The latest from the Numero Group turns up 25 alternate worlds in which unknown artists like Jerry Townes and Voices are stars, bona fide Bandstand-rocking stars. The two Chicago labels on display here, Nickel and Penny (monetary differences do not imply artistic ones, it should be said), were the work of the versatile Richard Pegue, who slid between recording studio, radio station and record store with silken ease. With all due respect to Chicago radio junkies, this installment of Eccentric Soul seems to suggest that the studio was Pegue’s real playground, as he wrote, arranged and produced all 25 of the tunes here. Most of them jump, like the Matta Baby (what’s "the matta baby"?)’s "Do the Pearl, Girl," which smashes together a pop-guitar with a swinging, naughty groove. The Norvells’ "Why Do You Want to Make Me Sad" is a refined thing, the sophistication of its arrangement betrayed by the tiniest lack of oomph in production. It’s that kind of slight detail that—when you notice them—reminds you these are not, in fact, chart-topping hits by the leading stars of the day. Which is why these expressions of underdog-soul can be so much more fun to discover.

Here’s one from the bottom of the deck, by which we mean Australia: The Necks are a more or less perpetually stunning trio of versatile inside/outside players, meaning they are as comfy with compositions (their own or others’) as they are improvising the walls down. For more than 20 years they’ve been first-call guys for touring artists and collaborators ranging from Nat Adderly and Clifford Jordan right through to Han Bennink, Otomo Yoshihide and the Ex. As you might expect, the Necks tend to get classified as "jazz" by default, but they slip through the fingers of pretty much every genre that tries to contain them. Mindset, their latest, comprises two long, sparkling, accessible pieces that are nevertheless, in Necks fashion, damn hard to label. Listening to "Rum Jungle" is like being slowly lowered into molten steel and finding that you actually quite like it; as drummer Tony Buck whisks the piece along (cymbals, lightly, but with edge), pianist Chris Abrahams stomps around the lower registers and bassist Lloyd Swanton gives contour to the rumbling storm. And...the storm just goes, increasing in vibrant darkness and expressive mood, but never exploding and never making an issue of it. "Daylights" is both darker and lighter, with the introduction of electro-acoustic sounds darting through a spacious but suspense-laden cityscape. Once again there is motion and stillness, an increase in tension, and no detonation. Beautiful stuff!

Followers of the past several years worth of African-music reissues have likely noticed the way that certain Caribbean sounds had manifested around the continent during the 1970s (Congolese rumba, anyone?). So it’s only fitting that the superb reissue-imprint Soundway finds the dynamic flowing in the other direction with this 1976 album. While most of its contemporaries were looking to the States for inspiration, the Trinidadian outfit Ifetayo gazed across the Atlantic, adding distinctly Afro-centric percussion to its supple, caramel-smooth funk. (Band-leader Oluko Imo would go on to play in Fela’s Egypt 80 band a decade later.) On Black Truth Rhythm Band, Ifetayo’s sole full-length release, the septet (we’re basing this assumption only on the cover photo) casts bass, drums and open space in equal balance, conjuring a particularly sweet and darkly colorful brand of funk. Notable among the record’s six tracks (both LP and CD include one additional cut) are "Save D Musician," which neatly pits a bit of steel percussion against the vast warmth of the band’s limber groove; "Kilimanjaro" and its tropical-tourist-baiting birdcalls and alternating organ and mbira; and "You People," which reflects a faint reggae influence.

Fans of Six Organs of Admittance and the more haunted side of the acid-folk scene, this Swede’s for you. Jakob Olausson is a farmer from the south of Sweden with a bracingly beautiful outlook on things, and the six-years-in-the-coming follow-up to his debut, Moonlight Farm, is the kind of record you’ll want to keep close at hand during the wee hours of the night. This is the kind of loner folk you’d swear was a lost gem from the private-press ’70s, some real last-man-on-Earth blues; that said, not only is this music not depressing, it’s strangely reassuring: The opening "Don’t Drown in Sorrows" comes on with layers of guitars and Olausson’s deep, wizened vocals reaching into the well of sadness to pull you out. At times his singing dramatically pulls away from a song’s melody, as on the mesmerizing "Riding on the Wind," but the force of Olausson’s vision makes everything feel like it’s in its exact place. Eight moving songs that will make you feel like you’re alone with the singer, Morning & Sunrise will be a key album to help you push through the winter.

At the time these sweet jams were committed to magnetic tape, the western Africa nation known as Burkina Faso was still called Upper Volta, but that’s splitting hairs. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (we hate broken records here at the record shop), Bambara Mystic Soul is another killer collection of music you’ve never heard before on one of the foremost reissue/reclamation labels on earth, Analog Africa. In comparison to other African forms of rock, funk, highlife etc, the Burkinabè sound actually benefits from a slightly lower-fidelity production quality; because the bass bleeds just a bit it fills in the spaces and makes all of this colorful funk seem smoother and warmer. It also sounds (admittedly, to these Western ears) a little more African, as if the musicians were less interested in (or, in a land-locked nation, more sheltered from) western R&B and Caribbean strains of soul and funk. The call-and-response vocal stands out among the brash horns and funk-guitar on Compaoré Issouf’s "Dambakale," while "Sie Koumgolo" by Coulibaly Tidiani builds off an awesome set of interlocking rhythmic lines that’d have any beat-searching producer salivating.