This was an amazing year with a number of innovative and revolutionary releases that made it very difficult to choose. I spent many days narrowing the best records of 2014 down to fifteen:

1. Josh Sinton’s Ideal Bread – Beating the Teens (Cuneiform)
2. Travis Laplante’s Battle Trance – Palace of Wind (NNA Tapes)
3. Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Peter Evans – Live in Lisbon (No Business)
4. Tomas Fujiwara Trio – Variable Bets (Relative Pitch)
5. Tony Malaby’s Tamarindo – Somos Agua (Clean Feed)
6. Matt Bauder’s Day in Pictures – Nightshades (Clean Feed)
7. Thumbscrew – self-titled (Cuneiform)
8. VAX – Count to VAX (self-released)
9. Mary Halvorson – Reverse Blue (Relative Pitch)
10. Max Johnson – The Prisoner (No Business)
11. Tyshawn Sorey – Alloy (Pi)
12. Anna Webber – SIMPLE (Skirl)
13. William Hooker & Liudas Mockunas – Live at Vilnius Jazz Festival (No Business)
14. Ingrid Laubrock & Tom Rainey – And Other Desert Towns (Relative Pitch)
15. Patrick Breiner’s Double Double – Mileage (Sulde)