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. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi

1		(Flip)
2		Knuckle Hair
3		Memphis [Intro]
4		Memphis
5		Saturnine
6		Heart Machine
7		Composition No. 23b
8		Spondulics