Matt Wilson Quartet & John Medeski – Gathering Call
Often lumped into some jam-band ghetto for his ventures with the avant-funk trio Medeski Martin and Wood, Medeski’s talents have long been harder to pigeonhole, including a contemplative solo record in 2013. Here, he’s a precisely moving part on an album that should be mandatory listening for traditionalists and jazz-curious Phish-heads alike. Read more on LA Times

Jeremy Pelt – Face Forward, Jeremy
January continues to be known as Jeremy Pelt’s “month.” As previously mentioned in last year’s Water and Earth release, Jeremy has released a CD in January, now for the fifth straight year. Going back to 2010 with Men of Honor, Pelt has continued the trend again this year with a new issue, due to hit the streets on January 21, 2014. Until last year’s CD, Jeremy had kept his previous band intact for over six years. Last year, he switched things up with a new band and a new direction. That direction was heavy on keyboards, effects, and some vocals. Read more of Audaud

Pat Metheny Unity Group – Kin(←→)
The Pat Metheny Unity Group, featuring Chris Potter on sax and bass clarinet, Antonio Sanchez on drums, Ben Williams on bass, and multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi, release their first record, Kin (←→), on February 4. You can watch a preview video about Kin (←→), set to various songs from the album, here, then pre-order the album in the Nonesuch Store for an exclusive print autographed by Metheny. The Pat Metheny Unity Group will tour North America beginning February 3. Read more on Nonesuch Records

Actress – Ghettoville
Four albums in and this south Londoner has all but obliterated his carefully devised image. ‘Ghettoville’ is a signed death warrant. It’s the skeleton of a nom-de-guerre buried under noxious dust of exhaustion, or as his final communiqué sighs: “… the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited. Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence.” Read more on Clash Music

Bohren & der Club of Gore – Piano Nights
Inspired by a Bohren concert where Christoph Clöser was playing a selection of the outfit’s music on a grand piano in Moscow, “out of boredom, more than anything,” said Clöser, the nine-song release was recorded at Dark Victory Studios in Cologne, Germany. Piano Nights is self-described as a return to the band’s roots, albeit based on complex arrangements and a broader palette of sound. – Read more on Vents

Raum – Event of Your Leaving
Event of Your Leaving, a project in-process for at least two years, proves just how complementary these seemingly conflicted aesthetic spirits can be. Where Harris makes subtle, interior, and dread-laced music that often sounds buried underground—it can feel embedded with existential questions of mortality and death, and did so explicitly on this year’s The Man Who Died in His Boat—Cantu-Ledesma makes blown-out, skybent music, with the affect of something heavenly pouring down. Where Grouper works with images of the natural world and somber moods, Cantu-Ledesma’s beaming washes of pastel-shaded white noise are optimistic; his song titles have included “White Dwarf Butterfly” and “Stained Glass Body”, carrying the romance of a love poem or emergency meditation. Read more on Pitchfork

Tara Jane O’Neil – Where Shine New Lights
Tara Jane O’Neil begins Where Shine New Lights, her seventh solo album and the first for Kranky Records with ‘Welcome’, a short passage of multi-tracked sirenic wordless coos that beckon the listener in to wander in a dreamlike state through O’Neil’s ever shifting and increasingly immersive sound world. Read the full review