Lying somewhere between the demarcations of electro-pop, high life, and the Caribbean diaspora sits the solo excursions of synthesized session heavyweight Wally Badarou. A guru behind the computerized keys and best known as The Talking Heads’ secret weapon on Speaking in Tongues, it was Badarou’s penchant for unfathomably catchy fills and phrasings that elevated “This Must be the Place” and “Burning Down the House” to the legendary earworm status they maintain today. This may be the most immediate reference point on Badarou’s extensive resume, but the sounds explored on his solo records are illuminated more clearly within the context of his eighties studio credits. One simply does not work with Black Uhuru, Grace Jones, or Fela Kuti without being fully immersed in groove.

A regular sideman and session player for various jazz and rock acts in the Bay Area during the early ’70s, trumpeter Luis Gasca eventually stepped back from performing. But his 1972 LP For Those Who Chant cements his legacy, featuring his Latin jazz stylings and players like Joe Henderson, Lenny White, Stanley Clarke and Carlos Santana.

Twelve years on from their last album together, Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White reconvene in a sprawling improvisation of tidal force, six cuts or one, depending on how you look at things. The tracks flow one into another like water running through sluices, inexorable and boundary-less. It’s as if, once started, the Dirty Three couldn’t stop until they had exhausted themselves.

Like his previous album, the COVID-era 2022 masterpiece I Survived, It’s Over, Nashville multi-instrumentalist Rich Ruth’s new album Water Still Flows is absolutely audacious in its musical fusions and amalgamations. This one is a woozy kaleidoscope of spiritual jazz, post-rock, chiming minimalism, Berlin school synth sequencers, metal and drone.

First released in 1986, the collaborative record of dream pop deities Cocteau Twins and minimalist giant Harold Budd is still among the most interesting crossbreeds between so-called pop and so-called art music. By the time of its release, The Moon and the Melodies‘ mix of cerebral drone experimentation and crystalline emotional delivery was at least on par with those at the frontier of pop’s absorption of the avant-garde: John Cale, Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, and the like.

Høvikoddden 1971 documents a band torn between shrieking free jazz, throbbing minimalism, psychedelic space rock and fuzzy, proto-punk garage stomp–suspended between their avant-pop beginnings and their fusion future. A three-hour, four LP slab of the Soft Machine may be too much for the casual fan. Or it might just be the ideal point of entry.

The Parisian label Wewantsounds delivers yet again with Funk Tide – Tokyo Jazz-Funk from Electric Bird 1978-87, a compilation surveying the Japanese jazz label’s ferocious first decade, culled by the Tokyo-based DJ Notoya. The eight tracks within, many of which are seeing their first release outside of Japan, comprise a bonanza of fusion, city pop, smooth soul sounds, and beyond.

Ambient, post-fusion jazz, minimalism, field recording, electronic extravaganzas and musique concrete manifestos — all could be sold as New Age with the right kind of window dressing and perhaps a little bit of sweetening. California Sigh, Underwood’s self-released 1988 cassette now issued on CD and LP for the first time by Drag City, dips slightly into field recording and electronic spheres, but otherwise sticks to another major venerable New Age pathway: solo acoustic guitar.