The follow-up to 2018's ambitiously realized big-band work
Big Heart Machine, saxophonist
Brian Krock offers a smaller, if no less aggressive solo debut with 2019's inventive
Liddle. As with
Big Heart Machine,
Liddle finds
Krock drawing inspiration from his dynamic mix of stylistic influences including avant-garde modern creative artists like
Anthony Braxton and
John Zorn and the M-Base funk of
Steve Coleman to the brutal power metal and prog rock that informed his teen years. In that sense,
Liddle plays like a micro-version of
Big Heart Machine, and even features several of his big-band cohorts in guitarist
Olli Hirvonen and bassist
Marty Kenney. Also on board are drummer
Nathan Ellman-Bell, and special guests pianist
Matt Mitchell and six-string electric bassist
Simon Jermyn. Cuts like the opening "Flip," "Knuckle Hair," and "Saturnine" are labyrinthine songs that feature unexpectedly knotty tonal shifts from swinging solo sections and free group improvisations to large slabs of atonal noise. Conversely, tracks like "Memphis," with its woozy electric guitar, and "Heart Machine," with its woody bass clarinet, are dewy, dreamlike arrangements that envelop you. Elsewhere, we get the fleet-footed "Composition No. 23b" that evokes the post-bop work of artists like
Ornette Coleman and
John Abercrombie as much as it does the flight pattern of a hummingbird. Similarly evocative is the levitating album-closer "Please Stop," which finds
Krock's earthy sax lines framed by a UFO-sized wave of electric guitar shimmer.