Aaron Parks' Little Big quartet played a slew of gigs before recording their masterful self-titled 2018 debut for Ropeadope. In the aftermath, they stayed on the road for over two years, touring the U.S. and Europe and becoming a "single organism," in
Parks' words. Their debut had been a long-delayed sequel of sorts to the pianist's Blue Note debut, 2008's
Invisible Cinema, as it seemingly focused on creating a smooth aesthetic for
Parks' compositions. By contrast,
Little Big II: Dreams of a Mechanical Man, though also a sequel to its immediate predecessor, opens up the group's intimate, synergistic communication to reflect the multi-lingual persona of a band making music in the moment.
The quartet --
Parks on piano and keys,
Greg Tuohey on guitar, David Ginyard on bass, and
Tommy Crane on drums -- explore and cultivate a musical aesthetic. Little Big marry creative and improvised music to the groove-centered elements of electronica, indie pop, neo-psychedelia, and prog, but avoid the "fusion" trap entirely by weaving the various textures, influences, and colors into an original, holistic musical language. Excellent examples lie in the two improvisations, "Is Anything Okay?" and "Where Now?" The spectral eeriness during the first half of the former exists in a space of hypnotically played single guitar notes, reverb, ghostly synth, and
Crane's percussion with its skittering backbeat. They find a fractured groove and move outside, but not into abstraction.
Tuohey's guitar is both guide and anchor, accenting the rhythm with sharp fills and single notes as
Crane shifts the dynamic of his attack -- he even drops out -- but never loses the beat. The latter emerges from a funky backbeat to dubwise bassline, and
Tuohey's psychedelic surf blues tease Latin-tinged melodic lines as
Parks becomes his foil on an analog synth challenging him to go deeper and wider. "The Shadow & the Self" emerges with a noir-ish, brooding, minor-key guitar figure with brooding intensity. The interplay between
Parks,
Crane, and Ginyard keeps the tension. There is a shift at the halfway mark that tempers the darkness;
Parks floats in his own wordless vocals before taking a lilting synth solo a la
Pat Metheny with
Lyle Mays. "Friendo" establishes a breezy, funky groove in its intro with overdubbed pianos and guitars twinning one another. When
Parks finds his solo, he also carves out space for Ginyard's bumping bassline. As
Crane holds steady,
Tuohey interjects with a biting solo then adds a new riff to the tune's vamp-centric core. "The Ongoing Pulse of Isness" constructs its own soundworld from bright percussion (bells, chimes, etc.) before discovering a folk song hidden in its melody. A slippery 9/4 meter creates fluid movement before the tune shifts again toward post-bop with glorious interplay between
Parks and
Tuohey, then circles back.
Dreams of a Mechanical Man is easily as strong as its predecessor. These tunes showcase Little Big in possession of a unique and vastly exploratory identity. Their music comfortably transcends genre boundaries, and the quartet's sovereignty has been developed to the point where they can break the confines of primacy in any composition to discover its identity. When all is said and done, the album is simply an accurate reflection of the band's own persona. ~ Thom Jurek