• Led Bib – Sensible Shoes
• Miriodor – Avant!
• The Ed Palermo Big Band – Eddy Loves Frank
• Positive Catastrophe – Garabatos Volume One
• Upsilon Acrux – Radian Futura

Let's see. This is all potentially good stuff. Perhaps most exciting (for me) is the Upsilon Acrux – this is a young avant-rock band who were once upon a time on D.C.'s own Planaria Records, whose last record Galapagos Momentum was a feast of heavy odd-time riffing. Miriodor are a Quebecois band who have a humorous and peculiarly Francophone take on avant-rock (you know it when you hear it); Ed Palermo has carved out a niche for himself reinterpreting Frank Zappa tunes, and by the name of this new album it doesn't seem like anything has changed.

Then there's the jazz. I know nothing about Led Bib, but apparently the Times (UK) said of them, "Sun Ra didn't die in vain," so that bodes well. Positive Catastrophe is a new group fronted by the always excellent Taylor Ho Bynum (and includes a favorite saxophonist of mine, Michaël Attias) and sounds really, really, interesting, purporting to combine Latin jazz and free/avant-jazz in a way that, as far as I know, hasn't really been done before. Cool!