Tag: Best of
It’s 2026, however before turning attention to the new year, here is one final “best of” list for 2025, highlighting some of the standout compilations that came out over the past twelve months. From funky deep jazz and spiritual grooves to obscure global selections, these well-crafted releases illuminated incredible gems in a carefully curated format.
Listen back to this past Saturday, December 27th BeatCaffeine Radio show on Motion FM, hosted by TJ Gorton. The broadcast included some of our favorite selections from 2025 including music from The Circling Sun, Collettivo Immaginario, Marcello Cassanelli, Gerardo Frisina, The Sultan’s Swing, Ensemble C and much more!
As with the new music releases of 2025, many incredible reissues and previously unreleased recordings emerged throughout the year. The recordings unearthed each year continue to amaze. As mentioned in past years, the quality of these reissue releases seems to keep improving over time.
Similar to past years, narrowing down this list was probably the most challenging task among all the year-end lists (sorry, I always forget a few worthy titles). For this list, the focus is mostly on full-length reissues, though a few standout 7-inch selections are included.
For our second year-end list, we spotlight 10 standout EP releases from 2025. As in recent years, this list notably includes some superb selections from two standout UK-based labels that continue to put out forward-thinking jazz fusion and peak-time dancefloor material in Steve Conry’s Ten Lovers Music and Colin Curtis Presents imprint. This overall selection of EPs are arguably up their with the year’s best full-length albums, when it comes to quality and impact.
It’s that time of year again, when we look back on some of the year’s best albums. As in previous years, we’ll start with the top new releases, followed by deep dives into standout reissues, EPs, compilations, tracks, and more in the days and weeks ahead.
Happy New Year! We’ve made it to the final day of 2024. For what will probably be the final BeatCaffeine “best of” list of the year, we dive into some of our favorite tracks over the past twelve months. This one definitely gets the reward for most difficult list to put together out of the bunch. Even though this list stops at 40, this could have easily been a top 100 given how great some of the music was this year.
As we wind down the final days of 2024, we take a look back at some of the essential compilation releases over the past 12 months. From tropical grooves to jazz dance, spiritual, cosmic and obscure selections from around the globe, these well-crafted records helped shine a much-needed light on some incredible gems from many under-the-radar talented artists and musicians.
Listen back to Saturday, December 28, 2024 BeatCaffeine Radio show on Motion FM, hosted by TJ Gorton. The broadcast looks back at just some of my favorite jazz reissues and previously unreleased records from 2024 including tracks by Sun Ra, Webster Lewis, Roland Haynes Jr & Phenix, Roy Hargrove, Copa Salvo, Enzo Randisi, and much more!
As with new music releases in 2024, there where many incredible reissues and previously unreleased recordings that came out throughout the year. I continue to be amazed by some of the recordings that continue to be unearthed each and every year. As I’ve mentioned before, I feel like the quality of the actual reissue releases themselves also continues to improve in time.
Listen back to Saturday, December 14, 2024 BeatCaffeine Radio show on Motion FM, hosted by TJ Gorton. The broadcast looks back at just some of my favorite jazz and cosmic selections from 2024 that have yet to be played on the show including tracks by Nala Sinephro, Ezra Collective, Rosa Brunello, Lucas Arruda, Tom Funk’s The Sultan’s Swing, The Robinson, the return of Galliano, two incredible covers from Japanese based groups Nautilus and Cruisic, and so much more!
As we complete another trip around the sun, it’s that time again to start to look back on some of the best releases of 2024. Similar to previous years, we will start with the best new albums and follow it up with a deep dive into some of the standout reissues, compilations, singles, tracks and more.
With the final “best of” list for 2023, I dive into some of our favorite tracks of the year. Out of all of the year-end lists, this is easily the most difficult to pull together given how many great tracks are worthy to be included in such a list. This year, I went about this differently. Instead of just listing the tracks, I also included the album, 12″ or 7″ that the track was associated with in hopes to encourage everyone to be purchasing the vinyl or digital releases (which is important for these artists and labels!). No commentary included with these, we’ll just let the music do all the talking.
Now in the final days of 2023, we take a look back at some of the essential compilation releases over the past 12 months. From tropical grooves to jazz dance, spiritual, soulful house and obscure selections from around the globe, there were many incredible must-own compilations to dive into.
