In their tribute to Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, the duo here manages some tightly woven, superbly played modern classic-jazz mixed stuff. Bartok-ReOrganised is excellent, a great way to cool your ears and set things just right with a modern take on a world-class composer.

Yesterday Into Day is solid stuff mixing prog, rock even some country, under the guidance of a songwriter who has something to say.

The sprawling Istanbul-based rock project Barista, comes from Bahadır Han Eryılmaz. His sprawling Open Sesame, presented in five volumes (yes, 5!), embraces the listener in music influenced by Turkish folk and Sufism as much as Journey, Supertramp, and The Alan Parsons Project. On Open Sesame Vol 2: Press Rewind, one gets a sampler (tracks 8-13) of the 26-song Open Sesame.

A tentative jazzy piano floats behind the delicate voice of Wise John as he opens his A Wonderful World album with “Won’t Somebody Let This Caged Bird Fly?” Although he sets us up for another solo piano vocal paean all too soon on the second tune, “Leaving La” is undercut (in a good way) by a raucous bunch of backing of instruments for a positively Nilsson-ian wonderfully wacky tune!

Multitalented Portland-based Ethan Matthews indeed delivers a singular modern prog music expression with his Echo Us Echo The Windsong Spires.

“Reawakened 2020” ends, with its big heavy bass beat, and shaky high percussion. It’s no surprise that we are back to the central lyrical idea, as most of The Virtualistics addresses the pandemic in some way. This last is the most fully realized tune here, and it rocks the album to a solid definite conclusion.

A plucky, circa-1920’s piano and effected restricted-speaker vocal inform “Don’t Mind The Weather,” the opener of Mike Gale’s new Twin Spirit. It follows with the slip-sliding out-of-tune piano hits and quick snare drumming of “Betterriver.” Gale, playing all instruments and singing here, seems to be setting up some fun weird soundscapes from the beginning, and although this second tune doesn’t go anyplace, really, it sounds interesting at least.

26 East, Vol.2. marks former Styx frontman/vocalist/keyboardist/songwriter Dennis DeYoung’s retirement. Thinking he was done with his “Vol.1” released last year, DeYoung simply wrote too many songs for a single album, so came to spread his goodbye over two volumes, this last, reported to be his final step away from recorded music.

We are in the hands of a well-reasoned production from the get-go here (Vanderveen produces here with Pete Fisher, who also plays bass on Release), with Michael Kay’s drums adding a nice marching snare snap, Kersten de Ligny a sweet harmony, a second electric and harmonica, and Vanderveen’s plucked acoustic laying underneath his delicate pipes on the title-track opener.

We get an excellent lyric on what could have been the usual tread about loss and memory, on “Polaroid Parade.” The fiddle marks the chills-up-your-back, but Jackson’s superb wordplay and the simple production mainly make this a killer track.