Horse Lords have a way of infusing radical ideas with rational approaches. Over four studio albums, the Baltimore quartet has developed a sharp line of inquiry around systems that organize not only music-making but also society, philosophy, and belief. The ensemble gives the folksy appearance of a rock band–bass, drums, guitar, and saxophone–yet they regularly employ dense weaves of polyrhythms and explore mathematically derived tuning systems with modified instruments and electronic processing.

Discovers the wonders of Zamrock as Now Again Records teams up with Vinyl Me Please over the span of 8 rare African garage rock albums.

Immaculately produced by ECM label head Manfred Eicher, Lotus found Maupin and his band exploring a restrained middle ground between the avant-garde and spiritual jazz. Opener “Ensenada” slowly unfolds over a bubbling acoustic bass line; “Song For Tracie Dixon Summers” stretches out emotively; “Past + Present = Future” simmers with interlocking piano pulses. It’s a record built for contemplative listening, an evocative counterpoint to the work of Maupin’s peers Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, and Joe Henderson.

Gendel uses Satin Doll as a means of exploring, deconstructing, and reassembling a selection of renowned jazz standards—including Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and the titular swing by Duke Ellington—as a practice in improvisation and DIY recording.

McCraven is a musician, composer and bandleader, but he is also highly regarded for his “chopping” or remixing and re-imagining production skills. We’re New Again, his reconfiguration of the late-career classic Gil Scott Heron album I’m New Here, will be one of 2020’s top recordings, putting a fresh spin on moving meditations on family, personal history and black identity. We talked to him about that project, the process of remixing and the way he and Heron find links between many different kinds of music.

As a sequel to their early album collection Environmental Holes & Drastic Tracks 1981 – 1986, African Head Charge have compiled the later years of their On-U Sound recordings in this 5CD, 9LP set. Alongside expanding their classic ’90s albums Songs of Praise and In Pursuit of Shashamane Land with bonus tracks, they have pressed 2005’s Vision of a Psychedelic Africa and 2011’s Voodoo of the Godsent on vinyl for the first time.

A masterful new offering from Ilyas Ahmed, who has been a reliable source for strange/wonderful sounds for quite some time now. Behold Killers has a few moments of disembodied vocals, but it’s primarily instrumental, with Ahmed letting his imagination run wild over the course of four absorbing tracks. There’s some moody fingerpicking, homespun Frippertronics-y situations and rumbly drones, all cut-n-pasted together collage-like into an extremely satisfying whole.

We Are Sent Here By History is a spiritual awakening and an homage to African and Caribbean traditions. Recorded exclusively in Johannesburg and Cape Town, with a collective of South African musicians, Shabaka says this of the album, “We Are Sent Here by History is a meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is a reflection from the ruins, from the burning. A questioning of the steps to be taken in preparation for our transition individually and societally if the end is to be seen as anything but a tragic defeat.”