Amazon.com's Best of 1998Saxophonist Ken Vandermark released two excellent LPs this year--Target or Flag, a barn burner featuring his Chicago-based group, the Vandermark 5--and Stumble, his collaboration with Sweden's AALY Trio. Vandermark is a player with explosive moves and a surprising vocabulary of honks, blats, and horn chatter. Stumble creeps through the shadows like the soundtrack to a noir thriller. Other times, the record is convulsed by Vandermark's horn fits. A player of many moves--clucking, coughing, roaring, shrieking, wheezing--Vandermark is a player always on the edge, always full of surprise, and on Stumble he delivers the year's best avant-garde jazz: bracing, funny, and sharp. --S. Duda