Olivier Laurent’s new concept album, “Solin Anj”, doesn't so much play for you as it does around you. Listening feels like an act of accidental espionage on a life in progress. We are placed in the sonic womb, hearing the muffled arguments, ambitions, and affections of a world getting ready for our arrival. It’s an album that unfolds with the unhurried, jazzy cadence of...

Sound Liberation’s “Elegy” isn’t so much an album as it is an unbolting of several sonic cages, letting the inhabitants mingle, argue, and eventually, find a strange, compelling harmony. Gene Pritsker and his rotating ensemble are, as ever, on a crusade against the "segregation of sound vibration," and here, their weapon of choice is grief, remembrance, and an absolutely defiant refusal to sit still...