprawls out to nearly two.

Assaf began his career in music at the unlikely age of thirteen. When the small-town Heavy Metal band he led was signed to a label and released an album. In the twenty years since, he has studied classical composition and Jazz performance, with full scholarship, at the Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance, and has gone on to work with some of Israel’s leading performers and producers. Assal participated in countless concerts and productions, awarding him considerable acclaim among his peers and among Jazz enthusiasts alike, both in his home country of Israel and abroad.

This is the fifth album by Polish (of Greek origins) guitarist / drummer / composer Apostolis Anthimos, mostly familiar as the lead guitarist of the legendary Polish power trio SBB, but also active in other music fields, as this album's title perhaps suggests. On this album Anthimos plays guitar and drums and is accompanied by bassist Robert Szewczuga, keyboardist Piotr Matusik and saxophonist Olaf Węgier. A couple of vocalists appear as guests on one track each. The album presents fourteen original compositions, presumably all by Anthimos, since nothing is explicitly stated on the album's artwork.

Joined by a superb cast of marquee players, Dewa Budjana's new release (his 4th on MoonJune), "Hasta Karma," sets a new benchmark for modern progressive jazz excellence in the 21st century. With a vibe and feel more akin to that of a band with decades of experience together, Dewa and his stellar session-mates – the legendary NYC vibraphonist, Joe Locke, and Pat Metheny Unity Group's rhythm core: the fabulous, articulate young upright bassist, Ben Williams, and the extraordinary maestro drummer, Antonio Sanchez – create superlative atmospheric textures that transport listeners to destinations of soaring altitude. Augmenting proceedings further is the glowing work of the legendary Indonesian keyboardist, Indra Lesmana.

After the expanded instrumental scale and sonic experimentation of Court & Spark and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell reverses that flow for the more intimate, interior music on Hejira, which retracts the arranging style to focus on Mitchell's distinctive acoustic guitar and piano, and the brilliant, lyrical bass fantasias of fretless bass innovator Jaco Pastorius. Known for his furious, sometimes rococo figures beneath the music of Weather Report, Pastorius is tamed by Mitchell's cooler, more deliberate ballads: these meditations coax a far gentler, subdued lyricism from Pastorius, whose intricate bass counterpoints Mitchell's coolly elegant singing, especially on the sublime "Amelia," which transforms the mystery of Amelia Earheart into a parable of both feminism and romantic self-discovery. This isn't Mitchell at her most obviously ambitious, yet the depth of feeling, poetic reach, and musical confidence make this among the finest works in a very fine canon.

On Karabas second album, the band combines psychedelic-, progressive- and jazz-rock in a symbiosis and created a sound that is reminiscent of the era of krautrock and canterbury scene of the early 70s.

Whether you love or hate the genre of music he specializes in, you've got to give the man credit. Even during arguably the all-time low point for "guitar shredders" – the mid- to late '90s – Greg Howe stuck to his guns, issuing album after album of technically astounding guitar rock. And with the genre experiencing a resurgence circa the early 21st century, Howe is still all about showing off his six-string gymnastic ability, as evidenced by his 2008 release, Sound Proof. If you're seeking carefully constructed, melodic songs – move along. But, if you're into all-instrumental prog metal with guitar at the forefront, then Sound Proof should meet your requirements.

Joni Mitchell reached her commercial high point with Court and Spark, a remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz which stands as her best-selling work to date. While as unified and insightful as Blue, the album – a concept record exploring the roles of honesty and trust in relationships, romantic and otherwise – moves away from confessional songwriting into evocative character studies: the hit "Free Man in Paris," written about David Geffen, is a not-so-subtle dig at the machinations of the music industry, while "Raised on Robbery" offers an acutely funny look at the predatory environment of the singles bar scene. Much of Court and Spark is devoted to wary love songs: both the title cut and "Help Me," the record's most successful single, carefully measure the risks of romance, while "People's Parties" and "The Same Situation" are fraught with worry and self-doubt (standing in direct opposition to the music, which is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last).