Best Jazz Records of 2025
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Gerald Bailey – Gross Means
Released on the ever-stellar Potions Music, Chicago trumpeter Gerald Bailey's Gross Means fuses boom bap, Ethiopian jazz, Second Line rhythms, and ambient-industrial sounds into an exciting and highly re-playable bedroom jazz exploration.
Chicago Underground Duo – Hyperglyph
Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor continue their decades-long collaboration with a record that bends jazz, spoken word, and free improvisation into a bold new sound.
The Circling Sun – Orbits
The Circling Sun return with another sunlit blend of spiritual jazz, cosmic funk, and breezy fusion. A record built for windows-open afternoons.
Buy The Circling Sun - Orbits vinyl here
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio – The Cosmic Tones Research Trio
The Portland-based trio deepen their meditative, ritual-leaning approach, tapping into the ceremonial roots of spiritual jazz without losing a sense of immediacy.
Buy The Cosmic Tones Research Trio vinyl here
Rachel Kitchlew – Flirty Ghost
Rachel Kitchlew steps away from her solo harp work and into something looser, stranger, and more intimate with Flirty Ghost, a late-night blend of jazz, ambient, and cinematic sounds touched by influences like Dorothy Ashby.
Oiro Pena - Béke
Finnish ensemble Oiro Pena step into a new chapter with Béke, an album that foregrounds vocals while staying rooted in spiritual jazz and folk traditions.
Buy Oiro Pena - Béke vinyl here
Okonski – Entrance Music
With Entrance Music, pianist Steve Okonski’s trio leans fully into improvisation and meditative groove, crafting an album that feels patient, warm, and beautifully open-ended.
Buy Okonski - Entrance Music vinyl here
Organic Pulse Ensemble – Ad Hoc
Recording everything to a four-track and trusting first takes, Swedish multi-instrumentalist Gustav Horneij turns his solo Organic Pulse Ensemble project into a living, breathing thing, melding spiritual jazz, Ethio-leaning melodies, hand-played percussion, and bright, searching horn lines that feel stitched together by instinct rather than polish.
Buy Organic Pulse Ensemble - Ad Hoc vinyl here
The Misha Panfilov Septet – Skyways
Recorded over two late-summer days in Tallinn, Skyways is a sweeping set built around two long pieces that rise, drift, and dissolve with remarkable patience. An album that takes its time and rewards you for giving it yours.
Phi-Psonics – Expanding To One
Los Angeles ensemble Phi-Psonics deliver a deeply meditative album at the intersection of spiritual jazz and minimalism, with compositions that are slow-moving but quietly impactful.
Buy Phi-Psonics - Expanding To One vinyl here
Secular Music Group - Volume 2
Secular Music Group return with an evolution of their sound on Volume 2. Recorded live to 4-track tape using 1970s gear, the album showcases lush piano and horns that lean toward spiritual jazz, with the band’s love of ’70s French and Italian library music showing up in the warm, cinematic edges.
SML - How You Been
Built from recordings gathered on the road and reshaped with the collective’s sharpened post-production instincts, How You Been captures a group operating with total trust and feels like a banner moment for one of jazz’s most quietly influential ensembles.
Buy SML - How You Been vinyl here
Web Web – Plexus Plexus
On Plexus Plexus, Web Web stretch their spiritual jazz foundation into more psychedelic, krautrock-leaning territory, aided by guest guitarist JJ Whitefield, whose riffs add both funk bite and cosmic haze. A lively, exploratory record from a band still finding new angles within their signature sound.
Moses Yoofee Trio – MYT
The Berlin-based trio sharpen their fusion of jazz, neo-soul, and beat-science on MYT, a record that leans as much toward modern beat culture as modern jazz interplay.
Buy Moses Yoofee Trio - MYT vinyl here