“Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” begins with Hubley’s drums over which a snippet of studio chatter can be heard, including a laugh as if they are saying, “Wait until they’ll get a load of this song.” Immediately, McNew commences with a perfect six-note bass riff that powers the song through to the end like the scientifically-tuned Formula 1 car engine.

New York’s numün never quite fit into the ambient country mold associated with founder Bob Holmes’s other group SUSS. The team-up with Joel Mellin and Christopher Romero of Balinese music ensemble Gamelan Dharma Swara meant numün was always going to be about finding the common ground between big sky drift and eastern drone. Their third album Opening positions them somewhere between Bruce Langhorne and Popul Vuh. But it also shows them capable of whipping up a slow-motion psychedelic boogie whenever the mood hits.

We just did a monster roundup covering the 50th anniversary of the release of the Davis live documents Agharta and Pangea — a pair of double live LPs recorded at the Osaka Festival Hall, February 1, 1975. You can read that, here, but for the uninitiated looking for a taste, go ahead and dig into Agharta en totale.

Tobacco City formed around Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard, both singers, both guitarists, whose vocal interplay recalls the swirling laments of Oakley Hall. They are especially fine together in anthemic “Time,” where Coleslaw’s keening lead collides with the buzzing sweetness of close harmonies. But while they set up these songs’ structures, pedal steel guitarist Andy “Red” PK adds color in the wailing, crying, yearning tones of his pitch-shifting instrument.

This latest album from the ambient ensemble Jantar evokes Jon Hassell’s fourth world sound, Laraaji’s ecstatic meditations, and, of course, the motherlode, the ambient soundscapes of Brian Eno.

Okonski return with Entrance Music, revealing the flipside of the perpetual afterhours reverie of Magnolia. For their sophomore outing, the trio gently open the curtains to find themselves in the light of a new day, unimpeded by anything that isn’t melody or mood. Entrance Music drifts along like a perfect daydream, homey and lived-in, but maintaining a sense of spontaneity that leaves no doubt pianist Steve Okonski, bassist Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery, and drummer Aaron Frazer are attuned to the same ephemeral frequency.

Phi-Psonics is a spiritual jazz collective headed by Los Angeles-based composer and acoustic bassist Seth Ford-Young, whose prolific session work can be heard on releases such as the recent stunner by Takuro Okada. The uninhibited, meditative soundscapes of previous studio offerings The Cradle and Octava quickly made waves after catching the attention of Manchester jazz label Gondwana, flashing nods to A Love Supreme and a lush framework playing off of Ford-Young’s Mingus-inspired upright bass, lifting woodwinds and the Wurlitzer piano of Mitchell Yoshida.

Over the past decade, Destroyer has shifted seamlessly into middle age. Where restless, lesser artists might have manufactured reinvention narratives or settled into the indie oldies circuit (imagine the money to be made from a Kaputt 15th anniversary tour), Bejar and his muse have kept on truckin’: ken, Have We Met, LABRYNTHITIS, and now Dan’s Boogie. Not career-defining statements, but statements out of which a career is defined.