Aron D’Alesio – Aron D’Alesio

This record is a one-man show, featuring a one-man band who pieced it all together on his lonesome, from recording and playing each instrument to producing and mastering it — all within the confines of a windowless basement studio in Hamilton, ON, where he began work at night and ended when it turned to day.(Exclaim!)

Daniel Caesar – Freudian

In an interview with NOW, the 22-year-old described his mind state as “head in the clouds,” and that comes across in Freudian. It’s not an album of sweeping gestures, but rather an ambling, pleasant account of a 20-something falling in and out of love. It’s full of small moments, nuance and detail. Opening in the bedroom with Get You, a slow-burner duet with Kali Uchis, Caesar and his main producers, Jordan Evans and Matthew Burnett, lay the groundwork for more love songs, with dreamy chords, honeyed melodies and unhurried grooves.(Now)

Joseph Shabason – Aytche

In 2017, with so-called Nu-Jazz in full view, saxophonist Joseph Shabason is solely pulling the thread left hanging by the marriage of minimalism and jazz in the previous century. His debut LP, Aytche, reveals this cross-pollination to be as fertile and captivating as ever, fitting as well– or better– into this decade as any other. Shabason builds a bridge off of the precipice his forbears established, skirting jazz, ambient, and even new age with the same deliberate genre-ambiguity that made their work so interesting.(Northern Transmissions)