This Earshot Jazz Festival billing stretches well past the usual constraints of the genre into exploratory terrain, if you couldn’t tell by venue or the artists involved. DJ J-Justice is a founding member of well-regarded West London–influenced DJ/production/promotions crew SunTzu Sound. He is also the cohost of KBCS’s Friday night program City Soul, where he deals in dance music with soul but not necessarily soul music—boogie, disco, jazz, R&B, Afro, techno, hip-hop, house, and more. Improv is a given with Afrocop, a spectral jazz trio whose sounds go into outer space, with moods and styles varying greatly, from cuts that feel like they should be scoring the chase scenes in the original (1980s-era) Terminator (like “Sci-Tropics”), to “Upward Bound,” which starts out with vague NOLA jazz vibes before venturing into cosmic grooveland. by Leilani Polk