John Lee Hooker built a long, rich career out of writing the same song over and over again for close to 50 years. That's not to say Hooker wasn't a great songwriter, as he most certainly was, but for him the most important thing wasn't the melody or the lyrics, but the boogie, the ceaseless forward rhythm that drove his music with an unholy force and was the foundation of nearly all his great songs. Seasick Steve is no John Lee Hooker, but he does share Hooker's true devotion to the deep and sinewy groove, an element that's run strong through Steve's music since he belatedly launched his recording career in 2006, and his albums have been cut from similar musical cloth, with the Seasick One wailing hard on a buzzy slide guitar while his rhythm section stomps behind him like the beat owes them money. 2015's Sonic Soul Surfer doesn't break a lot of new ground for Seasick Steve (the artist formerly known as Steve Wold)…

Drummer Elvin Jones' first full-length album as a leader is different than one would expect when it is taken into consideration that he was a member of the fiery John Coltrane Quartet at the time. This sextet session, which also includes his brothers Thad and Hank on cornet and piano in addition to flutist Frank Wess, Frank Foster on tenor, and bassist Art Davis, is straight-ahead with a strong Count Basie feel. Jones is still recognizable on the fairly obscure material (only "You Are Too Beautiful" qualifies as a standard) and shows that he can cook in the fairly conventional setting. All of the musicians are in fine form, and two selections feature the rhythm section as a trio.

French pseudo-beatnik Dashiell Hedayat persuaded the psychedelic, prog-rocking Gong to back him up on Obsolete, his second (and final) album project. This is the Continental Circus-era Gong, and the song structures here resemble that album's stripped-down sound. Propelled by Allen's spacy guitar and Malherbe's spicy sax, the tunes on Obsolete, though at times experimental, aren't as involving or full-blown as those on Gong's Camembert Electrique, recorded on the heels of Hedayat's album. Hedayat sings, or rather talks, in French on each piece. He wrote/composed all the "songs" in the autumn of 1969; the compositions were then recorded in May 1971. One of the most interesting and fleshed-out cuts is "Long Song for Zelda." Introductory acoustic guitar (courtesy of Tritsch) leads to actual singing from Hedayat before he breaks into his standard monologue…

On this pioneering album the full resources of a Symphony Orchestra are emulated with the uniquely powerful GDS and Synergy Digital Synthesizers. Predating samplers, and in many ways still superior to that now omnipresent technology, these instruments combined additive and complex FM/PM modulation, with great flexibility. Carlos developed a surprisingly realistic library of most existing acoustic instruments plus many novel hybrids and extrapolated timbres that also sound "real." The two orchestral suites on this album comprise the debut performance and introduction of the aptly named LSI Philharmonic.