Recorded in 1977 at the hand of Lee “Scratch” Perry in the legendary Black Ark lies one of its most beguiling and misunderstood creations. While blending roots reggae with African rhythms seems like a natural recipe for success, Island Records wouldn’t touch it. The project was deemed a failure at the outset, and only years later did various iterations of the project come to light.

The resurrection of Strata-East is nothing short of monumental, and that’s a fact. While each album on the legendary jazz label is a masterpiece in its own right, there is perhaps no clearer line to the heart of the Strata-East psyche than Charles Tolliver and Music Inc.’s Live at Slugs’ Vol. 1 & 2.

Interior Live Oak is a striking change of pace for Cass McCombs. His last album Heartmind was all set pieces: eight distinct tracks with eight distinct vibes. Interior Live Oak works in fewer hues but more shades. Every song here has its own little signpost, an indelible sonic signature to situate and settle you on your trek across the record’s four exquisite sides. By the time it wraps on the barn-burning title track, you’re ready to hit play on “Priestess” and do it all over again. It’s a fully-realized ecosystem, a California of the stereo.

“Wish you were here/as I sing bloody mary to the mirror/and the chandelier begins to tremble,” sings Donovan Quinn in a charcoal shaded drawl, in the laid-back but evocative “Black Pine Estates.” It’s the first cut from the first album by Western Extra, Quinn’s project with Chris Rose of Vampire Hands and Robust Worlds, and as close as you can come, musically speaking, to getting stoned with your most well-read friend.

In this day and age, very few albums are truly lost. Some just get misplaced. Take Bay area jazz band Smoke’s 1973 album Everything, an album that should be universally acknowledged as a stone-cold classic of groove music and proto-acid jazz and yet seldom gets mentioned. A half-century later, it still sounds fresh. Spacey, funky and ambient in turn, Everything managed to anticipate so much of where twenty-first century jazz has recently wound up.

With twenty selections culled from private press relics only, Maybe I’m Dreaming is a grab bag that feels as congruous as it does eclectic. From the Anthology Recordings diggers who brought you essential previous compilations like Sad About The Times, this collection is a self-described conscious detour, pairing synth-driven gems and reggae rhythms with rootsy AOR folk rock. Like a mixtape from a reliable old friend, Maybe I’m Dreaming feels curated with purpose and delivered with a panoramic reach.

East of the River Nile is a masterpiece of haunting and hazy ambience from Augustus Pablo (aka Horace Swaby), whose plaintive melodica leads waft through these dubbed-out instrumentals like fragrant and heady strains of ganja mist.

A steaming, subtropical electric stew of Latin, Brazilian and Afro-Cuban grooves—weird and wildly ambitious for Tjader, and as good as anything that the post-Miles fusion units were putting out in those days.